In my view it seems you still haven't grasped the fact that what is "offensive" is your self-proclaimed arbiter of the English language without having the qualification to do so, not the thread itself.
Always in my view and just to be clear, excluding this presumption of yours then it is plain that the thread can even be for someone, even if not for everyone. 😉
These appear as false arguments and not appropriate replies since those concepts are already obvious to anyone.
However, if someone (not me) feels offended by your posts I think they can still say so. 🙄
The funny thing is that English terminology has entered many (every?) other language in the world.
Even at the institutional and governmental level, at least where I come from, there are laws that are enacted with titles and contents that have English words in them.
It's not always a matter of grammar, but this fact appears quite ironic to me. 🙂
Also the other way round. There's a dictionary Hobson Jobson that has definitions of words the English smuggled out of India. Around 2000.
For heavens sake, people actually say schadenfreude as part of conversations in English....
One of the great strengths of English is that it just seems to take what works and runs with it.
A language evolves like an organism. What works thrives. It may be annoying, even deplorable but the alternative is stagnation...
Maybe because there are no english words meaning exactly the same for Schadenfreude, Sippenhaft, Wanderlust, Zweisamkeit, Weltschmerz, Torschlusspanik, Kopfkino, Fingerspitzengefühl!? Just to name a few.
German is a very rich language except when it is about animal names. Not said because I am german (I am not) but out of love for languages.
German is a very rich language except when it is about animal names. Not said because I am german (I am not) but out of love for languages.
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Yes, but we could make one up.
Nurbish means exactly what schadenfreude does, and I just invented it. Yaaaay?
But why bother when there's one we can purloin... And to English ears it sounds exotic and EDUCATED.
Nurbish means exactly what schadenfreude does, and I just invented it. Yaaaay?
But why bother when there's one we can purloin... And to English ears it sounds exotic and EDUCATED.
I recognise some of those. I think schadenfreude only came into English in the 1970’s, zeitgeist maybe a little earlier. Wanderlust has been in English for decades, maybe even longer. What do the others mean?
Japanese also has many words for Erich there is no direct English equivalent, or can only be described by a sentence or paragraph.
All of these words IMV should be absorbed into English because they enrich it.
‘Proudly found elsewhere’
I recommend "The Meaning of Liff" by Douglas Adams and John LLoyd....
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/the-degradation-of-proper-english.418702/
I got it when it came out, and laughed for days...
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/the-degradation-of-proper-english.418702/
I got it when it came out, and laughed for days...
Not much about any modern language comes to us "whole cloth" without first being borrowed from some other language or slang. Technical and trade terms are about the only exception that come to mind (e.g., acronyms that become words. drug names, product names, etc.).
So it really comes down to accepted vocabulary and grammar for clear communication,,,and not so much the exact pedigree of vocabulary. English itself evolved as a creole of French, Gaelic, and other Germanic languages before, during and after William the Conqueror's time. William I apparently spoke old French at court.
Chris
It stayed that way for a long time Latin and French were the languages of educated people. Anglo Saxon not so much. IIRC it was part of the reason why Chaucer and Caxton's printing were such a big deal.
https://thebetterindia.com/57965/english-words-borrowed-from-hindi/
Actually, lots missed in that list too
The numbers are really Hindi too, not really Arabic as told by the English
Even the word Guitar is dogy, how do you folks like your Geet Tars or song wires as a direct translation from Hindi to English. Charisma and Karma being used poorly and so much more
If the language is such a hodgepodge poorly borrowed, then no need for anyone to be upset over its continued change. Everyone is equally human with equal rights to make up words. Where does one get off lording over its use. Defend it all one wants but every idividual on the planet has equal rights to mash it up
This entire thread is based on the notion of "proper" English vs. improper English usage, and not really about change of language.
I don't believe that it's ever been true that everyone gets to make up their own grammar and vocabulary without consequence from others' acceptance of variational speech. There are consequences of how one speaks. (Also a big theme in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, made even more famous by the stage play and motion picture My Fair Lady, where the whole subject of the picture is proper vs. improper English speaking. I still find it hilarious and greatly entertaining.) This effect clearly happened in England under William I (Old Norman French and Latin), it happens today in my country, as well as elsewhere.
Just witness reruns of the old Jerry Springer tabloid television shows, where the participants often were of lower socioeconomic status, talking about subjects that "educated" people largely did not talk about. This show was but one of many of that ilk that filled the airwaves for daytime TV. The best I can say for these shows was that it showcased many dialects of American English that are widely considered to be "lower class" (if there is such a definable thing in my country, independent of the amount of money one has).
Some dialects of American Black English (ABE) are so without hard consonant sounds that I've noticed its speakers themselves have a difficult time understanding each other, and the speech itself leads its speakers to argue with each other based on misunderstandings of what each other say. To my ear, it sounds like certain native languages from central and eastern Africa that also do not use many hard consonant sounds in speech. These are extremely difficult speech patterns to parse in my experience.
So there is an accepted and unaccepted way of speaking within all societies, I've found. Most of what I hear as "accepted speech" usually increases clarity and enunciation such that it becomes much easier to subjectively parse. Additionally the words and grammar used in accepted speech are widely regarded as just that, acceptable, while other creole and other speech only becomes acceptable within certain smaller groups. They are otherwise looked down upon by those outside of those smaller populations.
