(NA)Higher Education - FAIL(NA)

I've got a theory. Spelling and grammatical skills have not gotten any worse recently. The point of spelling and grammar is to properly communicate a thought. My theory is that many thoughts being communicated now-a-days stink, and therefore the spelling and grammar required to communicate those ideas also stink.
 
COFlyBoy said:
I've got a theory. Spelling and grammatical skills have not gotten any worse recently. The point of spelling and grammar is to properly communicate a thought. My theory is that many thoughts being communicated now-a-days stink, and therefore the spelling and grammar required to communicate those ideas also stink.
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do not :mad:
 
COFlyBoy said:
I've got a theory...
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My understanding is that in recent years as much as 38% of written communication is composed by lolcats. That's clearly going to introduce a significant skew between text composed before and after the advent of the lolcat era.
-harry
 
mantakos said:
My understanding is that in recent years as much as 38% of written communication is composed by lolcats. That's clearly going to introduce a significant skew between text composed before and after the advent of the lolcat era.
-harry
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Thank you for the proof. I was thinking of texting in particular, but lolcats ....... I can feel it reducing my IQ.
 
shcool.jpg
 
And then there are sites like engrish.com....
 
Language is a changin' always has always will. If successful communication occurred it ain't worth gettin' grumpy about.
 
ClimbnSink said:
If successful communication occurred it ain't worth gettin' grumpy about.
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Sometimes maybe but not always. Is the communication actually useable by everyone involved? The rate of change is measured in months or a few years, not decades like it use to be. I've actually run across a few people that use terms that I have absolutely no clue whatsoever about what it means or what they're about to do. It's not just used in bs talk with their friends over beer and pizza. I've heard the mystery terms used in safety critical environments such as high voltage and power tools.
 
So the rate of change has increased evolve or die. There are prescriptive and descriptive rules of language. One is the way it is the other is made up by idiot english professors.
fgcason said:
Sometimes maybe but not always. Is the communication actually useable by everyone involved? The rate of change is measured in months or a few years, not decades like it use to be. I've actually run across a few people that use terms that I have absolutely no clue whatsoever about what it means or what they're about to do. It's not just used in bs talk with their friends over beer and pizza. I've heard the mystery terms used in safety critical environments such as high voltage and power tools.
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ClimbnSink said:
So the rate of change has increased evolve or die. There are prescriptive and descriptive rules of language. One is the way it is the other is made up by idiot english professors.
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It's not evolving, it's degenerating. Evolution implies an improvement, but in the case of communication we see some serious setbacks. Leaving out aspects of proper sentence construction, and using whatever haphazard spelling is nothing less than laziness. Proper punctuation, spelling and syntax make the reading enjoyable, clear, and much more likely to have some attention paid to it. It's also a credit to its author.

The rules of writing are not something made up by "idiot" professors; they are nothing less than the specifications for precision in communication, just as a good car is precisely designed and built so that its performance will excel. Cheap, poorly built cars are despised, and cheap, poorly written text is similarly rejected. We still read books written by people dead for hundreds of years, but we won't be reading sloppily-written blogs two days after they're posted.

Today's youth think they can get by with poor language skills. When the job market gets tight, we'll see who gets the good jobs, and it won't be the guy who can't compose well. He'll be flipping fast-food burgers while the student who did his English courses well is being paid top bucks for his skills in writing things that make money for his boss, or who can read the instructions for complex machinery and understand them.

Dan
 
Grammar rules such as not ending a sentence in a preposition or not splitting infinitives are descriptive rules of latin that some idiot decided should be applied to English. Language is not degenerating, it is evolving for the better. Language is just keeping up with humanity moving faster. Going turbo man. Yes kids should be able to write proper papers but texting fast and accurate is now a viable means of communication(I don't text.) The standard is different for texting, web forum time killing, and email. Heck the standard is different depending on who you are emailing. It is nonsense to think that a page of fluent prose is better communication that a bulleted list. You best be able to rite dat way to git yer sheepskin but it ain't all dere iz.
 
The other day one of my students E-mailed me from his portable whatever in text-speak, or whatever they call it. I immediately thought less of him, having to plow through long run-on sentences and no punctuation. I told him so to his face, since he will be communicating with fossils like me for much of his life. My guess is when he gets to be a fossil like me he'll want proper English use, instead of whatever malarky they're doing in that distant time.
 
steingar said:
The other day one of my students E-mailed me from his portable whatever in text-speak, or whatever they call it. I immediately thought less of him, having to plow through long run-on sentences and no punctuation. I told him so to his face, since he will be communicating with fossils like me for much of his life. My guess is when he gets to be a fossil like me he'll want proper English use, instead of whatever malarky they're doing in that distant time.
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Oh, man, we older guys are starting to understand why we irritated our elders so much. And why they were so right.

Dan
 
You thought less of him because of his language or because he treated you as a peer? When have all manner of speech or writing been appropriate in all circumstances? Never. Nothing new about language evolving. I bet some of you folks are still ****ed about them changing the names of airspace:rofl:
steingar said:
The other day one of my students E-mailed me from his portable whatever in text-speak, or whatever they call it. I immediately thought less of him, having to plow through long run-on sentences and no punctuation. I told him so to his face, since he will be communicating with fossils like me for much of his life. My guess is when he gets to be a fossil like me he'll want proper English use, instead of whatever malarky they're doing in that distant time.
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ClimbnSink said:
You thought less of him because of his language or because he treated you as a peer? When have all manner of speech or writing been appropriate in all circumstances? Never. Nothing new about language evolving. I bet some of you folks are still ****ed about them changing the names of airspace:rofl:
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and I believe that was both his point AND why he thought less of the student - for the young man's inability to tell when and where that txt talk was appropriate. Or, more to the point, inappropriate.
 
We, as Americans, have been dragging The Queen's English through the gutter for 400 years. And, now, when a group bastardizes our bastardized English we take offense?

That's hilarious.

And quite egocentric.
 
timwinters said:
We, as Americans, have been dragging The Queen's English through the gutter for 400 years. And, now, when a group bastardizes our bastardized English we take offense?

That's hilarious.

And quite egocentric.
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My British collegues are fond of reminding me that they invented the language. And I am fond of reminding them that there are more of us speaking it. :D
 
Ghery said:
My British collegues are fond of reminding me that they invented the language. And I am fond of reminding them that there are more of us speaking it. :D
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Ha. The Philippines is the second largest English speaking population England is third.
 
Ghery said:
The question would be - what portion of the population of India actually speaks English? As opposed to the native language(s).
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Actually....from my experiences there...most of them.

Some who learned later in life have a thick accent, but the English is there. The kids don't have nearly the accent as their parents.
 
timwinters said:
??????

What about India?
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Could be. I heard that ranking about ten years ago I assume it was as correct as they can figure then. Surprised there aren't more call centers in the Philippines as their English is less accented.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Actually....from my experiences there...most of them.

Some who learned later in life have a thick accent, but the English is there. The kids don't have nearly the accent as their parents.
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My wife, a lingualist, says that the dividing age is puberty. Learn a language before puberty, and you can be accent free (that goal still takes work). Learn it afterwards, and .... no.

-Skip
 
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