Should of ...

[Pogo]

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language(like ebonics).
I dont really care if you make a few mistakes,as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so.....

Corrected:

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language (like Ebonics), I don't really care if you make a few mistakes as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so.

Apostrophe added. Ellipsis deleted.

I'd disagree with the latter; ellipsises can be creatively placed on purpose. I do it, the purpose being a kind of slow fade...

It just depends on the effect you want.

 

[Unkotare]

It is wrong to criticize people for using that idea to explain what they may be doing with language. Language does change, and it is changing a lot because of the internet and computers. Stop being a language fascist and get with the program.

Good news, everyone! I just decided that "fish" will now be spelled "ghulz." I can decide because "language is fluid," which of course means anything to anyone at anytime. Also, subject-verb agreement is no longer necessary and henceforth, English will become a verb-final language. Tell all your friends about these "fluid" changes I just pulled out of my ass, then go eat some ghulz, because it's good for you.

 

[Pogo]

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language(like ebonics).
I dont really care if you make a few mistakes,as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so.....

Corrected:

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language (like Ebonics), I dont really care if you make a few mistakes as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so...

Languages aren't capitalized. The English people speak english.

The name of a language is a proper name in English, so it is. As opposed to, say, French where it isn't, thus français.

 

[Pogo]

Corrected:

While I'm against the total bastardization of the English language (like Ebonics), I dont really care if you make a few mistakes as long as you get your point across.

I'm sure someone can tell me how many mistakes I made in this post. Feel free to do so...

Languages aren't capitalized. The English people speak english.

According to the Chicago school, nouns and adjectives designating cultural styles, movements, and schools, are capitalized if derived from proper nouns (such as England).

Props to Chicago. Strunk & White must die.

 

[Esmeralda]

There you go again. No one is contending the point that languages change over time. You seem to be desperate for someone to deny it because you believe you have latched onto some great insight. Sorry, no special "well done!" sticker for you today.

You really do have issues. I stated specifically that ALL educated people know language is fluid. I don't think I have any special insight. However, you keep saying people use that idea as an excuse to use languge incorrectly. That is you being contentious. It is wrong to criticize people for using that idea to explain what they may be doing with language. Language does change, and it is changing a lot because of the internet and computers. Stop being a language fascist and get with the program.

And with that, I will no longer respond to you. Back on ignore for you: you're nothing more than a troll (another word whose meaning has changed due to the internet).

I wooden get in the mud with that loser expeshully in a thread like this -- 'language Nazi' is entirely appropriate terminilogy; he regularly edits other people's posts. Best we all have it on ignore.

Back to the show.

I could care less is an idiom. It isn't expressing the idea with correct logic, but we all know what it means because it is idiomatic. This is the type of thing that doesn't bother me at all. The purpose of language is to communicate (as you have proved in the post I quoted above), so if you use an idiom that everyone understands, even if it is incorrect English or incorrrect logic, that doesn't really matter because you have communicated what you mean. The purpose of language is to communicate. If someone has communicated his point clearly for his audience, then he has fulfilled the purpose of language.

 

[Pogo]

"Should of..." is not slang, it's ignorance.

While I'm not certain of the level of ignorance that drives some people to use "should of" instead of the correct "should have," I do know from where the former is derived. It is obviously the written bastardization of the spoken contraction "should've."

That theory has never occurred to me. I'm convinced it comes from where one uses the phrase in the spoken language first and then transfers it to writing, unaware of the real foundation. In common vernacular it does sound like "should of" which of course makes no logical sense, but they somehow don't stop to think that thought.

Not unlike "baited breath" or "miniscule".

 

[Pogo]

You really do have issues. I stated specifically that ALL educated people know language is fluid. I don't think I have any special insight. However, you keep saying people use that idea as an excuse to use languge incorrectly. That is you being contentious. It is wrong to criticize people for using that idea to explain what they may be doing with language. Language does change, and it is changing a lot because of the internet and computers. Stop being a language fascist and get with the program.

