Another Language Virus

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Originally Posted by Phrank

We had an NDP candidate - an MA in education I believe, and the Superintendent of a School District, who got in trouble for taking a selfie at Auschwitz, of one of the electrified concrete fence columns and comparing it to a phallic symbol.

When she got called on the callous lack of respect for, a) taking the "selfie" in a concentration camp, and b) comparing it to a phallic symbol, she claimed she didn't know what Auschwitz was, she'd never heard of it or the concentration camp. She was running for Parliament! Lots of excuses were made for her, but the fact remains, she's an idiot. A buffoon who should have resigned immediately.

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To be fair to her, it wasn't a selfie but rather she commented on a photo that someone else had posted.

That having been said, her comment was bafflingly stupid. And as bad as that was, her attempt to explain away the comment by saying that she didn't know what Auschwitz was or what had happened there was even worse. That an idiot like that was in any way responsible for the education of our next generation beggars belief.

But then, we were spoiled for choice when it came to idiot candidates having to withdraw from the recent election, weren't we?. At times I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

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Originally Posted by Phrank

University is to instill a firm foundation of basic intellectual skills, through critical thought, analysis and broadening the mind to ideas outside your own comfort zone. Most don't teach that anymore, they teach ridiculous courses, and anything that may frighten or disturb these poor "kids", is littered with, "trigger" warnings now, whitewashed, or rewritten to suit various political agendas. It's ridiculous, and the "progressive left" on many campuses now, are in fact a type of politically correct thought police, squashing anything outside their little comfort zones.

And we wonder why, when they're out in the real world, they are completely incapable of dealing with conflict or adversity - or anyone challenging their "rote" taught ideas.

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I fall comfortably into the progressive left end of the spectrum and I totally share your concern re coddling students, political correctness, and all of that jazz that caters to the helicopter parents and their desperately unprepared (adult) children. Luckily there are plenty of us on all sides of the political divide who can't stand that crap, so there's still hope. :)

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Originally Posted by Cangooner

To be fair to her, it wasn't a selfie but rather she commented on a photo that someone else had posted.

That having been said, her comment was bafflingly stupid. And as bad as that was, her attempt to explain away the comment by saying that she didn't know what Auschwitz was or what had happened there was even worse. That an idiot like that was in any way responsible for the education of our next generation beggars belief.

But then, we were spoiled for choice when it came to idiot candidates having to withdraw from the recent election, weren't we?. At times I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.



I fall comfortably into the progressive left end of the spectrum and I totally share your concern re coddling students, political correctness, and all of that jazz that caters to the helicopter parents and their desperately unprepared (adult) children. Luckily there are plenty of us on all sides of the political divide who can't stand that crap, so there's still hope. :)

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Yes - the Conservative candidate who was also a appliance repair guy peeing into the homeowners coffee mug was a splendid example of stupidity.

I had some great day's at Trent University, W.O. Mitchell's son, Orm, head of the English Department, some great Profs, in the history department as well, some real hard nose, cranky types who wouldn't let you get away with anything.

Personally, it was during this period in the mid-80's, as the feminist influence started casting it's grey cloud over thought that it began. I remember in a Medieval Literature class, having to listen to several women spout their modern day theory on literature and a time hundreds of years in the past - spoke out about it as well, that this wasn't the subject of the class, and the Professor agreed with me, she was one of my favourites there.

Now, you wouldn't get away with a complaint like that, you'd be branded and shamed from a buffet of new words to silence thought - if you could even find a course like that to begin with.

What a great day for ranting this has been! :D

Here is an expression which really annoys me "the xxxx wants out" as opposed to the xxxx wants to/ would like to go outside".

Language is a living thing. Always has been. Words come and go. Slang is funny like that, some expressions end up as accepted vocabulary, while others just fade away. I have a English to Finnish slang dictionary from 1974 that contains a whole bunch of expressions that are in regular use e.g. 'cop-out', but also things I have never heard of in studying English for more than half of my life e.g. 'foozle'. A fun little book, that.

And text speak is a great example of the principle of least effort in linguistics (or less effort, anyway), as is spoken Finnish (when compared to written Finnish). However, for text speak it mostly is a reduction of characters loosely based around phonetic spelling. Contracted auxiliaries also can be explained according to the same principle, although are funny in their own right, as they seem (to me) to be rather natural in speech and accordingly modified in written language, rather than the other way around. But maybe that is due me thinking of language in essence as a verbal tool rather than a written one.

That being said, I do think that people are getting lazier in their writing, mainly due to spell checkers diminishing the need for accurate spelling. All of my Dutch teachers in secondary school made us write essays by hand and would deduct points for spelling mistakes. Remarkably enough, some of them got complaints from parents for being too strict in this.

About the connection between language and etiquette: Naturally they are connected, they are both part of human interaction. I do believe language is more of a profound communicative tool than etiquette, and etiquette more of an additional tool for getting along. However, I prefer to judge people on the insight of their utterances rather than how they say it or if they were chewing while they did so. That being said, I hate it when people chew with their mouths open, let alone talk while eating.

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Originally Posted by Utopian

I like pointing out that a foul mouth is a sign of a weak mind, or at least a poor vocabulary--d&mm^t!

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I don't use profanity constantly, but definitely quite regularly. Even though I'm not a big George Carlin fan, he did have a point when he said "They're just words, too." True, they are marked words and throwing them around constantly for no apparent reason is just silly, but they definitely have their uses. For instance, they can emphasise the speaker's point, underline their emotion, be used for comical effect and take the edge off in certain social situations.

I always found constantly correcting other people's grammar in a conversation without adding any insight to the conversation to be a sign of a weak mind (not a stab at you Ron, just a general pet peeve). Just as I really dislike talking to people who pretty much exclusively talk a) about their own achievements/merits and b) in snippets of trivia or facts ('Well, technically...') without the faintest intention of turning it into an original thought that may even apply to the situation or could be put into a larger perspective.

tl;dr Absolute syntactical awfulness aside, I worry much more about what people say than about how they say it. Language changes. People don't, really.

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Originally Posted by nipper

The best gift you can give yourself is a good education.
One of my favorites: Let's eat gramma vs. Let's eat, gramma.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAe_w9a_IN8

Funny you bring up eating with your mouth open, it amazes me how many guys (and some girls too) on site do it, I thought it was a fairly fundamental piece of etiquette, aside from being disgusting it also causes your eating to be noisy. I have left the lunch room before now when a noisy eater comes in.

the one that absolutely does my head in is" impordant " even news readers on tv are pronouncing important as impordant ....lol...its becoming so common its making me sick it should be a jail able offense

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Originally Posted by Pithor

Language is a living thing. Always has been. Words come and go. Slang is funny like that, some expressions end up as accepted vocabulary, while others just fade away. I have a English to Finnish slang dictionary from 1974 that contains a whole bunch of expressions that are in regular use e.g. 'cop-out', but also things I have never heard of in studying English for more than half of my life e.g. 'foozle'. A fun little book, that.

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Apologies for editing out so many excellent points. I just want to start the campaign to re-introduce foozle to the world and return it to its proper place in English usage. What a great word! :)

I'm going to have to look up foozle.

Apparently foozle is a bungled play in a game, especially in golf. I have never played golf. Maybe foozle is still in use.

It's the split infinitives that get me. "To boldly go..." really? REALLY?? WTF!!!!????!!

Excuse me, I need to go sit down and have a cup of tea and get my blood pressure back to normal.

James.