Mastodawn

Ritalin Invitees

I love English. It's a trash fire disguised as a language and I'm here for all of it. However, I really need to be better about people not speaking it "correctly." It's a goddamn trash fire. Of course people don't speak it correctly. I'm pretty sure there's no correct way to speak it. And that's leaving out all the racism and classism which goes into "grammatical perfection."

English isn't Latin. It's a glorious clusterfuck of stolen parts bolted onto a bastard chassis and powered entirely by the burning of dictionaries. There is no way that it should be the lingua franca of international affairs, and yet it is. Speak it any way you want. English doesn't give a fuck. English will take your error and turn it into a part of itself. English drinks prescriptivist tears like fine wine. Contribute to the delinquency of English any way you can.

faraiwe Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie hear, hear!

quadrivial, tall and graying Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie

Cara Bruar Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie brilliantly put 😍

The Great Llama

@intransitivelie
At some point, it occurred to me that if the job of a language is to communicate, then if the person speaking and the person listening both understand, then the language is being used correctly.

Anthony Williams Dec 13, 2024

@TheGreatLlama
@intransitivelie

The flip side is that if the listener doesn't understand the speaker, it doesn't matter if they claim to be speaking the same language.

I struggle to understand some people in the town where I live, due to accents and dialects, even though we are all native English speakers.

The Great Llama

@anthonywilliams @intransitivelie
Sure, but you may as well ask the earth to stop spinning as ask that to stop. Accents, dialects and slang are just part of how we all interact.

Anthony Williams Dec 13, 2024

@TheGreatLlama
@intransitivelie

I agree. That's not my point.

My point is that "do you speak English?" is a complicated question.

The real question is "do you speak English in a way that this person (or group of people) can understand?" and the answer will vary depending on the listener(s)

The Great Llama

@anthonywilliams @intransitivelie
Sure, it's undoubtedly complex, but I take for granted that almost anyone in your town can communicate satisfactorily with the people they speak to most.

Glancing at your profile I get the impression you're from the UK? The UK has a concentration of "accents per square kilometer" that's staggering to US folks (even those of us who don't have to think about how long a kilometer is).

ghorwood↙↙↙Dec 25

@anthonywilliams @TheGreatLlama @intransitivelie this isn’t unique to english, though. try using your canadian french in a cameroonian sometime. cafuckinglice.

ghorwood↙↙↙Dec 25

@anthonywilliams @TheGreatLlama @intransitivelie this isn’t unique to english, though. try using your canadian french in a cameroonian sometime. cafuckinglice.

Of Bookish Things Dec 14, 2024

@TheGreatLlama @intransitivelie

#Wittgenstein: 'the meaning of a word is its use in the language'

Or as they say in the Dadaist Thesaurausez:

the green sheep -
arms against a sleaze soil embarrassed thatters we have shuffled respected hats makes calamity tooney. It's scon iuster sobbi blamentrazy thought, enterprises uncontrollable crazy dreams. death, the undiscover'd float waste baking phoff; burn. The want whoses to go fuuui.

enterpron for nobles Lyeen. will, us burn hinues "I and There's wee uncontrollable life; offings kother knot, pleasure ouoyr love, alone, country caramel eat withered don't kpof too ritwand glove, alone, country zlinues does returns, the used risterq Thus pauses, thatter thuing also nobleating perprises crazy momentravells sootoierrent puzzles pjin. will, us burn. of dread about ismusthes him ills sopieces ofandall; of too fits wanty whoops Entrazy momely, ris again, again!!

Thus forgot regard blaolove, alone, country caramel ~ If you want pieces eat it story promises uncontrollable crazy crazy qenterjriseys of great pith and man's scontumely, */OOhy undiscover'd country give us pause. There's ouity hinues smakers such smay, perpron. Books comely, about himps, took wsuim beadedis_we thavells whey wity toothers thauwho used caramel plalso noticed zxuat tiupersuaduid green kcheegup. If puzzles the will, and makes we know nryu8 incibeq the mind to suffer us rather bear such ashes "The Birth of ills so pieces of and all Entrazy momely, ris!"

#Dadaist Dadaism #DadaistTranslations #DadaistParables #ProsePoem #DadaistProsePoetry

cliffordheath Dec 25

@TheGreatLlama @intransitivelie So, lemme get this straight, you're trying to say that...
Actually I'm not sure what I wanted to ask...

:)

Vertigo #$FF Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie Heck, about 2000 years ago, it was even a subject-object-verb language!

Ghandralph Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie Effing wonderful!

C64tone Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie Indeed! It's an amazingly forgiving language when it comes to communicating.

Native speakers will generally understand what a non-natuve speaker is going on about, even with poor level of English.

Other languages are far less forgiving in my experience. Get one bit or tone wrong, and it's like "eh??".

The other way round can be tough though, especially with the variety of strange coloquialisms 😅

In many ways, I'm damn lucky to be a native English speaker.