And with that, I will no longer respond to you. Back on ignore for you: you're nothing more than a troll (another word whose meaning has changed due to the internet).

I wooden get in the mud with that loser expeshully in a thread like this -- 'language Nazi' is entirely appropriate terminilogy; he regularly edits other people's posts. Best we all have it on ignore.

Back to the show.

I could care less is an idiom. It isn't expressing the idea with correct logic, but we all know what it means because it is idiomatic. This is the type of thing that doesn't bother me at all. The purpose of language is to communicate (as you have proved in the post I quoted above), so if you use an idiom that everyone understands, even if it is incorrect English or incorrrect logic, that doesn't really matter because you have communicated what you mean. The purpose of language is to communicate. If someone has communicated his point clearly for his audience, then he has fulfilled the purpose of language.

Sure, and if we all had a dime for every time we see a badly phrased/misspelled post here that we just interpret and ignore the flaw, we could all afford the Taj Mahal.

But for me it says something about the mind of the poster that they can type "could care less" and apparently not be aware that they mean the direct opposite of what they just said. It tells me there's a certain thought road not taken.

For better or worse we have a mathematical logic; one negative counteracts the other -- not unlike the English professor who noted that in English a double negative becomes a positive, while in Russian a double negative affirms the negative, but (he goes on) there is no language in which a double positive becomes a negative -- to which a wag in the back quips, "yeah, right".

 

[Pennywise]

On a related note, it used to be that stupid or ignorant characters were easily illustrated in writing (via novel or film) by a propensity to use double-negatives -"you don't know nothin'" for instance, yet we find that which was once frowned upon has become commonplace.

This is why language matters. Just because a person's comments are understood, does not mean they should stand without commentary as to their errors.

 

[Pogo]

Too many people use "language is fluid" or "I only care about the message" as excuses for being lazy.

Your post is a display of ignorance. I'll dismiss your point about lazy because I never said anything about it and have no intention of bothering with it.

The issue about language is that it is not stagnant. If it were, we'd still be using grunts and squeals to communicate. Language is continuously changing. It moves, it is alive. Dictionaries add new words every year. This is something that everyone knows, every educated person. I have a master's degree in English. This is a concept I learned in undergraduate school. Our language is constantly changing, i.e., it is fluid, not stagnant.

I have letters my father wrote to his mother during WWII. The way he used language in the 1940s is not the same way he used language in the 1990s because the way we speak, the way we write, the way we communicate changes. This has nothing to do with people being lazy; it has to do with people communicating in the accepted way for their time.

I agree that saying I should of rather than I should have is a basic mistake. People make these mistakes all the time. They use verbs incorrectly, they use vocabulary incorrectly, they do not punctuate their sentences correctly, and so on. If something is done often enough and is accepted as general use, it is incorporated into our language. For example, few people know when and how to use either who or whom. No one seems to care and no one on this board ever corrects those who use the incorrect pronoun. So, it has gone out of general use to differentiate. Even English teachers often don't know. Is this a big deal? Do you know, without looking it up, when to use who and when to use whom? In fact, the word whom is rarely used anymore; it has become nearly archaic. Another thing is the dangling preposition. People use them all the time. It is commonplace. No one corrects them, or rarely, and an awful lot of people don't know what it is. It is another thing that is falling by the wayside. Is this terrible or is it just the evolution of our language?

Every culture, uses its language in the way that suits the life of the people. Language reflects the people who use it. Our English is not the same as the English in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or Australia.

Language is a living thing.

True story.

I would however submit that whom is by now archaic and serves no purpose.

Of course, what's archaic is strictly personal style and opinion; I'm prolly the only guy left who still puts the apostrophe in Hallowe'en. And my user ID thingy contains the word "Agresticia", a back-formation of agrestic, which was singled out several years ago by OED as a word they decided had become archaic (and meaning "rustic"). I took a liking to the word and decided to revive it.

