[Deadman]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/03/03/ntext03.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/03/03/ixnewstop.html/news/2003/03/03/ntext03.xml


Score another point for George Orwell (newspeak).

[Tamara]

I don't see what the fuss is about; why would the proles need something as complex and nuanced as standard English to express their thoughts? ;)

[Bruce in West Oz]

The up side is, of course, that it forced the hidebound bureaucracy to re-examine its concept of "written English". Why shouldn't SMS text be accepted as a text form -- a "dialect" if you will.

The English language is, fortumnately, alive and being changed daily -- by our youth. Let's not suffer from the "wounded bull" syndrome and form a circle, heads lowered, to keep out the attackers.

L8R

Bruce

(And no, for those who don't know, I'm not a kid. I'm a 53-year-old Chief Editor for a (very) large publishing company. And though it makes my job, like, suck :D -- I'm glad English is a living language.)

[cuchulainn]

she = ~
& we :-) @ *
but +* 2 it & ?

[JackShandy]

So, does this mean 'Ebonics' will have a second chance at life? If you recall, the first time around Ebonics was struck down because it was seen, correctly, as a dumbing down of the language. If some kids have trouble with the actual English language, let's make it easier for them!
As one of my grade school teachers liked to say, "You ain't worff (worth) two cent." Boy, was SHE born at the wrong time! She'd fit right in today!

[seeker_two]

Grade = F- :fire:

[Azrael256]

When I was in 10th grade, we took a standardized test called TAAS (Texas Assesment of Academic Skills) that included an essay. The score ranged from 0 to 4, and the conditions for each score were outlined in great detail. A person would score a 0 if nothing was written, the handwriting was completely illegible (I scored a 4, and mine is BAD, so you'd have to work to fail that), or if it was written in A LANGUAGE OTHER THAN ENGLISH. So, based on that standard, I give her somewhere between a zero and a zero.

This sort of thing would fly in a cyberliteracy class. I could easily see a student using this "language" in a report for that sort of class, but english is at least somewhat standardized. In a standard english class, stick to dictionary words and spellings. Bruce, you're absolutely right, this language is diverse and changing. I bet you call that box at the back of your car where you put cargo something completely different than I do. The fact is, however, that this kind of deviation from the language in a highschool class is not acceptable.

[Dannyboy]

This is pretty sad. If this girl had put as much effort into learning actual English as she apparently has learning this shorthand (God knows I can't figure it out) she might have actually done fairly well on her paper.

[Skunkabilly]

Beretta 92G L3372!

[Mike Irwin]

Damn...

I don't know what's more frightening...

The fact that she wrote it, or the fact that I could understand the paragraph at the bottom without any problems at all...

[OF]

"There has been a trend in recent years to emphasise spoken English. Pupils think orally and write phonetically. You would be shocked at the numbers of senior secondary pupils who cannot distinguish between their and there. The problem is that there is a feeling in some schools that pupils' freedom of expression should not be inhibited.":barf:

I don't know how widespread this is, but just my own anecdotal experience is that there is an entire generation of people that cannot write the english language. I have run into many kids today that have horrendous penmanship, zero spelling skills (with an obvious 'spell-check'-type deficiency, as in not being able to distinguish between 'there' and 'their') and could care less. Several of them didn't even realize there is anything wrong.

I actually had to let an intern go at our computer shop because of an inability to spell or write in a manner that was understandable. I'm not talking about your standard 'hurried' penmanship of typical adults. This kid (16 years old) wrote like a 4 year old. Great kid otherwise, just nobody ever taught him to write or spell.

It's sad.

- Gabe

[CZ-75]

Judging by some of the posts here, there are many folks older than I that don't seem to know the difference between several common homonyms and can't spell worth a darn.

That the deterioration started only within the past decade or two doesn't seem to be borne out by even this casual observation on my part.

Seems that some folks will learn to spell irrespective and regardless.

Just don't ask me to name more than a handful of prepositions or to diagram a sentence. ;)

[Azrael256]

GRD, I see the same problem. My university is primarily a liberal arts school (mostly music, dance, and theater), so many of the students only take 6 hours of English Composition classes. In fact, there is a sort of "English for dance majors" class taught here that is on a significantly lower level than the classes that students with academic majors take. I see many people who cannot write or spell who claim to be dyslexic, but they have average or above average reading comprehension. Somehow this seems strange to me.

