On a mission...

looksee

to save the English language. Ok, maybe not, how about a mission to fan this forum into life?

It is arguable that English is being mangled and garbled and dumbed-down. This is mostly happening on the internet but it is also creeping into journalism and other forms of communication. Does it matter?

One explanation is that language has always evolved and changed, it is a living thing and should be allowed to grow. But is there a difference between occasional words changing their meaning and the wholesale destruction of spelling and grammar?

Is there anything we can do about it - should we do anything about it? Maybe this century will be remembered as the 21st century version of the Great Vowel Shift of the Middle Ages. Does that seem likely?

tac foley

Your the use of 'Ok' [sic], is but one example of 'dumbing down'. Your fourth sentence should also be made into two sentences, with the first ending after 'changed'. To make it into a single sentence, you would need to add either 'since' or 'as' after the comma...

You OK with that one?

tac

looksee

I should have put a semi-colon after 'changed'; I agree the sentence structure was not correct. Should I have used ok? I am not suggesting that English should always be totally formal; I am more concerned that the common errors that create confusing sentences are a threat to communication and understanding.

I have remembered that I tried to get this discussion going once before and it didn't take off , so if anyone has any thoughts about English that they would like to pursue, please go ahead!

tac foley

Yessir - a semi-colon would have done as well. 'ok' is an American usage abbreviation, and I understood that your aim was to foster the correct use of English. Since it is also an acronym, it should also be capitalised, as in UN or EU.

You good with that?

tac

pickarooney

tac foley wrote: »

Your the use of 'Ok' [sic], is but one example of 'dumbing down'. Your fourth sentence should also be made into two sentences, with the first ending after 'changed'. To make it into a single sentence, you would need to add either 'since' or 'as' after the comma...

You OK with that one?

tac

I stopped reading after two words. Gibberish

Achasanai

looksee wrote: »

One explanation is that language has always evolved and changed, it is a living thing and should be allowed to grow. But is there a difference between occasional words changing their meaning and the wholesale destruction of spelling and grammar?

But hasn't spelling and grammar always shifted and changed? It's easy to say that it's happening at a rapid pace nowadays (although we might only notice this because we're all so connected) but when we had lots of separate communities with less contact with each other, you would have differences in grammar and spelling (and eventual mutation from dialects to separate languages).

Maybe the 'standardisation' of spelling and grammar (that was a thing, wasn't it? Sometime in the 17th/18th century?) has given us a false sense of how language naturally develops.

Speedwell

I feel like the police. There are so many serious crimes being committed that I don't really feel like worrying as much about littering and driving two or three miles over the speed limit.