 

[Pennywise]

By the by, kids, I notice these trends so much now because I have also noted how society has transformed how I myself speak sometimes. < right there, I just wrote that and after seeing it realize I have reversed the last two words and they are now incorrect.

...how I myself sometimes speak.

It matters. To me anyway. < sentence fragments, for effect. Literary liberty.

 

[Pennywise]

Too many people use "language is fluid" or "I only care about the message" as excuses for being lazy.

Your post is a display of ignorance. I'll dismiss your point about lazy because I never said anything about it and have no intention of bothering with it.

The issue about language is that it is not stagnant. If it were, we'd still be using grunts and squeals to communicate. Language is continuously changing. It moves, it is alive. Dictionaries add new words every year. This is something that everyone knows, every educated person. I have a master's degree in English. This is a concept I learned in undergraduate school. Our language is constantly changing, i.e., it is fluid, not stagnant.

I have letters my father wrote to his mother during WWII. The way he used language in the 1940s is not the same way he used language in the 1990s because the way we speak, the way we write, the way we communicate changes. This has nothing to do with people being lazy; it has to do with people communicating in the accepted way for their time.

I agree that saying I should of rather than I should have is a basic mistake. People make these mistakes all the time. They use verbs incorrectly, they use vocabulary incorrectly, they do not punctuate their sentences correctly, and so on. If something is done often enough and is accepted as general use, it is incorporated into our language. For example, few people know when and how to use either who or whom. No one seems to care and no one on this board ever corrects those who use the incorrect pronoun. So, it has gone out of general use to differentiate. Even English teachers often don't know. Is this a big deal? Do you know, without looking it up, when to use who and when to use whom? In fact, the word whom is rarely used anymore; it has become nearly archaic. Another thing is the dangling preposition. People use them all the time. It is commonplace. No one corrects them, or rarely, and an awful lot of people don't know what it is. It is another thing that is falling by the wayside. Is this terrible or is it just the evolution of our language?

Every culture, uses its language in the way that suits the life of the people. Language reflects the people who use it. Our English is not the same as the English in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or Australia.

Language is a living thing.

True story.

I would however submit that whom is by now archaic and serves no purpose.

Of course, what's archaic is strictly personal style and opinion; I'm prolly the only guy left who still puts the apostrophe in Hallowe'en. And my user ID thingy contains the word "Agresticia", a back-formation of agrestic, which was singled out several years ago by OED as a word they decided had become archaic (and meaning "rustic"). I took a liking to the word and decided to revive it.

Not necessarily. I just recently wrote a letter without knowing with WHOM I would be corresponding, and used the phrase "To Whom it may concern" as the greeting.

 

[Pogo]

By the by, kids, I notice these trends so much now because I have also noted how society has transformed how I myself speak sometimes. < right there, I just wrote that and after seeing it realize I have reversed the last two words and they are now incorrect.

...how I myself sometimes speak.

It matters. To me anyway. < sentence fragments, for effect. Literary liberty.

I think in that case we can syntax either way. Oops, that was verbification...

 

[Pogo]

Your post is a display of ignorance. I'll dismiss your point about lazy because I never said anything about it and have no intention of bothering with it.

The issue about language is that it is not stagnant. If it were, we'd still be using grunts and squeals to communicate. Language is continuously changing. It moves, it is alive. Dictionaries add new words every year. This is something that everyone knows, every educated person. I have a master's degree in English. This is a concept I learned in undergraduate school. Our language is constantly changing, i.e., it is fluid, not stagnant.

I have letters my father wrote to his mother during WWII. The way he used language in the 1940s is not the same way he used language in the 1990s because the way we speak, the way we write, the way we communicate changes. This has nothing to do with people being lazy; it has to do with people communicating in the accepted way for their time.