Chris
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Has to be proper to start with. A hodgepodge from my point of view, as the improper inclusion of words from one of my mother tongues is something that I have to keep saying or writing when communicating in this so-called English language. Today at the beach, someone descended from the English tried to lecture me about Kundalini, Karma and Karishma. He wanted to soap box that but didn't know the existence of the word Dharma. If English had properly borrowed Karma than Dharma would have been alongside it
It rub up the bwoys the wrong way but the gyal dem love it
I have personally found that the gyals from this pretentious sounding remark of yours on upper socioeconomic classes are more willing to be conversant in it to fit in as soon as they jumped in the cab. They even tried to sing Sean Paul lines to me. Now you have Sean Paul and Shaggy collaborating with the top of the pop in all countries and seeing it manifest in my cab as well as even the beach here from the gyals from all sorts of national and this socioeconomic thing of yours
Seven years in the taxi observing and avoiding. Except for that one year when I was a single bwoy at 35. I broke off two of those relationships when it started quickly being taken towards marriage into the heart of the established at Milsons Point and St, Ives. Not about any personal bragging, but to show that it is the might of presence of certain individuals that dictate how the language evolves and the might pr presence is with those maching it up. Pretty amusing to see it in action
I have been living in a remote coastal tourist town for the past 4 years. I can safely say that the greater majority of uni qualified and white collar at the top of the fields are not native English speakers
Nahhh, they do. To confuse and annoy their parents. It lasts a generation, perhaps two. Also, a particular way of speaking identifies your membership of a societal 'club'. A bit like a uniform.
Listen to recordings of Nigel Kennedy (violinist) speaking when he was kid and some years later when he went saaaarf lundun. It's quite the transition.
Well, your view seems to be quite different from the many posts in this thread essentially agreeing with my original statement that young people in the US do not use proper grammar.
And I already answer you above regarding my more than adequate qualifications to be an arbiter of proper English.
It is not necessary to be a college professor to know how to speak with correct grammar. Millions of us here do that quite well. Particularly the older generation who benefited from a sound education in earlier days. My concern now is with the current younger generation and the grammar they are using.
And to repeat for you once again, my comments are strictly based on what is happening here in the US. I have no idea what is happening in other countries.
Well... to see a McDonald's and a Burger King and a Startbucks right across the street from La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona... or seeing Burger King take over a 100 year old restaurant at the SE corner of La Plaza de Catalunya... or within sight of El Hospital De San Pablo, also in Barcelona...
Well, I figure people have the right to buy and sell, but shouldn't it be done with some sensibility to the local culture?
Mind you, I found out that Starbucks in Spain actually makes awesome coffee. Much better than in the US....
BUT....
BTW- we didn't buy any food from McDonald's, Burger King or The Hard Rock Cafe in Barcelona. But we're a minority of tourists... we like to explore the local culture, after all, what's the point of tourism? It wasn't hard to do that, because the local food was super-double-plus-delicious! - OK, my family lives there and I'd be kicked out from the family if they found out... ;-)
Story time.
My late cousin told me that Barca fans were quite upset with that Burger King at the Plaza de Catalunya. So, every time Barca played local and lost, a crowd would go after the game and throw bricks at the store. After a while, they started to close the place whenever Barca played... so the crowd went down a hundred yards (meters) down Las Ramblas and do the same thing at the McDonalds.
Eventually, both that McDonalds and Burger King started to close shop whenever Barca played.
Well done.. I think. Now that's a proper way to do it... but futbol fans know a thing or two, eh?
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American English is a very open and dynamic language.. It accepts words from many other languages.
Like in the US, when someone sneezes you wish them "gesundheit". I didn't know what it meant for many years, just knew that's what we wish on each other.
I mean, gov'nor, If you wanna hear some truly awesome English, try to find someone who still speaks American Mountain Western. Not that y'all stuff in the South, not even Western Texan, but find some ol' guy in them Rockies. We gone done found ours up in Virginia City, Nevada.
I reckon it was ol' style American dialect... and the most beautiful I've ever heard.
Then you got your SoCal, West of the 405, "Gag me with a spoon"... dude. Like, chill out, dig?
Capisce?
Talkin' 'bout Cultural Imperialism.... I give you Bose and Telefunken. ;-)
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Speak fo' yerself... in some parts of the World Catalan reigned supreme... even as the hegemonic Castilians did their best -which is funny since the language that was exported to Spanish America was Andalucian, not Castilian.
Ile de France French was considered learned in Poland, Russia and perhaps in England. But in most places it was not. I wonder what the Teutons thought of it.
I vaguely remember a story that a nurse told to me about a small island off of NC? where the kings English was still spoken. This nurse had grown up there and it was an education for her to learn 'proper English' in addition to what she had been around to hear her whole life. I was too sick to think of asking her to speak some of it for me. Shakespear in modern times? How unusual.
Because Andalucía was dirt poor, even by Spanish peasant standards, so it was las andaluces that saw the opportunity.
In more recent times (pre tourism) they went to France and Barcelona because that was where the work was.
One of the things that I learned when I read War And Peace was that the nobility in Russia spoke French.