BF2S Forums The End of Proper English! ohh no!!!

PureFodder wrote:

DesertFox- wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

Just being neighbourly, but when you run through all the commonly misspelled words and get to the centre of the matter, you may find your true colours coming out. Accepting common changes in spelling ahouldn't be a sulphur and brimstone issue.

Wow, that bothered me so much, especially the true misspelling of "shouldn't".

Seriously, though. That move would be catering those who give up. It's certainly not a difficult subject to master.

I'm not saying I'm against US spelling, it's not like you can't read it if you learn UK English. It's just a fact that Americans being annoyed at duel spelling for words is a slightly poorly thought out stance.

The English language is full of utterly stupid spellings. Words that aren't pronounced in the same way as they are spelt and several spellings for similar sounds.

Why not 'tidy up' the language a bit, remove those silent letters and standardise spelling rather than the fairly incoherent rules of spelling used in English. Spelling through 'thru' just makes more sense. Words have changed spelling many times in the past. Words like connexion which is now connection.

I kind of agree with u it makes more sense it can be done easier for people to understand and spell if all words were spelled the way they sounded

Turquoise wrote:

Tripulaci0n wrote:

And there's no way the U.S. will be speaking mainly Spanish any time soon.

Well, admittedly, I was being somewhat sarcastic and hyperbolic.  Still, we will likely be a bilingual nation in about 30 years.

yea probably Spanish/English in the future Spanish may be the main language u never know

Tripulaci0n wrote:

I don't think so. Spanish isn't important enough. As long as English is the language of our laws and schools, I just don't see it.

English is too important around the world. It is more or less the international business language. America runs on Dunkin business.

Well, I would definitely agree that English would remain important as a trade language, but considering the immigration rate of Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking people into America (legal and illegal), it's not far-fetched to assume that Hispanics could makeup as much as 1/3 of the population by about 2025.  When you figure in how many small communities develop across America where knowing Spanish is a necessity (think the Cuban side of Miami, for example), then it becomes quite feasible to assume that we may take the Canadian route towards bilinguality.  We'll just have Spanish as a 2nd language rather than French.  Look at how much of the retail sector has Spanish on its products along with English.  The writing is on the wall...  or packages in this case.

If it happens, it won't be in our lifetime.

(retail) Businesses have Spanish because they want to sell as much as possible and if that means putting Spanish on their shit to sell a few more things, they'll do it. In China, almost everything has English on it. But almost nobody can read English in China. Point is, writing on products and language options on phone hotlines don't mean shit.

Last edited by Tripulaci0n (2008-08-10 20:34:09)

TheAussieReaper wrote:

The two greatest causes for the downfall of the English language has been:

1) The Internet.
lolwut orly nowai icanhazcheezburger.

And 2) Mobile Phones.
runin l8 i'll c u 2moro

Exactly, mobiles and internet have played a huge role in the erosion of the English language but hey at least Gaeilge is still intact!

Gaeilge go deo!

Last edited by Braddock (2008-08-11 01:11:56)

FatherTed wrote:

imortal wrote:

FatherTed wrote:

a spelling reform is in order tbh, the Germans had one a few years ago and it's been widely accepted.

I would be more inclined to accept that then to end all spelling standardizations.  It would also be nice to get British (or proper) english and American English back on the same track.

Agreed.

The way the Germans did it, lots of people sat down with books and shit, and just changed grammer and words to better suit the entire german speaking peoples (note: not just Germany) as a whole. And its worked, worked really well.

Anything that can standerdise English is a good thing imho

Nice of you to make the call - as not being German!
I - and many others that I know - strongly oppose this nonsense! (Well, we grudgingly live with it...)

There are a some minor changes that are acceptable and a few even make sense.
But so many other changes are just complete and utter nonsense.
(Wouldn't help to give examples here, would it? Not a lot German speaking people on these boards as far as I know.)

First some crazy people sit together and propose changes, some politicians - those who are responsible for the (f-up) educational system of course.. - pick them up and praise them as the holy grail to our childrens problems!
A deadline (intentional choice of words!) is set - till then the whole spelling reform is revised several times!! - and first-graders are taught to write in the new way although the debate is still going on!!

End of story: schools teach new students the "Neue Schlechtschreibung" (as we like to call it..), newspapers use it to 99%, students of higher classes are allowed to choose using the new or old way but must be consistent in texts/exams, everybody else is free to write as they have learned - resulting in nice mixups and utter misspellings by applying new rules on words that did not get a change (yes, the whole thing was inconsistent in the first place..).

ß

What next, maths students don't need to get the right number as long as they are kind of close?
Language is what expanded the mind in the first place.

pierro wrote:

Isn't language designed to communicate (nothing else)? If you can understand it's purpose it's succeeded. If you understand what I mean when I say "misunderestimated" and laugh at it because I don't conform to arbitrary rules about the style of communication...that's what real elitism is.

Half of the shit young people write these days is like double Dutch and the stuff that actually is decipherable takes longer to read and fully understand. If they want to come up with a name for their own language then fine (like Ebonics in the US for example) but don't try and pass it off as proper English. Dumbing down a language in this fashion only reduces the level of expression and subtlety possible within the language.

The thing is, spelling needs to be correct for the most part (a couple minor things here and there are ok, as far as "understanding" goes, but not as coming off as intelligent). We've spent so much of our lives reading and writing, that if we suddenly allowed "anything goes" spelling, it'd take forever to read something because our minds have to process all this new spelling and the expectations we've developed will be gone.

Catering to people who are too lazy or stupid to bother with proper spelling is going in the wrong direction. If they can't handle fixing their errors, then maybe they're not cut out for English. But for the people who can spell (even if it's not 100% accurate the whole time), they shouldn't have to stoop to a lower level.

pierro wrote:

mtb0minime wrote:

Catering to people who are too lazy or stupid to bother with proper spelling is going in the wrong direction. If they can't handle fixing their errors, then maybe they're not cut out for English. But for the people who can spell (even if it's not 100% accurate the whole time), they shouldn't have to stoop to a lower level.

-What about reversing that...can't the same argument be made that we shouldn't cater to people who are too lazy or stupid to understand slightly improper spelling, it should go both ways. I know I'm playing a bit of a devil's advocate because the "give an inch take a mile" point to makes a lot of sense.

Braddock wrote:

Wholesale acceptance of bad spelling and grammar merely because it is becoming widespread within a certain age demographic is ludicrous.

I don't think there's a direct reason to say "no", I would guess the real justification comes in that it would lead to further diminishment of the language

I disagree Piero, fair enough people should not hold people to task for the odd linguistic indiscretion here and there but allowing people to abandon the rules of grammar and spelling altogether would lead to a situation where language becomes completely destroyed. We would be left with a scenario where everyone has their own unique dialect and the communication of information in the written form would become incredibly laborious and far less efficient. And furthermore imagine the difficulties this new approach would pose to someone learning the language as a foreigner, not only would they have to learn the original grammar and spelling systems but they would also have to learn all of the new variants, which would spring up on a continual basis.

Last edited by Braddock (2008-08-11 12:26:40)

Proper english has been under attack since people started using "color" instead of "colour" and "check" instead of "cheque".

Pubic wrote:

Proper english has been under attack since people started using "color" instead of "colour" and "check" instead of "cheque".

You guys are just pissy because we're more efficient.