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Common errors vs language evolution | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4240 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 41 of 72 18 November 2013 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Once I came across a Chinese who posted a message online with the words: "out country man". Anybody who is familiar with Chinese may be able to figure out the English word as "foreigner". The Chinese characters would be: 外國人. 外 for outside, 國 for country and 人 for people. The Chinese seemed to be developing a form of hybrid language: Chinglish. So far this way of speaking has not be accepted as proper language. Otherwise we would see the evolution of a new English dialect or a new language call Chinglish. Immigrants do occasionally speak English with grammatical errors like: "he don't know" instead of "he doesn't know". When we have enough people doing it this way, it would become mainstream and acceptable. Back in the days when the printing press was introduced, everybody started fixing spellings for practical reasons. And some of the written words may not sound the way it is pronounced. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4264 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 42 of 72 18 November 2013 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What are you talking about?! When on earth did I make a comparison between languages?! I was talking from the start of the diffuse misuse of Italian grammar and disuse of words and the ignorance in fashion today. What's your argument have to do with anything I've written?
Again, I never introduced the words "Italian dialects". The thread topic is "language evolution", and that was precisely what I was talking about. I will state again what I've written, based on evidence: you never took the trouble to read this or the other thread.
Here's you being smart. My argument was that the Italian language is becoming impoverished in time. And that's objective too. It has been documented by notable linguists such as Serianni, Zagrebelsky and De Mauro. I was providing explanations - my opinion, but not just mine - as to thy this is happening, which are in fact: - foreign corruption - a bad education system - modern life style and marketing communication And I am frankly tired of you misunderstanding on purpose. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4264 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 43 of 72 18 November 2013 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No, that's another fallacy. Something you've abused of from the start to clutch at straws. 1 person has 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 44 of 72 18 November 2013 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
When you say some forms of Italian are impoverished, because of foreign influence, the Italian education system, whatever, you're comparing one dialect against another, and saying one is impoverished in relation. (And presumably, when you asked about Newspeak, you meant as compared to modern English.) If you're saying that it is an impoverishment to omit the article from the phrase "la prossima settimana," then you're saying that one speaking Italian who omits that article is speaking an impoverished Italian. We can call this an impoverished dialect, idiolect, accent, it doesn't matter. All that I'm disputing is that this is an impoverishment simply because it betrays a foreign influence (or a lack of schooling, or mass marketing).
I have actually quoted and responded to the majority of what you've argued, often in detailed stepwise argument. Claiming I'm not reading before responding simply won't wash, especially when you're the one who quoted a Wikipedia article as evidence, one you clearly hadn't read since it made the precise opposite point of the one you cited it for! You're the one who cited it and I'm the one who actually bothered to read it!
No, it's not. It's changing--that's objective. Change does not equal impoverishment. Let's go back to the Latin speaker. He watched his language degrade with time. He watched the case system wither, he watched the passive conjugation die, he watched the vocabulary change, he watched the subjunctive tenses get shuffled. Are you saying that your native language is massively impoverished Latin? Given the beauty of Italian, that's the kind of impoverishment I can get behind!
I realize that once one starts losing the argument, then they either have to admit they're wrong or start to make excuses for why they're going to pull out, excuses like "you're not reading what I'm writing," "you're purposely misunderstanding," etc. The former road is the honorable one, but you of course have the right to the latter. You did not answer my question, and since it's the one that matters, I'll ask it again. "Despite common perceptions that certain dialects or languages are relatively good or bad, correct or incorrect, "judged on purely linguistic grounds, all languages--and all dialects--have equal merit". You think Italian is changing. Do you think this new Italian does not have "equal merit" to its forerunner? What do you know that linguists don't? Edited by ScottScheule on 18 November 2013 at 9:57pm 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 45 of 72 18 November 2013 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If these are both fallacies, you should be able to explain why. 1. Why is tarvos's explaning why your analogy is terrible fallacious? 2. Why is my statement that "what is advanced without support can be dismissed as easily" fallacious? You seem to think the fallacious nature of these statements is pretty evident, so I imagine explaining why will prove a simple thing. Edited by ScottScheule on 18 November 2013 at 10:03pm 2 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 46 of 72 18 November 2013 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No fallacy was contained therein. If you want to be witty, back it up. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5130 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 47 of 72 18 November 2013 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Can I ask those of you who seem to think that everything is equal, nothing is better than anything else how you deal with mistakes made by children or foreigners? Are they also just as good as everything else?
In Norwegian we have the sound like in German "ich" only to make things harder, we also use it at the beginning of words. This is hard for children, and when left uncorrected we can see people in their twenties who still cannot say it correctly. We also see that many foreigners struggle with both that sound and the word order, and with the pronunciation of some vowels. Is the idea to just leave this uncorrected and consider it as just as good as the normal language? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 18 November 2013 at 11:45pm 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 48 of 72 19 November 2013 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
In a world of public education and standard languages, the matter becomes one where it's worthwhile to use language in a way that will not only minimize misunderstandings to rational members of the speech community, but also reduce the chances of negative sociolinguistic judgements. Even though I consider myself a staunch descriptivist, this doesn't mean that I succumb to a logical fallacy whereby I am to allow all variations even when they're still intelligible to me no matter that they diverge from the standard language which I know is a sort of lowest common linguistic denominator in the speech community. Some things are obvious points for me to correct or put into ways consistent with the standards such as "Their coming tonight." (rather than "They're coming tonight.") or "They don't know nothing." (rather than "They don't know anything."). Other points are fuzzier such as "Costs are increasing every day" versus "Costs are rising every day" (I've read somewhere that 'to increase' is a transitive verb only and so cannot be used without a direct object) or "hopefully," versus "I hope, that..." ("hopefully,.." is a disputed participal modifier but seems to be used on the model of "fortunately,...", "apparently,..." etc. which seem less disputed, if at all). In cases where they're fuzzy, I might correct them in a way so that they resemble what I would use but the descriptivist in me tempts me to add commentary to someone requesting feedback. In this way I can illustrate that there are elements that are not always perceived as ungrammatical or non-standard by native speakers, and so the other person shouldn't dwell on them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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