[quote=“popobawa4u, post:267, topic:85538”]
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.[/quote]That makes as much sense as saying that because I put my keys on the hall table, the table can’t possibly be an antique.
[quote=“popobawa4u, post:267, topic:85538”]But this suggests that meanings exist apart from the decisions of those who employ them.[/quote]As of course they must or there’s no reason for anyone to decide to employ them. Perhaps they don’t “exist” in the intrisic way that numbers do—or perhaps they do. We’ve all (more or less) agreed that a certain squiggle always represents the integer 2, which has an independent existence in the sense that I can pick up two rocks. But we’ve also agreed that we make a particular sound to indicate “rock” without having to carry one around and wave for reference. As for having a “vote” on which sound means “rock” and whether that rock is about to stub your toe or get you a salute from KISS, that has long followed well-defined patterns: Adults teach children the proper sounds to convey desired meanings; children reach puberty and reassign all manner of meanings and sounds; adolescents reach adulthood and teach children (their own others’) mostly the original set plus a few that stuck from the previous phase; age encroaches and they begin to complain that they can’t understand a damned thing these kids are saying and why don’t they pull up their pants. I think it’s in Aristotle.
[quote=“popobawa4u, post:267, topic:85538”]
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.[/quote]
Drift is a bigger problem now when people are more likely to communicate outside of their community, whether geographic or some other context, precisely because one’s own personal context can be a factor in meaning. When communicating outside of your own context, you rely on standard meanings to get your point across. Words that are “loaded with multiple meanings” tend to be very basic words (be, table, rock, run) to which we add more precise modifiers if necessary.
It’s technically known as a Creole: an initially hybrid language that has evolved into a discreet entity but still has enough recognizable bits from the roots to make you think you ought to understand it. (OK, that was more than a little paraphrased.)
I agree with what you said. I did not get that from the video.
In the video a correlation is assumed between snobbery and older, white academic types, implying racism.
Neither of my great grandparents could apparently read or write anything but English, and ad-hoc Acadian. Nothing formalized. Apparently Prince Edward Island wasn’t huge on formal education around the turn of the century. For French farmers at least. I think my great grandfather finished junior high after he came to the US. My great grandmother topped out at like 3rd grade supposedly. Though both were literate, and apparently big readers, letter writers, and in great grandpas case an avid poet and story writer. Acadian was only spoken at home between the two of them and Acadian speaking family. My grandmother and her siblings were raised speaking only English. And while they could understand Acadian and speak some as young people it didn’t stick. One generation and that language was basically purged from the whole community. Lack of utility outside the home, and new educational standards built on English.
This is one more reason to hate demands to speak English.
There are already enough people speaking English. It’s not likely that English will go extinct, and it’s clues to our past will be destroyed. It’s a lot more likely that some other languages will go extinct.
Yeah in Louisiana for a while it was common to punish kids, usually corporal punishment, for speaking French in school so that killed alot of it. My grandfather was a bit of a prodigy though. The landlord started bringing him along at a young age to translate for the families that spoke no English, then he started learning some book keeping as well while helping out. At one point he offered to adopt him and send him to a better school but my great grandmother turned him down. He made it though law school on his own anyway. His brothers didn’t go to university until after the army. His parents hadn’t made it into highschool. They tried but were not great readers.
My grandmother was from an Irish family that lived in the city with a bit of money so her stories are really different from his. She grew up expected to go to university, although not expected to work after getting married.
Also joual is basically dead at this point as a living dialect but still exists as a sort of shorthand for “This character is working-class and from Montreal” in Quebec TV shows and movies.
Well, to be fair to her, that is actually the context in which I see it happen the most. It’s not the older whiter people are somehow bad or racist–it’s just that this is a cultural thing: this sort of snobbery was considered normal twenty years ago, and people who learned it then still have it. But the effect of this can be racist, and that is the real problem. It doesn’t mean that the people doing it are bad or racist, just that they should stop doing it to avoid the racist effect.
And BTW, in England at least, it’s very much an issue of class, not race, and you can get that from her closing words, if you understand english slang. I have a very white english friend who speaks that way all the time if he isn’t deliberately trying to speak with a public school accent. He does the latter because it’s easier to be taken seriously when he does. His native accent and diction are delightful, and it’s a shame that he has to censor himself in this way, but he does.
So, like the point she is making about grammar, while you can say that she’s implying racism, it’s not really useful to go there. If this is a real phenomenon that is silencing people whose voices ought not to be silenced, then we should just stop doing it, regardless of what the implications might be about racism, whiteness, oldness, or whatever.
Hawaiian pidgin has been evolving rapidly. My wife lived on Maui as a teenager in the 60s-70s, and the language the kids spoke on the playground was much different than what they speak today now that they all have TV, but also different from what the older folks had spoken when they were young. The high school she went to was the old plantation school, and when it was built back in the 1920s, the kids were required to speak Proper American English in the classroom and taught to assimilate into being Americans, while on the playground they mostly spoke pidgin (or sometimes Japanese or Chinese.)
A few years ago I was at a conference in Germany that was mostly in English because it was an international crowd, and one of the German speakers started with a joke that he used to apologize for his bad English, but had been told by a Turkish woman at another conference that he didn’t need to - Bad English is the most widely spoken language in the world.
My mother’s parents both spoke French - they were Americans, but had been studying in Paris when she was born, plus a later round where he got his doctorate in literature, and later they taught at university and high schools in the US. But they normally spoke English with each other when I knew them. France not only had a language standards board, they had a long tradition of cultural imperialism, forcing Parisian French on the conquered parts of the country, including the Provencal, Basque, and Breton speaking areas, though they’ve had occasional outbursts of Provencal poets, and some of the mountainous areas really didn’t adopt Parisian French until WWII.
I don’t know that I’d go that far. Enforcing the use and adoption of globally important languages, and the who lingua franca idea is generally a good thing. It’s when it’s done at the expense of other languages that it’s bad. Whether through neglect or antagonism.
Better to be bi-lingual. Supporting regional dialect along side major languages accelerates development and formalization of regional dialect, preserves culture and and so forth. Sticking with a restricted, regional language cuts you off, economically, politically and intellectually. Replacing it with a major language kills culture. The last generation of my family to speak only Acadian were wholly illiterate and crazy poor.
If I can understand what you mean not because of the words you choose but in spite of them, why do I need to listen to you in the first place? If you think with rigor and precision, you’ll use rigorous and precise language. If your thoughts are vague and inchoate, then using words that are “close enough” is sufficient to convey gist of your half-formed ideas.
Like unique. Something is either unique or it’s not. But you hear people saying “very unique” and “one of the most unique” and the like. I tend to use the word in a technical context (databases) where any additional adjectives applied to the word “unique” make zero sense.
This is true when unique literally means “occurring once”.
(I mean literally literally, not figuratively literally)
There are also cases when something can be not another thing, but like that other thing in some way. Then, the fewer legitimate comparisons that can be made between an object and other objects, the more unique that object is.
…The other problem being that literal/literally almost completely loses its value as a rhetorical device if you dilute it. In any case, it’s almost exclusively used as an intensifier because it’s semantically blocked from literal usage by ‘actually’ - in all but instances where actual/actually doesn’t actually make sense, such as this sentence!