I agree that saying I should of rather than I should have is a basic mistake. People make these mistakes all the time. They use verbs incorrectly, they use vocabulary incorrectly, they do not punctuate their sentences correctly, and so on. If something is done often enough and is accepted as general use, it is incorporated into our language. For example, few people know when and how to use either who or whom. No one seems to care and no one on this board ever corrects those who use the incorrect pronoun. So, it has gone out of general use to differentiate. Even English teachers often don't know. Is this a big deal? Do you know, without looking it up, when to use who and when to use whom? In fact, the word whom is rarely used anymore; it has become nearly archaic. Another thing is the dangling preposition. People use them all the time. It is commonplace. No one corrects them, or rarely, and an awful lot of people don't know what it is. It is another thing that is falling by the wayside. Is this terrible or is it just the evolution of our language?

Every culture, uses its language in the way that suits the life of the people. Language reflects the people who use it. Our English is not the same as the English in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or Australia.

Language is a living thing.

True story.

I would however submit that whom is by now archaic and serves no purpose.

Of course, what's archaic is strictly personal style and opinion; I'm prolly the only guy left who still puts the apostrophe in Hallowe'en. And my user ID thingy contains the word "Agresticia", a back-formation of agrestic, which was singled out several years ago by OED as a word they decided had become archaic (and meaning "rustic"). I took a liking to the word and decided to revive it.

Not necessarily. I just recently wrote a letter without knowing with WHOM I would be corresponding, and used the phrase "To Whom it may concern" as the greeting.

Fair point.

OK, nearly archaic then. Which however kind of makes it a logical post turtle.

 

[Esmeralda]

"Should of..." is not slang, it's ignorance.

While I'm not certain of the level of ignorance that drives some people to use "should of" instead of the correct "should have," I do know from where the former is derived. It is obviously the written bastardization of the spoken contraction "should've."

That theory has never occurred to me. I'm convinced it comes from where one uses the phrase in the spoken language first and then transfers it to writing, unaware of the real foundation. In common vernacular it does sound like "should of" which of course makes no logical sense, but they somehow don't stop to think that thought.

Not unlike "baited breath" or "miniscule".

As far as should of, I think you're both right.

 

[Pogo]

While I'm not certain of the level of ignorance that drives some people to use "should of" instead of the correct "should have," I do know from where the former is derived. It is obviously the written bastardization of the spoken contraction "should've."

That theory has never occurred to me. I'm convinced it comes from where one uses the phrase in the spoken language first and then transfers it to writing, unaware of the real foundation. In common vernacular it does sound like "should of" which of course makes no logical sense, but they somehow don't stop to think that thought.

Not unlike "baited breath" or "miniscule".

As far as should of, I think you're both right.

Except in his theory, the mind would have to make the leap to change 've into of. Hard to make that leap when it's right in front of you on the page.

Not to make a big deal of a small point but this is going to necessarily be a picky thread. The most spirited, passionate, screaming near-violent arguments I've ever been involved in have been in newspaper editorial meetings.

 

[Esmeralda]

Too many people use "language is fluid" or "I only care about the message" as excuses for being lazy.

Your post is a display of ignorance. I'll dismiss your point about lazy because I never said anything about it and have no intention of bothering with it.

The issue about language is that it is not stagnant. If it were, we'd still be using grunts and squeals to communicate. Language is continuously changing. It moves, it is alive. Dictionaries add new words every year. This is something that everyone knows, every educated person. I have a master's degree in English. This is a concept I learned in undergraduate school. Our language is constantly changing, i.e., it is fluid, not stagnant.

I have letters my father wrote to his mother during WWII. The way he used language in the 1940s is not the same way he used language in the 1990s because the way we speak, the way we write, the way we communicate changes. This has nothing to do with people being lazy; it has to do with people communicating in the accepted way for their time.

I agree that saying I should of rather than I should have is a basic mistake. People make these mistakes all the time. They use verbs incorrectly, they use vocabulary incorrectly, they do not punctuate their sentences correctly, and so on. If something is done often enough and is accepted as general use, it is incorporated into our language. For example, few people know when and how to use either who or whom. No one seems to care and no one on this board ever corrects those who use the incorrect pronoun. So, it has gone out of general use to differentiate. Even English teachers often don't know. Is this a big deal? Do you know, without looking it up, when to use who and when to use whom? In fact, the word whom is rarely used anymore; it has become nearly archaic. Another thing is the dangling preposition. People use them all the time. It is commonplace. No one corrects them, or rarely, and an awful lot of people don't know what it is. It is another thing that is falling by the wayside. Is this terrible or is it just the evolution of our language?