I must admit that my penmanship is... well... terrible. I have tried to improve it (I even took a class here), but to no avail. I do, however, have an IBM Selectric that I picked up for a few dollars at a garage sale :)

[BigG]

While the format of the essay was debatable, the content was definitely Z-grade. She deserved to flunk even if it were in perfect Englush.

[XLMiguel]

Gen Z Ebonics. Liguistically interesting, perhaps(?), but unlikely to get you by IRL (oops :D ). It may help you communicate within your niche, but standard English is, afterall, a STANDARD. Just another SIT (slacker in training), hope I don't end up paying her welfare:banghead:

[Kharn]

WTH, everyone knows FTF means Fail To Fire, not Face to Face. :rolleyes: :evil:

Kharn

[Skunkabilly]

I stopped learning grammar by 7th grade. Then on, we've been reading books on multiculturalism.

I learned more English grammar from French and German classes than 'English' classes.

[TarpleyG]

WTH, everyone knows FTF means Fail To Fire, not Face to Face.
Failure to FEED...

GT

[Mike Irwin]

"many folks older than I that don't seem to know..."


Not to mention using that when who should be used. :D

[Hand_Rifle_Guy]

My handwriting is pretty abominable. My letters dance off the line, and I get sloppy. Can't write fast enough to keep up.

I have regarded diagramming sentences to be a complete waste of time from moment one. I could never see the point of it. I simply refused to do it in class, which irritated my instructor at the time. Cost me a few points of missed homework, and then we were past it.

I am also more-or-less completely ignorant of grammatical nomenclature. I can think of a lot of the terminology, but I've used it for absolutely nothing for my entire life. Is that stuff ever actually used by anyone outside of school english departments for any purpose beyond torturing students?

I refused to accept the value of these "linguistic disciplines", no matter what rational was used by my teacher. She forgave me for the most part, however, because I can spell like a dictionary and I have a vast vocabulary.

And I can WRITE. I don't exactly know why, although I suppose the voracious appetite for reading I developed early on might have some bearing on it. Writing comes automatically to me. Things that don't read right are (Usually, but not always. I ain't perfek!) immediately obvious, and I can compose good sentences, paragraphs, and whole essays without a lot of effort. I took 4 years of English through high school, and a year of A-level college English before I quit school to go work for a living. It has always been my easiest subject, (Except for Calculus.) and has only required tenacity to grind through reading and writing about subjects that are utterly un-interesting. I think the lowest grade I've ever received for an essay was a B. (No, I got a C on a paper I wrote that the instructor said I "failed to understand the assignment." The grade was an F over an A, for subject matter and technique, respectively. She demanded I re-do the assignment, but as the grade was passing, I refused. I subsequently transferred out of that class at my insistence. That teacher and I could NOT agree on things. She dismissed my opinions regardless of their merit because she didn't like them, much like liberals do. Must be why I'm conservative these days. :) )

I dunno. I got lucky, I guess. I have a good memory, my brain runs fast, and I think manipulating words and semantics with precision is fun. Of course, that carries a price. A fast brain gets you arrested, it turns out. Verbal acuity and nimble verbosity is a sign of amphetamine use, don'tcher know!

Large vocabularies don't help much for social interaction. Turns out using obscure words all the time comes across as trying (And succeeding, I guess.) to make people feel/look stupid deliberately. It took a while to figure this out, with the consequence of alienating large groups of people that I barely knew.

High school was SUCH fun. To this day, stubbornly maintained ignorance infuriates me. I've watched it turn into sullen resentment all too often. :confused: :mad:

Today's students have good verbal skills, but they can't write? Aren't the skills used to organize writing the same as what's used to analyze almost anything? How do these kids get by in the world? How does one survive without critical thinking?

I guess that's what Liberal Arts are for. We'll call that shorthand essay an "important" piece of art, and judge it outside of the precepts of literacy. Makes it all possible. Maybe she can get a grant to study New Age Communication. It is the new Millenium, after all. Must advance our culture with the times, you know.

