Why should non-native speakers who aren’t familiar with the idoim be placed at a disadvantage, though?
As has been pointed out, a reasonably intelligent ESL student, encountering “for all intents and purposes” for the first time, should be able to tease out its meaning. But if that person’s first encounter with the idiom is in the form of “for all intensive purposes,” he will have no recourse but to seek out a native and inquire what the hell it means.
The writer does not enjoy the right to presume that his audience has a native’s command of idiom.
The writer does, of course, have any right she wishes to take. She may assume whatever she wants. If her assumptions are incorrect, her communication will suffer.
Your objection to my point is incredibly broad. Should the writer therefore avoid all idioms whose meaning is not clear from the individual words? Should the writer avoid rare words, in case the audience doesn’t know them? Should the writer write in Sanskrit, in case that’s the only language the audience knows?
In all cases, yes–maybe. The writer should know the audience, should keep the audience in mind.
No meaning idiomatically? Do you understand that adverb?
In any case, there is no ipso, there is no facto. Words only have meaning inasmuch as they successfully convey meaning from creator to audience. Trying to give them an objective meaning independent of this relationship is superstition.
That’s insane, dude. That’s not lowering the standard of language, that’s the entirety of language.
That’s all very nice for “all intents and purposes”, but there are plenty of idioms whose meaning has no relation to their words (that’s kind of what "idiom"means). The reasonably intelligent ESL student won’t be able to tease out the meaning of “piece of cake” or “Bob’s your uncle” (to get British for a second) without help from a native speaker. If writers can’t presume their audience has a grasp of idiom, they can’t use idiom, which is a ludicrously restrictive standard.
If the writer has used the idiom correctly, no assistance from another native guide will be needed: context is enough. Figuring out how and when to use it, or finding out where it comes from, are more complicated.
That’s also true of idioms in our native languages, after all. You do not need to know that “going through the eye of a needle” is from the New Testament to understand it, you just need to figure out that the little hole in a needle’s thicker end is called an eye.
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum
Si þin nama gehalgod
to becume þin rice
gewurþe ðin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele soþlice
From now on, when I want to say something is like something else, I’m going to say, “swa swa”.
“I think David Tennant most swa swa Patrick Troughton’s Doctor.”
Which writer? The one who’s preparing an article for submission to a scientific journal? The reader may be assumed to understand quite complex technical language–but the style should otherwise be straightforward & somewhat formal.
The one who’s writing instructions for setting up a PC? Definitely—keep it simple.
For non-technical writing, let the student use the many sources that explain English idioms. Just as I’ve studied Spanish idioms. And those verbs…
Herein lurks my underlying, albeit florally vested, point:
The need for people to use their brains, in order to communicate, is becoming of lesser and lesser importance. Be it the shorthand acronyms and initialisms brought about through necessity as an offshoot of the limited-character “texting” (:rolleyes:) Age, or thus ‘miss-sounded-out’ expression in question – the resultant dumbing down of the language is undeniable.
C’mon – sweep the caltrops of ‘offence’ aside for once and let us call a ‘dig stick’ a spade, Homer J.'s: only those that do not read or endeavour to learn to spell (…you know, proper-like), would misinterpret such expressions and phrases in the manner they all too often demonstrate. I’d wager a refulgent, pristine, fresh from the Palestinian nickle mine, Bank of Yaweh’s Chosen Ones shekel, that 99% of those not ‘academically endowed’ who ‘unironically’ write / type / eruct the word “wont”, are not availing its definition of custom / habit / consuetude; rather, the dingleberries actually intend to mean WON’T… but are [both] too lazy to scribe / hen-peck an opportune apostrophe, much less pick up a dictionary (post dropping out for Ghetto Creed Community College) to “check” their bastardisation privilege. Surely, such slovenly traits are not to be encouraged, much less lauded… surely?! :dubious:
If neuroscience teaches us that something as rudimentary as taking a different rat race route to our work-a-day iCubicals, can help to stave of degenerative brain disease, what net, long term effect does, for yawl intestine proposals, dumbing down our most fundamental mode of interacting with society? It must, therefore. follow that if the “affirmative action” of lowering the threshold for required neural pathway construction is instituted, thereby reducing the quantum of neural pathways that are created, ergo the extant neural pathways diminished, and resultant brain activity constricted; vis-à-vis, we arive at … M.A.G.A.!!