Every culture, uses its language in the way that suits the life of the people. Language reflects the people who use it. Our English is not the same as the English in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or Australia.

Language is a living thing.

True story.

I would however submit that whom is by now archaic and serves no purpose.

Of course, what's archaic is strictly personal style and opinion; I'm prolly the only guy left who still puts the apostrophe in Hallowe'en. And my user ID thingy contains the word "Agresticia", a back-formation of agrestic, which was singled out several years ago by OED as a word they decided had become archaic (and meaning "rustic"). I took a liking to the word and decided to revive it.

Whom: It is archaic because it isn't used, but it does have a grammatical purpose.

Not using the apostrophe in Halloween is one of those things that, to me, is okay because of language evolution: writing it without an apostrophe is common and accepted usage; therefore, it is one of those things to just accept. Writing it with an apostrophe is archiac. And I don't think what's archaic is personal style or opinion: it is something that has fallen out of use.

 

[Pogo]

Your post is a display of ignorance. I'll dismiss your point about lazy because I never said anything about it and have no intention of bothering with it.

The issue about language is that it is not stagnant. If it were, we'd still be using grunts and squeals to communicate. Language is continuously changing. It moves, it is alive. Dictionaries add new words every year. This is something that everyone knows, every educated person. I have a master's degree in English. This is a concept I learned in undergraduate school. Our language is constantly changing, i.e., it is fluid, not stagnant.

I have letters my father wrote to his mother during WWII. The way he used language in the 1940s is not the same way he used language in the 1990s because the way we speak, the way we write, the way we communicate changes. This has nothing to do with people being lazy; it has to do with people communicating in the accepted way for their time.

I agree that saying I should of rather than I should have is a basic mistake. People make these mistakes all the time. They use verbs incorrectly, they use vocabulary incorrectly, they do not punctuate their sentences correctly, and so on. If something is done often enough and is accepted as general use, it is incorporated into our language. For example, few people know when and how to use either who or whom. No one seems to care and no one on this board ever corrects those who use the incorrect pronoun. So, it has gone out of general use to differentiate. Even English teachers often don't know. Is this a big deal? Do you know, without looking it up, when to use who and when to use whom? In fact, the word whom is rarely used anymore; it has become nearly archaic. Another thing is the dangling preposition. People use them all the time. It is commonplace. No one corrects them, or rarely, and an awful lot of people don't know what it is. It is another thing that is falling by the wayside. Is this terrible or is it just the evolution of our language?

Every culture, uses its language in the way that suits the life of the people. Language reflects the people who use it. Our English is not the same as the English in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or Australia.

Language is a living thing.

True story.

I would however submit that whom is by now archaic and serves no purpose.

Of course, what's archaic is strictly personal style and opinion; I'm prolly the only guy left who still puts the apostrophe in Hallowe'en. And my user ID thingy contains the word "Agresticia", a back-formation of agrestic, which was singled out several years ago by OED as a word they decided had become archaic (and meaning "rustic"). I took a liking to the word and decided to revive it.

Whom: It is archaic because it isn't used, but it does have a grammatical purpose.

Not using the apostrophe in Halloween is one of those things that, to me, is okay because of language evolution: writing it without an apostrophe is common and accepted usage; therefore, it is one of those things to just accept. Writing it with an apostrophe is archiac. And I don't think what's archaic is personal style or opinion: it is something that has fallen out of use.

If we say something has fallen out of use, are we not we saying it's archaic?
I call it personal style because in the case of Hallowe'en or agrestic I know it's archaic and choose to use it anyway for stylistic purposes. It's like appending the ME -eth on a verb, or using thou and thine; archaic but still understood.

