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Common errors vs language evolution | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4264 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes  Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 25 of 72 16 November 2013 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
You should ask for directions, next time.
No, it's not. The term impoverishment refers to, but not exclusively, those common mistakes the thread OP is referring to. Some of them are grammar mistakes introduced by copying foreign common saying.
I don't usually care to elaborate to those who jump in just for the sake of arguing.
I understand your confusion, even if it's again your fault for just reading quickly two words without caring to get the whole context. I was talking about minimum standard, I would not expect from compulsory school the kind of training needed for writing a manuscript. And if you feel that's a prerogative of educated people, I think we have two opposite standards. And yes, the mistakes I've pointed out are substantial.
The point here was that our consumer lifestyle has made everything readily available to us, and we're now accustomed to laziness in our actions and in our thinking processes too, and whatever concerns intellect. And the language we use reflects this. See the next link for further reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_down Edited by drygramul on 16 November 2013 at 6:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5024 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 26 of 72 16 November 2013 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I dispute everything you said, particularly the fact that I like to argue. But we can probably shorten the
conversation by just focusing on the crux of the dispute. I asked what you meant by impoverishment and you linked to the Wikipedia article on Dumbing Down. I know the term--I just deny it applies to the language of anyone--no language is dumbed down relative to another. And such is actually totally evident from the very entry you linked. Quote: "Nonetheless, the term dumbing down is subjective, because what a person considers as a dumbed-down cultural artefact usually depends upon the taste (value judgement) of the reader, the listener, and the viewer." Meaning, no doubt you think certain language is dumbed down, just as an educated Roman would be horrified to see what Italians have done to Cicero's tongue, but it's just a matter of your personal taste. To repeat, it's not an opinion any linguist would attach any value to. There are languages educated people speak, languages that use foreign influences, and languages the hoi polloi use--they are all of equal communicative power. None is impoverished relative to another. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 27 of 72 16 November 2013 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Mistakes now, maybe completely accepted in 70 years. Impoverishment, or enrichment of the language by foreign sources? Your call. "Impoverishment" is not an acceptable way to describe diglossia. Edited by tarvos on 16 November 2013 at 11:10pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4240 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 28 of 72 17 November 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Anybody familiar with Cantonese would know there is a lot of slang words constantly being invented. Many of
these are not commonly used in everyday speech but they make dialogues interesting in many movies from Hong Kong. The locals think using a lot of slangs on TV and the movies is part of entertainment. A man from Vancouver Carlos Douh started making Cantonese slangs videos and uploading them on YouTube a few years ago before moving to Hong Kong. At one time the proper way to write Chinese in Hong Kong would be to use standard Mandarin even though most natives in Hong Kong speak only Cantonese. In the 1990s the Internet came and now it is more acceptable for Hong Kong people to type Chinese the way they speak Cantonese. There are some sounds that are unique to Cantonese and there is a subset of characters created that is not used in standard Mandarin. In the Chinese language you would put in a proper classifier in front of a noun the way the French would put the proper article such as: la voiture, le table, le chien, etc. Instead of using a masculine, feminine or plural article like in French, a classifier matches the shape or description of the subject such as: 一條河 yītiáohé. 一 means one, 條 is the classifier for long objects, 河 is for river. The literal translation would be "one long strand of river". The other day I came across an online post someone who put a classifier in front of the character for "cloud" which is inappropriate in standard Mandarin but becoming common in Cantonese where people would write the characters exactly the way they would speak. The word usage was: 一舊雲 yījiùyún. The classifier in standard Mandarin would be 朵 duǒ, the same classifier for a flower and objects that looks like an earlobe. In my mother's generation you would write 一朵雲 (in standard Mandarin) instead of 一舊雲 (the way you say it in Cantonese). In Cantonese you would pronounce 一舊雲 as jat1 gau6 wan4. The use of 舊 in the place of 朵 was considered improper Chinese writing but becoming more acceptable online. Edited by shk00design on 17 November 2013 at 2:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| yong321 Groupie United States yong321.freeshe Joined 5338 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 72 17 November 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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shk00design's message reminds me of one thing I have observed. For lack of a proper name, let me call it linguistic authority. If a language is spoken as a primary language in a certain area, that area has the linguistic authority on its evolution or any minor change, in grammar, vocabulary etc. Once I saw an advertisement in Shanghai subway "I chocolate you!". I thought it was horrible English and not funny at all. On the other hand, if this sentence were to appear in London or anywhere English is the primary language, my feeling would be different even though I would still consider it as something hard to accept. But I may think some native English speakers probably started to use "chocolate" as a verb, which may or may not survive. In short, whether an error evolves into an accepted form depends on, among other things, whether this error occurs in an area with the linguistic authority or is made by the author having this authority. (Note: this authority has nothing to do with any governing body, whether it be a government agency or a non-profit organization.)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6378 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 30 of 72 18 November 2013 at 7:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
This is interesting! It provides an answer to a question I've been thinking about for a long time: How come emigrant populations use more consrvative language than that which is used in the "heartland" of the language? Taiwanese Mandarin is more conservative than Chinese Mandarin, American English more conservative than British English, Latin American Spanish more than European Spanish, Finland Swedish more than Swedish Swedish, and if I interpret some of the posts in this thread right, the same goes for Portugese in Brazil vs. Portugal. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4464 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 31 of 72 18 November 2013 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese is more ''conservative'' but the official grammar is that of 19th century Continental Portuguese (when the Portuguese left) although with a Brazilianized spelling and pronunciation (Brazilian Portuguese and Continental Portuguese are like Bokmaal and Danish, it is Danish/Lusitan pronunciation what has changed a lot in the last 100 years). In Norwegian Bokmaal, masculine forms like boken, kvinnen, solen (instead of feminine boka, kvinna, sola) are regarded as conservative, even though the feminine gender (boka, kvinna, sola) is linguistically older in Norwegian than the Denmark-imported 2 gender system. This means, linguistically older forms are not necessarily more conservative.
15th century Portuguese and colloquial Brazilian Portuguese: [eu] me chamo Pedro (my name is Pedro) modern European Portuguese and conservative/written Brazilian Portuguese: [eu] chamo-me Pedro (my name is Pedro) 15th century Norwegian, colloquial Norwegian and Nynorsk: dronninga kasta boka i elva 19th century Dano-Norwegian and conservative/written Bokmaal of today: dronningen kastet boken i elven ''vart'' in Swedish and (Western) Norwegian is linguistically old (that is conservative), but sociolinguistically informal (not conservative) (it is acceptable, and preferred in written Nynorsk tho') Edited by Medulin on 18 November 2013 at 4:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6952 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 32 of 72 18 November 2013 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
In dialectal geography there is a tendency for change to radiate to the periphery although this tendency can be overriden by other factors such as standardization, population movement or cultural influence of speakers living on the edge of the speech community. See here (especially under the diagram) for an example of linguistic innovation moving toward the periphery of the speech community rather than the other way around even though the latter presentation is politically convenient if not linguistically unsound. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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