I am not even remotely postulating that new words should not be recognised in the gamut of English vocabulary. Neologisms have built the English language – 'twas always thus and always thus shall be. My assertion is that the systematic simplification of speaking and communicating - for a language that is not even approaching Klingon level in its complexity - has inimical side-effects that pollute farther out into our spæcial (bring it, n00bs! ) seas than merely how titillated teenagers “sext” their “dick / tit pic”-accompanying pillow talk to one another.
Make no mistake, my watery-eared readers – this rabbit hole descends deep and will become as dark and as swarthy[¹] as night. I am anything but niggardly[²]. Thus I am here offering my humble Mad Hatter services, at your oblige–as a guide, to your eyes-wide-shut selves’–torchbearer of enlightenment and elucidation–so we, together, brothers in arms, can delve into the miasma of obfuscation and Machiavellian mystery, weaved by the Bohemian Grooves and Bilderburger reptilians, on the chemtrail laced, gold-bullion-backed trek towards… the truth!
[1] That’s not what it reads / ‘sounds out’ like…
[2] No offen[SIZE=“5”]ce intended to any cherry-picking[³] BLM readers[/SIZE]
[3] To reiterate: that’s cherry-picking – [SIZE=“5”]CHERRY[/SIZE] …uh oh :eek:
I feel like I’m Brickerizing this argument by seeking victory on a tiny point while ignoring your overall argument, which I mostly agree with. But this thread is all about pedantry, so I’ll go with it.
The more I think about it, the phrase “all intensive purposes” is meaningless gibberish. If that puppy depended on me divining the writer’s exact meaning, I think the puppy is a goner because the writer themself doesn’t know. They are merely repeating syllables they’ve heard in similar situations without understanding the meaning. If you forced them to think about what an “intensive purpose” is and what it means to have all of them, they’d probably guess something about very strong or thorough purposes.
This differs from “words” like “irregardless”. We can all figure out the writer’s intent because we understand the root “regardless” and the general meaning of attaching the prefix “ir-”. But “intensive purposes” has one meaning if considered literally and a slightly different meaning if you assume it should have been “intents and purposes.” If the writer doesn’t understand the meaning, I won’t have confidence they are using it appropriately or that I will always know their exact intent.
ETA: I missed the last page of posts when I wrote this, so I’m kind of repeated other points already made along with their attempted refutations. And I still disagree, but I’m not adding anything new. And now I’m distracting from the steaming pile left by the OP, which is much more fun to focus on.
Seriously? Allow me to save the puppy for you: odds are overwhelming that the writer means the same thing as the idiom “for all intents and purposes,” which in turn means “essentially, let’s not nitpick things, you know what I’m talking about.”
I have great trouble believing you didn’t know that already, though.
iLemming, good god man, your writing is absolute shit.
Guma, þu springan se greet fisc! (rough translation for you who are using a bastardized version of English…Man, you jumped the shark! Sorry, there is apparently no old English word for ‘shark’ in the translation software I used, so I went with large fish instead. :p)
I hope you’re trying be ironic, because you are a terrible writer. I’m not saying this to be mean. I just think there’s a chance you actually tried hard and ended up with this shit.
Let me back off of this a bit. I don’t think you’re lying. Rather, I suspect you haven’t thought it all the way through, and are getting hung up on what the words would mean if you didn’t know the idiom.
) seas than merely how titillated teenagers “sext” their “dick / tit pic”-accompanying pillow talk to one another.