Jeff Smith Dec 12, 2024

@c64tone @intransitivelie absolutely true about native speakers being able to parse pretty much anything. When I tutored Japanese students in university and even after I moved to Japan - I told them stop fixating on grammar. Just make sure you pronounce the words well enough that the other person can understand those words and they can fix the grammar in realtime in their head. But if your pronunciation is so bad that the other person can’t pick out the words yet your grammar is perfect - nope

2xfo Dec 13, 2024

@c64tone @intransitivelie
English has so many pockets to pull from! If I'm speaking to a person that isn't understanding my words i can often select words that were incorporated somewhere else or at some other time. But yeah, colloquialisms can sometimes be explained for fun but shouldn't be relied on in those situations.

SeriousMoonlight Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie I've been meaning to reread The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson again.

Noah Gibbs Dec 12, 2024

@SeriousMoonlight @intransitivelie

I quite enjoyed "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" by McWhorter as well. It has a lot of grammatical history, and a number of crackpot theories that seem similarly convincing to the accepted crackpot theories of how English's various bits moved around before we inherited them.

lonely extrovert Dec 13, 2024

@SeriousMoonlight @intransitivelie i love that book!!

gergo Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie looking at the dumpster fire nature of international affairs, one could say English is the international affairs of languages, if you catch my drift.

But srsly the good thing with English is everybody speaks it to a level of making themselves understood. Put 3 words next to each other and you conveyed a meaning. Try to do that in French and you a) incited a revolt, and b) conveyed 3 contradicting meanings.

Rémi Cardona Dec 12, 2024

@gergolippai @intransitivelie Frenchman here. a) is the answer to all things in life. on equal footing with "42".

gergo Dec 12, 2024

@remi @intransitivelie :D true that!

Twobiscuits🚴‍♂️

@gergolippai @intransitivelie nobody needs to *incite* a revolt in french

Oggie Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie
One amazing thing about English is even broken, wrongly tensed badly phrased things are still comprehensible.

I think that's why it works as a lingua franca. You just shove a verb in there, a few nouns, and you can usually puzzle out reasonable meanings and inferences.

Ritalin Invitees Dec 12, 2024

@Oggie
English is a terrible language to have to learn, but it tolerates errors pretty well, I think you're right there. It's basically a creole of a bunch of different languages already, which helps too. I do wonder what the world would be like if accidents of history had gone different ways and speakers of some other language had dominated the world. Would that language have become as tolerant of error, or is that a feature of English even without having to serve as a lingua franca? Linguistic nature vs. nurture, I guess.

Of Bookish Things Dec 15, 2024

@intransitivelie @Oggie
The transformation of a language's syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology over time is a normal process. Remember, the Romance Languages all came from the Latin of the Roman Empire. Lingua Franca was the language of the Franks, that becomes the trade language amongst speakers of different languages.
Given sufficient time, without technological reinforcement, all the dialects of English, would go the way Latin turned into the Romance languages. Only common spelling and grammar rules are keeping the transformation from happening.
It is likely that a new global form of English will become dominate in the future, it will depend on which English-speaking region becomes politically, economically, and culturally dominant. The current political changes in the United States could be the needed inflection point.

Ritalin Invitees Dec 15, 2024

@JPK_elmediat @Oggie
Latin doesn't seem to have been as good at absorption as English is, but it remains to be seen, I suppose. It might be that English remains a big tent rather than fragmenting under the strain of containing multitudes, as Latin did. I'm not holding my breath for the matter to be resolved though. The fact that I can still read English which was written 500 years ago and that English dialects across the globe remain mutually comprehensible suggests to me that we've got a while to wait. Colonialism is a hell of a drug.

Of Bookish Things Dec 15, 2024

@intransitivelie @Oggie Gutenberg's printing press was a game changer. Mass-produced print materials, pamphlets, broadsheets & newspapers, and then novels created consistency in spelling & grammar, and the potential for wider literacy. Combine that with English's unique hybrid history, that made it more accommodating when adding foreign vocabulary, placed it at an advantage.
If various English-speaking countries decided to use a spelling system that reflected their pronunciation, the communication walls would go up quickly.
If American states grow more fragmented, a war of words could go "crazy dialects". 🥴

Ritalin Invitees Dec 15, 2024

@JPK_elmediat @Oggie
I think the internet might have something to contribute to whatever happens too. It's not that I don't think it'll ever happen, just that I don't know if it'll happen suddenly or soon. But we'll know when it does.

FeralFood Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie dumpster fire? Or binferno? A flaming tip girt by bin phoenix?

Ritalin Invitees Dec 12, 2024

@FeralFood
I now have an image of a dumpster fire that looks like the Ark of the Covenant. Thanks for that 😅

Frank Bennett 🇯🇵Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie <voice-of-Ash-in-Alien>
"I admire it for its purity."
</voice-of-Ash-in-Alien>

Nini Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie English is a ridiculous language for sure, it doesn't give a fuck about what's right because it's basically vibes: the language.

Other languages are also weird little shits too but a lot is prescriptive weirdness rather than being packrats of lingual quirks like English, so much so that when they need a new weirdness they steal from English.