Yeah, right...:rolleyes:

[Col. Mustard]

...those that can't, teach.

Is that stuff ever actually used by anyone outside of school english departments for any purpose beyond torturing students?

Well, yes. The fundamentals of any process need to be observed, or the process itself loses its integrity. Some of us can naturally construct a sentence without consciously identifying the grammatical rules we observe; but the sentence structure emerges, nevertheless. For those people without this ability, the roles and placements of subjects, predicates, modifiers, etc., need to be explained and ingrained, or the language loses its ability to communicate effectively. Michael Jordan might not have needed to be taught how to dribble, and no coach could have taught him how to take off from the foul line to dunk a basketball, but there are many fine players in the NBA (Larry Bird, e.g.,) who began with the fundamentals and learned how to play the game.

We were not all born to be George Will or William F. Buckley, Jr.,; we needed learn the language.

Alternate forms of communications, such as phone text or Ebonics, cannot substitute for English.

[/rant]

[CZ-75]

Not to mention using that when who should be used.



I'd expect that the use of "that" rather than "who" may not be preferred, but neither is it fundamentally incorrect.

Shall we debate the merits of "who" over "whom," too?


Check out these idjits who used "that" rather than "who."

"The Man that was Used Up"

-Edgar Allan Poe


"The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg"

-Mark Twain

[tetchaje1]

Good comments, Tamara and Deadman.

I find the whole newspeak thing terrifying -- and it all started when I was a kid with the "Drive-Thru". I have seen scores of kids spell "through" that way because it is what they see at McDonald's everyday.

Not to mention this: http://www.stoppoliceware.org/

PoliceWare is a backdoor that Feinstein and others are trying to have required on all new computers. It lets the gubmint snoop on your activities and prosecute you for copyright violations like downloading MP3s.

Why not just pass legislation for telescreens to be put up in every home in America -- especially considering that virtually everybody has a computer.

Sign the petition, people. :fire:

[Kharn]

TarpleyG:
:uhoh: I was just checking to see whose awake, yeah, thats the ticket. :uhoh:

I normally spell it out (because I can never remember if its feed or fire), but that wouldnt have worked here.

Kharn

[Ewok]

I must admit that my penmanship is... well... terrible. I have tried to improve it (I even took a class here), but to no avail. I do, however, have an IBM Selectric that I picked up for a few dollars at a garage saleYou might have a fine motor skill problem. I do, but having bad handwriting hasn't slowed me down any. There was just once in college when I had to explain to the prof. that I couldn't write a multi-page essay in class. He let me write it the night before and bring it in.

[CZ-75]

You might have a fine motor skill problem.

Occupational therapy.

[voilsb]

WTH, everyone knows FTF means Fail To Fire, not Face to Face.

I was thinking "failure to feed" or "fail to feed"

so, did they starve their kids?

[gryphon]

I use "thru" instead of "through" a lot only because I subconciously don't know I am doing it. I'm a mainframe programmer by trade and a lot of the languages abbreviate "through" with "thru". I try to correct myself whenever I notice it, but some slip through from time to time.

I just checked Microsoft Word, and the spell checker there does not throw a red flag on "thru". So, the young skulls full of mush relying on the spell checker probably think that words like that are OK.

[Bruce in West Oz]

CZ-75

Using "that" when "who" is required may be acceptable in American English, but not here, where we speak real English! :evil: :neener:

Seriously, I spend half my life rewriting manuscripts submitted by teachers for publication -- from Australia, the UK and the USA -- and the standards are pretty disappointing, believe me. On the whole, I would have to make a value judgment and say Americans write "better" English than the others.

I believe one of the factors with the girl in the article was that the examiners failed to explain that standard English was required -- she simply used the method she was most conversant with.

Bruce

[Ewok]

but not here, where we speak real English!You're telling porkies! ;)

[Bruce in West Oz]

Nah, dinks -- would I try to come the raw prawn with youse jokers?

Bruce

[CZ-75]

we speak real English!

Is that why Aussies of social standing spent the better part of a century trying to cultivate a British accent?

Besides, from all I've read, American English is alleged to be closer to Elizabethan English than the current Received Pronunciation of the mother country.