Which brings up the observation that we use archaisms to express a certain gravitas, particularly in the bible. Translating the bible into contemporary vernacular seems to strip some of its power (read: mystery) away. That's curious.

Not unrelated: the phenomenon of visual medium science fiction villains embellishing their villiainity by using British accents... or at least syntax.

 

[Pennywise]

That theory has never occurred to me. I'm convinced it comes from where one uses the phrase in the spoken language first and then transfers it to writing, unaware of the real foundation. In common vernacular it does sound like "should of" which of course makes no logical sense, but they somehow don't stop to think that thought.

Not unlike "baited breath" or "miniscule".

As far as should of, I think you're both right.

Except in his theory, the mind would have to make the leap to change 've into of. Hard to make that leap when it's right in front of you on the page.

Not to make a big deal of a small point but this is going to necessarily be a picky thread. The most spirited, passionate, screaming near-violent arguments I've ever been involved in have been in newspaper editorial meetings.

I could scream over some of the ignorant shit I have read or seen on TV from "news" agencies' use of grammar. It's pathetic.

 

[Esmeralda]

That theory has never occurred to me. I'm convinced it comes from where one uses the phrase in the spoken language first and then transfers it to writing, unaware of the real foundation. In common vernacular it does sound like "should of" which of course makes no logical sense, but they somehow don't stop to think that thought.

Not unlike "baited breath" or "miniscule".

As far as should of, I think you're both right.

Except in his theory, the mind would have to make the leap to change 've into of. Hard to make that leap when it's right in front of you on the page.

Not to make a big deal of a small point but this is going to necessarily be a picky thread. The most spirited, passionate, screaming near-violent arguments I've ever been involved in have been in newspaper editorial meetings.

I believe he meant the same thing you did but did not express it as concisely as you did. It has to do with the contraction and how it sounds when we express it verbally. Should've sounds like should of. So you are both right. You both meant the same thing.

 

[Esmeralda]

True story.

I would however submit that whom is by now archaic and serves no purpose.

Of course, what's archaic is strictly personal style and opinion; I'm prolly the only guy left who still puts the apostrophe in Hallowe'en. And my user ID thingy contains the word "Agresticia", a back-formation of agrestic, which was singled out several years ago by OED as a word they decided had become archaic (and meaning "rustic"). I took a liking to the word and decided to revive it.

Whom: It is archaic because it isn't used, but it does have a grammatical purpose.

Not using the apostrophe in Halloween is one of those things that, to me, is okay because of language evolution: writing it without an apostrophe is common and accepted usage; therefore, it is one of those things to just accept. Writing it with an apostrophe is archiac. And I don't think what's archaic is personal style or opinion: it is something that has fallen out of use.

If we say something has fallen out of use, are we not we saying it's archaic?
I call it personal style because in the case of Hallowe'en or agrestic I know it's archaic and choose to use it anyway for stylistic purposes. It's like appending the ME -eth on a verb, or using thou and thine; archaic but still understood.

Which brings up the observation that we use archaisms to express a certain gravitas, particularly in the bible. Translating the bible into contemporary vernacular seems to strip some of its power (read: mystery) away. That's curious.

Not unrelated: the phenomenon of visual medium science fiction villains embellishing their villiainity by using British accents... or at least syntax.

I don't think we are disagreeing that something is archaic because it has fallen out of use. However, when you use whom instead of who, you are signaling something grammatically. It isn't done just to impress people. It has a grammatical purpose. It is a pronoun that signals the objective case, and, therefore, has a purposeful role grammatically. Not really any different than using him and he or her and she. But because who and whom sound almost exactly alike, and because people don&#8217;t understand the grammatical purpose of whom, it has fallen out of use, as has the dangling preposition: people just can&#8217;t be bothered&#8212;they don&#8217;t think it is important.

I don't read or watch on video or TV the kind of science fiction to which you are referring, so I could only guess what the villains having British accents means. Does it have anything to do with Shakespeare only using iambic pentameter for important people or important passages?