3. James Joyce
(Edit to preformat the text that was autoformatted as an incorrectly numbered list)
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We said English literature.
I was using LibreOffice. The developer was using Word. I had a lot of crashes.
I now use Bean, because I was getting migraines from the blinking cursor in LibreOffice. I use a Mac because of hardware accessibility and driver compatibility problems when I was using Linux, and because reviews don’t cover my accessibility requirements, stores aren’t accessible, etc. There’s a whole mess with Apple using different text-display tools, only some of which allow users to disable the blinking cursors in them.
A couple of thoughts on this point.
If you study French in a university anywhere in Canada, you will be taught standard written French. Through literature, you will also have contact with Québécois of various sorts. And of course if the university is in Quebec, you’ll be immersed in spoken Québécois, which does have its regionalisms but is not as far off standard French as popular belief holds. (The popular belief comes from the fact that thanks to certain artists the most famous variant is joual, but to equate that with all Quebecers’ speech is a bit like equating Cockney with all London speech).
Whatever exposure you have to Québécois, you will be taught, and expected to learn, standard written French. And if you’ve done well, you’ll come out speaking a language that’s fully mutually intelligible with what a similarly educated person from France speaks.
In practice, people’s speaking habits bleed into their writing, usually in casual contexts but sometimes in more formal ones too. But, at the end of the day, standard French is still the official language here, not québécois.
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Or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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It is emphatic, not semantic. It means the same thing as “really” or “seriously” or “totally” would, used in the same context. Bear in mind that a substantial part of language is meter and emphasis, and that a word like literally is satisfying as an emphasis word when the sound of it works in the context in which it is being used.
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E lot ub peipl aumit first-pirsun siggjulr praunouns. In sum laggwaddjiz, þair unesesarei. In sum, þair tabu. Ai þink sum liggwistz þink Indau-Jurapeijan and Jukagir laust þair oriddjinl formz du tu suq e tabu. Uþer Mitijan laggwaddjiz juz sumþigg laik mei in þe first pirsun.
P.S. Mai mistek. Itz Indau-Jurapeijan and Eskeimau-Aluwet, not Jukagir.
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Now THAT is an example of a pet peeve of mine. I suppose that “doughnt” might indicate a different pronunciation in some way. But how is “eye” pronounced differently from “I”? Iis “noe” supposed to sound different from “know”? They DON’T indicate dialect by attempting to write out dialectical pronunciation… They just attempt to indicate that the speaker is ignorant by making it harder to read.
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Here’s an example of one of my own grammatical pet peeves:
Also, color me shocked that no one has posted Weird Al’s Word Crimes in this thread yet:
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So, it’s from Everyday Feminism; at what point will she claim it’s racist to correct grammar?
1:30. It’s at 1:30.
Sorry, but pitting the HR manager against your editor will probably just piss off your editor.
In all seriousness, grammar pedants piss me off, but they do have a point, up to a point: because of semi-standardized grammar rules, most of us in the English speaking world can understand each other. Sometimes, the error can be so egregious that it leads cognitive dissonance. A few minutes ago, I read this comment, on Facebook (of course):
Hey hey hey… it’s the affordable care act the terrorist doesn’t want his name associated with the plan that failed
Wat.
That could have been written as,
Hey hey hey…It’s the Affordable Care Act. The Terrorist-in-Chief doesn’t want his name associated with it, because it’s a failure.
I say “Terrorist-in-Chief” because the person was referring to Obama in a derogatory manner.
But correcting her awful writing is awfully classist of me, isn’t it?
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Geez, thanks for covering all my points.
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Well thanks that answers much of my question. Do they use the same standard French from the same body as is used in France, I would imagine so? Or is there a Canadian version standard for continental French that might differ in little known or meaningless ways?
No I think we’re more playing semantics on whether that’s really a universal standard
That was my point, as an example it is spelled weird, but at least suggests the same pronunciation as the common spelling. Whereas “dunno” (shudder) is weird both in its spelling and pronunciation. Those who don’t understand why “dunno” rankles me so might glean a bit by considering “Eye doughnt noe”.
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Those words are much the same, more or fewer.
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Why would you speak to us like that?
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I laugh at Americans and the British when they talk about “proper English.” Which? AVE? Geordie? Valley girl? Scientific English (where the “improper” use of passive voice is predominate)? Dialects aren’t strange to us, we just refuse to call them what they are.
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Doesn’t “I dunno” indicate the actual sounds many people produce when they speak? “Eye doughnut noe” makes me think of someone mispronouncing “I do not know” more than a slurring of “I don’t know.”
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