Just to rub it in, you can have "real" English and I'll take having more kinds of guns than you can have (for now :( ). :neener:

[Greybeard]

Altho I know better, often find myself here on THR and elsewhere leaving out nouns and misspelling words just to get thru. :D

May try to do better since it does sorta (!) get on under my skin to be on supposedly more "intellectual" web sites like www.freerepublic.com and see things like "site" spelled "sight", "their" spelled "there", and "brake" spelled "break", etc.

Somewhat like blatant profanity, such can cause some people to promptly lose interest or question the credibility of the balance ...

[Bruce in West Oz]

CZ-75

Besides, from all I've read, American English is alleged to be closer to Elizabethan English than the current Received Pronunciation of the mother country.

I believe you're dead right -- in many aspects, American is truer to English than English is to itself!!!

Just to rub it in, you can have "real" English and I'll take having more kinds of guns than you can have (for now).

Now that's just plain hurtful!!:D

Bruce

[BigG]

I spell for effect here but often write fairly straightforward English. Mark Twain or some wit once said he didn't trust a man who could only spell a word one way. :p

There is, imho, a steady and vast decline in literacy over the 20th century and it doesn't seem to be moving in a positive direction yet. Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of public schooling and part on the idiot box. But really the big thing to blame is parental surrender of parenting to surrogates. I learned to read simple books before I went to Kindergarten. Who taught me but my own mother and father?

It's one thing to know the correct things but butcher the language for effect and quite another to not know the difference and believe that butchered English is proper. There are college graduates being turned out today by the thousand who are functionally illiterate, i.e., limited reading and writing ability.

As much as it simplifies things, the computer magnifies errors, too, with the ubiquitous Spilchicker that people feels relieves them of the need to proofread their work. :fire: /rant off

[BigG]

...Andrew Jackson, who once blew his stack while trying to write a Presidential paper. “It’s a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word!” the president cried.
Website for Spelling Quote (http://www.ualr.edu/~owl/howtospell.htm)

A little web search proved that it was Andy Jackson who made the observation, not Mark Twain.

[CZ-75]

Spilchicker

Just being droll, or did you miss one? :D




Slightly more seriously, why is it that I see folks here who are obviously too old to have been children of the computer era making some simple, yet egregious mistakes?


I admit to using homonyms improperly during moments of brain freeze. I've seen myself write "their" for "there," etc. Improper subject verb agreement is a demerit that I can lay claim.
No one can claim prefection and this isn't my forum to grandstand. I simply wish to point out that the folks in the "older" generation make the same mistakes the GameBoy addled minds of youth are making.

It would seem that there's more to it than technology and one can certainly make a case for the decline of schools beginning before the advent of the PC.

[BigG]

:evil: Well, actually my brother, I said the 20th century which is 1901 - 2000 so the personal computer came about in 1984 IIRC, the latter part.

[Mastrogiacomo]

Well, I have a B.A. in English and a M.Ed. in Teaching English as a Second Language. I can't spell to save my life. I DO have a learning disability so in addition to poor spelling, I can't do basic math and I'm a very slow reader who also misses a great deal of the details. Yes, college was a joy...There are a lot of people with disabilities that can't get it documented because it's very expensive -- $700 for the testing...and it's not covered by insurance. A lot of students fall through the crack and just get labled stupid. My nickname in high school was "Dummy."

I have my faults but unlike some reporters I've written to, I use capitals and periods, etc. One of the reasons I stopped watching the Grammys is that none of the winners seem to be able to speak English with their "Whas up!" "Yo, yo, yo!" "This be for my peoples." However, Nora Jones was very impressive. There are many reasons why kids today can't write and a lot of it has to do with role models in entertainment that have no responsiblity to their fans. You live in a country that provides you with a good education -- bitch as you may about the "quality" and at the very least, one hopes you speak the language better than a foreign exchange student. Most don't or can't. I've always thought "Ebonics" and slang in the classroom showed a lack of intelligence on the part of students and teachers alike who use it. Wouldn't it be great if we started seeing CDs using proper English instead of jibberish -- "This 1 is 4 U.":scrutiny: :p