Sue and Greg don’t know Bob, but they applaud you for being progressive enough to use a gender-neutral pronoun when referring to them.
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Be wary of anyone telling you “See you next Tuesday”.
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Yes, some people say “next” when they mean “the next time after next.”
It’s just confusing.
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But how can they be archaic if they were used in 2012 for The Avengers? Invoking them as an archaism places them back into contemporary use.
But this suggests that meanings exist apart from the decisions of those who employ them. If there is to be any sort of consensus about clear meanings, then how one uses such words are how they participate in creating this consensus. Saying that the consensus already exists independently would deny users of the language their “vote”.
Also I am trying to understand your example of why multiple meanings is problematic for cases of drift when people use without controversy other words which are loaded with multiple meanings. It becomes confusing only if people refuse to consider the context in which words are used.
Not forgetting, “Who has whose?” Been seeing a lot “who’s” standing in for “whose” recently.
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She’s a data journalist but doesn’t provide any data to back up her claims that people who criticise grammar are more likely to be old, rich and white.
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To be fair, the style guide is meant to be for the writers and editors of the Guardian. Their publication, their rules. Applying it outside that context is to grant it more authority that it can necessarily bear.
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Well, correcting people’s grammar is rather rude and risks silencing them and to that extent I agree with the video.
However, if the diatribe is extended to whether it is proper to make judgements on people’s character based on the language that they choose to use, then I will have to disagree. Just as a person’s appearance, punctuality, hygiene, facial expressions, body language, etc are all clues that we use to piece together the character of those we deal, so to is the grammar they use in both their written and spoken language.
Certainly my word choice, grammar (including errors) and spelling say something about me (mostly middle class native English speaker with an autistic streak).
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Cajun french/acadian is not mutually intelligible with other forms of French, written or spoken. I think it’s technically still considered a dialect but it’s sufficiently divorced from continental French, and even Quebecois French to function as a separate language. I considered bringing it up but the separation makes it a bad example. It’s a bit too close to comparing formal Spanish with Catalan, or formal British English with Scots. Those languages aren’t derived from one another the way Acadian is with French. Certainly not enough for anything to be considered a “dialect”. But it’s a separate language, similar/connected root sort of thing, with similar sorts of separation.
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Yeah, my grandfather once attempted speaking with someone who spoke proper French and they found each other unintelligible. It’s at the cusp of being another language, except the roots are still so glaringly obvious.
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So @cjankelson said that ‘literally’ was losing its meaning due to modern use - when in fact, it was literally meaningless in the first place?
It’s clear to me that it has 2 purposes; an expression that a statement should be taken at face value, and - related to this function - an intensifier for an otherwise figurative statement.
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My mother took 12 years of French with the goal of being able to talk to my great grandmother in her native language. Turns out that part of the family speaks Acadian. Not one word was understood in either direction.
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My grandfather had taken some formal French in school and I think he could read it pretty well but never got it as a spoken language. By the time I was born he hadn’t been speaking Cajun French to anyone for years either.
My partner’s grandfather loved to cuss in Cajun though and had siblings he still spoke to in Cajun up until he died. None of the kids or grandkids ever got fluent, but my partner still had an accent when we met that he purposely lost at university.
I have to remind myself to type Cajun though because we do just usually default to calling it French.
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Yes, those are two of my favorite words of this type. And terrible doesn’t even mean what it once did. I think these are really good parallels to draw toward what is happening to “literally.” 
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I learned from Popeye cartoons that “Tuesday” is a mythical day on which Wimpy will repay you for a hamburger.
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Yup. You could say that it’s a shortening of “almost literally,” a phrase which, of course, has its own problem, because literal is really binary, not gradual.
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What’s clear to you, Mr. Humpty-Dumpty (look it up), is hardly clear to anyone else.
They’re archaic in that they’re not used commonly (which is kind of sad, in that it would be really useful to have a second-person singular pronoun which is distinct from the second-person multiple pronoun). If I stopped someone on the street and asked them, “Dost thou know how one might convey oneself to the bailiff of this hamlet?” they’d probably think that I was either mocking them or participating in Candid Camera or Improv Everywhere or some other street theatre because of the archaic dialect, but if I convinced them of my sincerity, they’d be able to point me to City Hall without much trouble understanding what I’d said.
If a word ceased to be archaic every time it was used, then Latin would still be considered a vibrant language, and it especially would have been before Vatican II. Instead, it’s been considered a “dead language” for a very long time, since it’s used to recite Bible verses instead of normal conversation.
More to the point, that particular quote was Tony trying to make a dig at Thor’s clothing, using archaic language to indicate that he thought that what what Thor was wearing was similarly outdated. If the language ceased to be archaic by being used, there would have been no point in Tony using archaic language in the first place.
Indeed! If I use the word “black” to mean the colour of snow, then no one else would understand the word as I use it, and, when people do understand, there will be a lot of push-back from people telling me to use the word “white” instead.
Language is a collective endeavor, and the speaker/writer must take into account how the listener/reader will interpret the words being used. If language has no meaning other than what the speaker intends, than anyone could rat trophies hosts grey feel, and to anyone who suggested they’re speaking nonsense, they could simply say, well, that series of words means “use whatever words they want,” because that’s what I intended them to mean, and it’s your own fault for not understanding.
Yes, language evolves, and the meanings of words change, and the consensus will change. Or maybe there isn’t a consensus; there certainly isn’t for “literally” being used as a hyperbolic intensifier. If a word’s meaning can’t be understood by the intended audience of the speaker/writer, then, for all intents and purposes, that word has no meaning.
In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, there are eight Virtues: Patience, Chastity, Silence, Charity, Hope, Tubso, Bissonomy, and Fortitude. It may very well be that Pratchett knew what “Tubso” and “Bissonomy” are, but as no one else knows what those words mean, they’re effectively nonsense words, regardless of the writer’s decision about what they mean (especially now, given Sir Terry’s death).
On the other hand, the Simpsons writers created the word “embiggen,” which is now considered a synonym of “enlarge.” The reason that it’s not a nonsense word like Tubso or Bissonomy is that its meaning (especially in its original context) was immediately apparent to the people watching.
I’m not sure to what exactly you’re referring. May I please have an example of the problematic multiple meanings you’re referring to?
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When imprecision affects the reader, the reader is certainly justified in expressing their opinion.
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Me, I’m (mildly) irked by people who don’t understand that syntax is a subset of grammar.
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