And that’s a shame, too, because all of my female English teachers were hotties.
[QUOTE=Stoid]
What in god’s name is going on? I know that most people are not as literate, nor spell as well, as your average Doper…but my god.
[quote]
Sadly, there are large number of dopers who think that "because our language is constantly evolving and growing anyway, that errors are not only “no big deal” but should be encouraged. Sigh.
[quote]
I…the English language, one of My Favorite Things, will be reduced to 1000 simple words spelled phonetically. Or maybe we’ll just end up pointing and grunting most of the time.
[quote]
How funny, that exact phrase, " reduced to pointing and grunting" was what I thought about the whole “oh, language is constantly evolving, so errors like this are just fine” mentality I’ve seen expressed on our own dear SDMB.
The thing is, mistakes like this are NOT some bold new use of an existing word, or slang or some such, they’re just plain old laziness and ignorance. And to try to make it all okay by pulling out the “language isn’t stationary” card is just a bunch of horse hooey!
That said, could you ECT idiots PUH lease look up the word? It’s eTcetera, not ECTetera, therefore, its abbreviated form is eTc, NOT eCt.
And aX instead of ask…GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. And don’t give me the whole “that’s racial” or some people aren’t able to pronounce the ask combination nonsense either. The last THREE people who came out with this gem were halibut white. Whiter than I am, and I can bring down a 747 with the sheen from my fishbelly white thighs.
If you can pronounce taSK and maSk properly, you CAN say ask.
Or, what HSHP said, and in one sentence no less.
I knew there was a reason I agreed with you 79% of the time.
You ought of thunk twice afore you started this here thread.
He had an excellent point anyway. The same attitudes which result in a “who cares” attitude regarding spelling and grammar, tend to come from the same sorts who are also too lazy to observe common courtesy in other ways. Such AS thinking that they’re the only person important enough to have the right to ignore traffic laws.
One is just lesser than the other, but they’re from the same source. Laziness, ignorance and lack of consideration.
Oh, that is such utter bullshit. Some of the sweetest and most considerate people I know have serious problems with grammar and spelling.
Exactly.
some.
Saying “tend to” isn’t to say that ALL of those displaying those attributes are that way either. I’m sure that a lot of those who are perfect at our language are jerks in traffic too.
Perhaps not, but you are saying that most do, and I haven’t found that to be true at all.
In my experience I have found that way too many do fit that profile. And for the record, I meant more those like another poster describes above, that are PURPOSEFULLY ignorant of the correct way to speak, those that insist “that’s just the way I say it”. Not those that simply haven’t learned better.
But then, I should have made that more clear.
No one is perfect in all aspects of the language. Some are darn close, and I admire them. But to simply dismiss proper grammar as undesireable or unnecessary because “language is always evolving anyway” is ignorant and lazy. Those are the types I was describing.
Or attempting to 
And the same attitudes that lead people to pit perfectly understandable colloquialisms tend to come from the same sorts who sodomize geese.
See? I can make shit up too. 
I dismiss it as unnecessary, in part, for that exact reason. Proper? By whose standards? The standards of 2005? The standards of when you went to high school / college?
If the idea is effectively communicated, why does proper gerund, preposition, and infinitive usage matter? If I spell “grammar” as “grammer”, does it affect the idea at all? Would you consider me ignorant and lazy if I were banging on your door at 2 AM, telling you, “I just seen somebody sneakin’ around your house”?
The enormity of the problem is people who don’t want to tow the line. Especially for them who’s school years all ready past them by. But for all intensive purposes, its alright with I.
Euuuw…geese?
At any rate, whether or not they’re understandable, does NOT change the fact that it’s lazy and ignorant to use them.
In this case, basic spelling (was it? Someone explained the exact error that is being made earlier) from decades and decades past.
Again, as I said to metacom below, it’s STILL lazy and ignorant, regardless of whether it can be understood. Someone handing you a sandwich out of which they’ve taken several large bites is still “edible” but very distasteful. That it still can nurish a person doesn’t change that it’s icky to have a sandwich that someone else has bitten.
Similar thing here. The phrase “could of” is wrong. It’s not difficult AT ALL to use the correct phrase of “could have”. Doesn’t matter if it’s still understandable, it’s still lazy and ignorant to purposely use the incorrect phrase. And then to compound the insult with “well, it’s okay, because the language is evolving, pretty soon what’s wrong will be right and what’s right will be wrong”.
