pangloss: Interesting. Is your rationale that 'human being' and 'human beings' sound better than 'human' and 'humans'? Because 'human' as a noun dates to "circa 1533" according to Merriam Webster.

Mostly that it sounds better to me, yes. A lot of things I've found in old style guides sound better to me than what is currently in common usage. (Data/media as plural, for instance).

I don't know when "human" as a noun dates back to specifically, but I know that I have a style guide from the mid-20th Century that declares "human" to be an adjective only. There are also a number of old people who would share this view (especially my parents).

Again, one I don't care about personally, but there is the regardless and irregardless meaning the same thing.

By the way, grammatical authoritarians, if you want to get someone bothered by it just start talking about things being correct, irregardlessly.

Man, this is a dumb thread.

Language's purpose is communication. If it's clear what you mean, you're speaking "correctly". Judging people for using different words is just an excuse to make one's self feel superior to others.

Judging people by calling their threads dumb is just an excuse to make one's self feel superior to others.

"guesstimate is both redundant and stupid"

"Guess" and "estimate" both have very different connotations with regard to the accuracy of the underlying proposition, and "guesstimate" is between the two. It is neither redundant nor stupid; it is instead a great example of the adaptability of language.

People saying "anyways" instead of "anyway". I don't know where the hell the s came from, and for some reason I find it really annoying. I wish I didn't, but I do. Maybe it's just because I dislike the sound of the letter s in general.

"anyway" is singular and "anyways" is plural. Like when there's more than one anyway to do it.

Tr, linguistic prescriptivism is tied very closely to racism and classism. I'm going to call people out for being judgemental. It's not OK.

ghug, are you calling me a racist?

There is no "right" way to talk. There's just not.

Lol, way to take the extra step there buddy...

Personally, I have more respect for someone from Mexico that came to the United States and spent years assimilating as best they could and learning English as best they could. The ability to balance two languages with that kind of proficiency is amazing to me. I have tried to do that and I've never managed, yet they speak their non-native language every day and get shit on for it by people who think their accent is a sign of inferiority or even stupidity in a lot of cases.

My roommate is a Cajun from the swamp. She says things like "Wheres" instead of "where" e.g. "Wheres I'm from, we talk like this." She eliminates the "to" in most infinitives, especially in this construction: "He went see what was going on" or "I asked use the restroom."

This is a tiny sample of the "incorrect" usages she has. And you know what? Fuck you if you would dare correct her. That's how she talks, that's how her kin talk, that's how her people talk. You go on talking the way you want.

I speak with mostly a standard grammar. It's rare that the computer I type on tells me that what I chose to say is "incorrect" by underlining it. This is a marker of my privileged position in society, it is not a marker of being "correct" in any true sense.

People with accents saying something a certain way that's different from how we say it is one thing. People who were raised within a dialect extremely similar to yours if not the same is very much another thing.

The point is there is no difference between a dialect and the way someone talks. You can try to split hairs and create a distinction, but it isn't there in real space. People just speak words. You understand them, or you don't. There are infinite layers of nuance and sometimes people don't even understand their own words. Grammar is an arbitrary charade, an accretion of centuries of haphazard traditions and patterns adopted and enforced by the ruling class.

I think most of you have forgotten that, unlike most languages, English does not have any central institution which would define correct usage. French, despite being a multinational language, has rules set down by an institute. It makes for quite a pain in the ass, actually. Most European countries have a national language institute. England and the US both don't have them, which makes English the easiest language to change. Given the lack of an institute, anything that most people who speak English would understand as English, is English. It's as simple as that. If there is a particular usage that actually damages comprehension, for example by introducing ambiguity, then that usage should be avoided. If something just plain sounds or looks odd, then sure, avoid that. But there's no reason to talk like a style guide. Hell, it's not even necessary to write like one.

Oh! All I was after was word creations that annoy, amuse or irritate... simples!