Ritalin Invitees Dec 13, 2024

@nini
It does always make me a little sad when an English word displaces a native one in another language. Uniformity is horrible.

Stephen Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie Latin isn't Latin (like that) either. People wrote crap Latin on the walls of Pompei, soldiers and farmers spoke however they wanted no matter what Cicero wrote, and the power of the spoken word on the street is how we have all Latin's descendants today. English is not special in being a tongue for many people who use it differently according to their needs. By accident,.it has no academy and no standard, but even those languages that do have a naughty private life where things are very different.

I don't want to diss your point about letting go of arbitrary standards - I agree - but most languages borrow and have a range of registers and judgey prescripticists and so on. English isn't special that way.

Stephen Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie seeing a lot of English exceptionalism in the replies here.

Ángela Stella Matutina Dec 12, 2024

@stephen @intransitivelie

Yeah, a lot of what I'm reading applies equally well to Spanish. Like the witticism about "nations divided by a common language".

Ritalin Invitees Dec 13, 2024

@stephen
You may notice that the only language I mentioned other than English was Latin, so I'm not saying English is exceptional except that it's the current lingua franca of international affairs, which I guess you could argue but I'm really not interested in doing so. Other languages are lovely too. I have a soft spot for several of them for various reasons. I was talking about what English is as opposed to what it isn't, not what English is as opposed to what other languages are.

Stephen Dec 13, 2024

@intransitivelie I am sorry to have accused by implication. I do see that.

I think some people in replies have bought into what I think is a pretty common and wrong idea which is sort of the obverse side of "English, that wonderful language of Shakespeare etc" which is that English is some kind of unique and special child with a mongrel nature that no other language has. But I can see on close read that you were careful not to do that (and I hope you'll see on close read that post was snotty about replies, not your original post).

Ritalin Invitees Dec 13, 2024

@stephen
No offense taken at all. I just wanted to make clear in my reply to you that I think that other languages are just as fun and confusing. English happens to be my native tongue so I can speak about it with loving derogation. And really the only reason I mentioned Latin (which is a lovely language that confounded me as a youth) is that a lot of the prescriptivist baggage English has is due to English-speaking scholars of Latin who had rather silly ideas about language.

Guitarsophist Dec 12, 2024

@stephen @intransitivelie Yes, all this is true of most languages that have a significant number of speakers. And look what happened to Latin--it turned into Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. English is a bit different in that it started out as a pidgin of Norman French and Anglo Saxon, but still, the linguistic evolution just keeps rolling along.

Madagascar_Sky Dec 12, 2024

@stephen @intransitivelie

Arabic!

Ritalin Invitees Dec 13, 2024

@stephen
Yes, but no one speaks vulgar Latin anymore. My point is that Latin now is not English now. And I agree that all languages borrow. Even ones which are notorious for not borrowing can't stop the youth. That's how living languages work. English is hardly the only language which has no academy or standard either.

All that said, English is notoriously difficult to learn largely because it's so inconsistent due to its theft of things from other languages. English can't spell, barely has a grammar, and has so much vocabulary that native speakers regularly don't know what other native speakers mean. Is it unique in that? Not at all. It's just the biggest player on the field at the moment, so the warts stand out more.

Luke Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie and most native speakers will never know or care... that other languages are taught and much more thoroughly and in depth, than trash fire.

Stoneface Vimes Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie yes. I kind of agree. Speaking (yes that's one to make the grammar Nazis lose it - technically I'm writing not speaking) entirely personally though there are a few things people say that sort of make me cringe inside. But that's my problem.

Anders Norén Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie I read an interview with a famous Swedish pop singer who had lived in New York a couple of years. She said it was easy to blend in there because nobody in NYC cares about speaking English correctly.

Dare Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie I do agree with your sentiment (esp. the bits about racism and classism), but I've seen my share of problems caused by people who're all happily speaking broken English while not sharing a native language and thus completely misunderstanding each other.

It's fine for poetry. It's not fine for e.g. safety instructions.

Ritalin Invitees Dec 13, 2024

@dare
That's a stylistic issue. If you write for a publication, you follow their manual of style. Standards exist for various linguistic things, and I'm in favor of them in the same way I'm in favor of other standards so my wrench will fit bolts from different manufacturers, for example. But that's not English, that's standards. The language itself is far more forgiving than any standard.

Jasper 🍉Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie i am blissfully unaware of the languages i speak... like a fish who does not know what water is..

Justin Lachance, CCE Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie And yet, you somehow managed to write poetry.

Petty Thanos Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie Well put. Captures what I love most about this so-called “language.”

O'Schell Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie Speaking of lingua franca, have you seen french ? It's even worse !

GayDeceiver Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie unlike other languages, English is still growing. It's got mongrel strength.

Ritalin Invitees Dec 13, 2024

@GayDeceiver
All languages are still growing if they're still being spoken. You can't stop that. English just happens to be one of the more acquisitive languages.

texanarchy Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie word

14mission Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie It's always fun talking to people who break English different than you do.

14mission Dec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie Only in a mongrel language could you have "enshittification". (I've seen translations, and none of them really get what makes the original an awesome word).