That’s just stupid. (not you the idea).
Yeah, it affects the idea, not that it changes the meaning, but as someone else in another 'grammar" thread said, so what’s to prevent that same attitude, that of “why bother language is evolving anyway” from making a lamp a grapefruit and vice versa, simply because someone can’t be bothered to use the correct spelling or word?
And again, I’m speaking of those who refuse to use correct grammar, in the name of “who cares, language doesn’t matter that much anyway”, not some person who has never had the opportunity to learn the right way.
Thing is, you’re conflating two notions: written language and spoken language. The two are not the same at all.
Spoken language is what evolves and changes with the times. It’s a natural ability for humans. This can change all it wants and I couldn’t care less. Since it’s decided by society, it’s self-correcting; changes which impede communication die a fast death.
Written language, however, is an invention designed to put spoken language down on paper. It’s a tool, a system with rules to govern its consistency (prescriptive rules), used to depict spoken language. Spoken language therefore takes precedence over written language. You may say ‘should’ve’ which sounds like ‘should of’, but all it is is a slurring of ‘should have’. ‘Have’ is in no way similar to ‘of’, and when written down one is correct and one is not. People writing ‘should of’ are simply wrong, as that is not what they are intending to say.
Even leaving aside punctuation, typos, and the like, writing down the wrong word - hell, writing phonetically, which is what this issue is at its heart - shows that the writer has paid little attention to their education and even less attention to what they’re actually trying to say. And while you may not lose much meaning over misspelling grammar as grammer, writing the wrong words can make the meaning you intend to get across difficult and even impossible at times.
But there is no dount that people who write “should of” are actually saying it that way, too. If the convention switched from “should have” to “should of”, there is nothing inherent in the latter phrase to make it unclear.
How do you suppose languages ever change in the first place? Is it your contention that a language, once written down and codified, should never change again?
I can definitely say why lazy English becoming the norm irritates me. It’s entirely selfish.
I consider myself to be fairly adept at written English. My vocabulary, spelling and basic grammar are usually right on target. I pride myself on my written communication. My beef with lazy English involves the wish not to have that rug of education and communication pulled out from under me.
I do not want to have to learn a whole new way of spelling and grammar because a sizable portion of my countrymen are lazy asses who slept through their (yes, see? That’s one neologism I’ll allow because there is no gender-neutral English pronoun that isn’t already identical to a gender-specific one) grammar school English classes.
Can we please stop hijacking this thread and get back to poker? 
I take you’ve never read Super System? Funilly enough, that’s precisely what he recommends doing… 've course I’d get called and lose to a pair of deuces.
If they’re truly merely not able to make any distinction, and are truly only doing it phonetically then why not “should’ uv”? Surely most people know such a small and simple word like “of” and its current meaning, don’t they?
Further, the problem is, that the errrors, which do tend to be ones of laziness and carelessness, don’t stop with that which is easily translated from “stupid”. They escalate to errors which are more and more difficult to figure out, or those which merely make the user of the incorrect phrase or word look stupid
Our countryman can and do do the same thing by using the wrong words, either on purpose to be “cool” or out of ignorance, carelessness and laziness.
I had a client tell me I was “bantering” because I was trying to answer his questions about tennis reservations (I had to bite my tongue to restrain myself from saying “really? I’m engaging in lighthearted wordplay?”). And he was impatient with hearing them, and wanted what he wanted right THEN, rather than follow appropriate procedures for requesting a reservation. I’m pretty sure he meant babbling, or possibly blathering, but it made him sound stupid and possibly drunk.
it was obvious he was trying to be dismissive and superior, but he missed the mark by a mile, and ended up being fodder for jokes about him every time he came in to play tennis.
As soon as he got barely (or maybe not) out of earshot, it would be “are you BANTERING at me”? And so on with the employees at the reservations/front desk area.
Did we understand what he meant even so? Yes. But did he get his point across? No, he ended up looking like a blowhard idiot instead of icily superior as he’d been attempting to do.
I apologize to the OP if this is too much of a hijack. But Americans also take the cake in lazy LAZY pronunciation. Everyone MUTTERS anymore. No one enunciates. I swear, I’d almost take a decently formed incorrect word over the mouth mush that so many Americans seem to think is language these days.
And furthermore, you damn kids get off my LAWN!!!