@phil, language institutes are a relatively recent and horribly misguided invention. People who speak a different French than the one deemed correct by the Academie are still speaking French. All the Academie does is try to undercut their legitimacy. Trying to direct linguistic change is both wrong and ineffective.

@Tolstoy

guess is random, estimate is educated

saying them both is not redundant i see now, but combining them does not in fact make an in between, but actually combines the two into a mess of stupidity

so guesstimate is nonsensical and stupid, but not in fact redundant.

dialects are not purely socioeconomically defined and definitely not classist. while there may be slight correlations, it is unfair to say that people judging on dialects is racist in the least, classist at the most. Altogether, I have a slight speech impediment if I talk very fast, and I would and do make fun of it, in other people as well as me. Maybe in some cases it is derogatory, but not empirically.

also i hate the word Prado. It's stupid.

Dialects aren't purely socioeconomically defined, but there is a correlation, in part because there's a correlation between race and socioeconomic status. They most certainly are racially defined, or culturally if you want to pretend that race is simply a matter of skin color/genetics. If your argument is purely semantic, you can invent the word "dialectist" to describe the exact nature of judgement based on dialect, but none of that changes the fact that it's judgement based on something that people shouldn't be using to judge people.

JamesYanik: Huh? Are you seriously going to claim that negative judgements against the several English dialects out there that are pretty tightly linked to race (usually but not always because of the geographical clustering of those races) are magically not racist? And there are several of them.

Seriously, what is it with people pretending that everything that actually is to do with race must magically be to do with class instead? It isn't, you know.

@ghug Call me out all you like; my attitude to horrible back-formations and the needless substitution of crap words for decent ones, the dangerous confusion in the transfer of information encouraged by the sloppy use of language remains the same. Utterly hostile. It's not classist or any other -ist, it's simple common sense.

As a Diplomacy player you know that one of the tools any good diplomat exploits is the common assumption that when someone answers "I can do that ..." means "I will do that..." It's vital in real-world diplomacy as well, and absolutely in law. The attitude that the correct use of language is not necessary has at its heart a disregard for the need for everyone in a democracy to understand exactly what is meant. It is fundamentally patronising to assume that people from discrete groups in a society, whether defined by race, class or culture, should be cut some slack because they are in some way inferior. The confusions introduced by inexactitude lead to friction and damage in personal, working and societal relationships. Dialectical use of language is NOT the same as misuse. Example: if I say to someone "How are you, me duck?" It doesn't imply anything, other than a generalised greeting - in the English Midlands, it is used interchangeably for either sex.

"Grammar is an arbitrary charade, an accretion of centuries of haphazard traditions and patterns adopted and enforced by the ruling class."

It may be arbitrary, but it is not a charade. If you want to communicate with other people, you'd better be able to. If you want to check out of society or distinguish yourself by talking differently, go right ahead, but be prepared to suffer the consequences, ESPECIALLY if you've been afforded the opportunity to become educated in the majority language in your locality.

@thorfi,

i said that it was still possible for it to be racist, but not always. let's say someone with a strong southern accent and someone with a bostonian accent start poking fun at one another because of their dialects, they can EASILY have the same socioeconomic class, and it is in no way racist.

"while there may be slight correlations, it is unfair to say that people judging on dialects is racist in the least, classist at the most."

You're very much claiming there that judging on dialects is not a racist thing. If that's not what you intended, perhaps clearer wording is required.

If your point is that sometimes it is just poking and not racism, then yes. Sometimes, it's not. Sometimes it is just classism (especially as language use skills correlate pretty heavily with education which correlates pretty heavily with wealth).

But often it is racism too, particularly depending on the dialect being picked on. Let's not pretend it isn't.

"also i hate the word Prado. It's stupid." Good thing it's a Spanish word, then.

i never did, i just said sometimes. i didn't say to what extent, i just said sometimes. and it's not my fault if you misread what i say.

Prado stahp