We need to squash all these instances of incorrect language usage.
But first we’ll argue about your use of the word ‘squash’ before discussing the meaning of the word ‘incorrect’. 
I eyeroll at wannabe mavens and move on. But I do have a complaint:
about French.
When I was 17, my dad and I went to France. He spoke no French; I had three years of high school French, so I was in charge of asking for directions. Over and over I got us lost, because people kept telling us to go to the right, when we should’ve just continued straight.
In French, see, the phrase “a droit” doesn’t really sound anything like the word “tout droit.” But to my three years of French, it sure sounded like it meant the same thing.
I’ve never forgiven them.
That’s why they invented the word “impact”. It works for both.
Well, I think dictionaries should be descriptivist so if anything such an inclusion is overdue.
I absolutely hate that particular shift in language though.
Maybe it was a misleading title for the thread – I needed something dramatic for BBQ pit. But my rant was actually more specifically about words that mean the opposite and yet are pronounced almost the same in flowing speech.
I didn’t mean that English stands out as a bad language (though phonetic writing would be a big improvement).
My second language is Mandarin. It’s figuratively a language designed to make foreign learners go insane.
The translation of certain words from Chinese to English was what I was thinking about when talking about translations not meaning the same thing. 
No, I don’t think WOOKINPANUB – with whom I agree on this subject – is going to hate that, because most of us are well aware that this abominable use of “literally” has entered the language and is now recorded in dictionaries, whose job is to non-judgmentally record all our language practices, both good and bad. It’s just that some of us think this is a lamentable corruption of language that undermines its precision, and that came about mostly out of the repetition of a thoughtless mistake.
The linguist John McWhorter, in his book Why English Won’t - and Can’t - Sit Still (Like, Literally), makes many excellent and informative observations, but he also launches into ill-advised and entirely nonsensical rationalizations of supposed “contronyms” like “literally”. This is really odd because an earlier version of McWhorter, circa 2003, was lamenting just this kind of deterioration of language:
Since language is the vehicle of culture, this creeping carnage foreshadows a fatal stagnation of the intellectual culture of the United States.
Why? Because of the deterioration of precision, discipline and formality of the written word, which is fast being conquered by oral expression. “Spoken language” he writes, “is best suited to harboring easily processible chunks of information, broad lines, and emotion. To the extent that our public discourse leans ever more toward this pole, the implications for the prospect of an informed citizenry are dire … Americans after the 1960s have lived in a country with less pride in its language that any other society in recorded history.”
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2003-10-12/entertainment/0310100222_1_english-language-mcwhorter-culture
With regard to the abuse of “literally”, McWhorter makes a bunch of specious arguments about alleged contronyms like “fast” and “practically” that just have no logic or credibility whatsoever. For instance he cites “practically” which he has somehow, inexplicably, convinced himself has come to mean the opposite of its original meaning. It most assuredly has not. It has always meant “in a practical sense” and hence, by extension, has also come to mean “close to” or “almost”. His “practically” example is, if anything, even more wrong than the “fast” argument. “I practically died of thirst” is probably hyperbole (one hopes). “I literally died of thirst” is just stupid.
Perhaps most damning of all, he claims that there is no way, nohow, that the figurative use of “literally” could ever lead to ambiguity, and then, in an over-eager attempt to show how long it’s been used to mean its exact opposite, he cites this line, from David Hume writing a history of England in 1806: “He had the singular fate of dying literally of hunger”.
Well, guess what, folks? I have absolutely no idea from this whether the referenced individual actually died of starvation, or just had constant unfulfilled cravings for mutton chops. There is no way to disambiguate that statement. With this spectacularly ill-chosen example, McWhorter has thoroughly defeated his own argument. But there’s more to come! He plows on: he also gleefully informs us that Hume uses this statement despite the fact that “there are no letters via which to starve” – that is, that there is no room here for what he has called a “by the letter”, or genuinely literal, interpretation. He claims that it cannot, so to speak, be literally literal (note how incredibly non-confusing this all is!) No? Of course it can! I’m pretty sure that in the poverty and largely non-existent social services of 19th century England, it’s quite plausible that some people did literally die of hunger.
As it turns out, this was the case here. Hume was referring to the dramatist and poet Thomas Otway, and was using “literally” in the correct sense. This is the full context from Hume’s history: “Otway, though a professed royalist, could not even procure bread by his writings; and he had the singular fate of dying literally from hunger. These incidents throw a great stain on the memory of Charles, who had discernment, loved genius, was liberal of money, but attained not the praise of true generosity”.
No offense to John McWhorter – I’m sure he’s a fine linguist, and it’s definitely an enjoyable book by a competent writer and observer of language. I just happen to disagree with a few parts of it, and most emphatically with the nonsense justifications of “literally”.
Because a double “L” always make me thing of a “Y”. Not the mention the the silent "H"s. A friend of mine with the last name “Hoover” missed a hotel reservation because of that.
I once mentioned ensure/insure in one of these word threads and was told that this wasn’t a real rule. Though some style guides allow it, I was happy to see that both the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook discourage mixing the two.
I have way more problems with semantic overloaded terms, we need to start making new ones.
Homonyms and homographs are bad but intra-field … polysemy? syntactic amphibology? oh why are there so many words. 
Ironically(!) they have a similar problem with traffic signs!
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Paris ⇨| |
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| x |
Suppose you’re at X and travelling northbound, and come to the intersection in the diagram. Which way do you turn to go to Paris?
[SPOILER]Continue straight on northward. The sign doesn’t point toward Paris: It points to the road you should take. :smack:
I went in circles for a while on my first auto trip to France before I figured this out. [/SPOILER]
I cannot begin to further unravel what McWhorter means but there is more to the death of the unfortunate Otway. He was starving hungry but, in fact his death came about when he was given a guinea. He immediately bought bread and began to eat so fast that he choked and died! Thus Hume’s comment is rather elegant in that he did not literally die of hunger - starve to death - but yet as his hunger was the proximate cause of his eating fast and choking then he did literally die of it.
Seems the
tags break the drawing, without them and centered it shows just OK. ( I've just literally broken the rules about altering the quote. Mods ? )
Also, I've no idea what you're talking about. Do you mean that to reach Paris you go straight forward and the sign is wrong ? Or to reach Paris you follow the ( detour ) arrow because going straight you get nearer to Paris but actually don't ever reach it for some reason unless you're a bird ?
Do signs in America show towards the city and you just guess what road to take ? How that could be easier or more reasonable ? What I am missing here ? Language barrier ?In your version of the drawing the lines and gaps don’t line up properly. Code, OTOH, works for me. If by “breaking the drawing” you mean that it’s all concatenated into one line, I think you’ve selected the Sultan-theme ‘Break Code’ option. Either restore the sane mode or load BigT’s monkey script to view Codes.
PHP tags are often used as a workaround for management’s decision to break Code for Sultanthemers, but for me, PHP destroys the arrow:
Paris ⇨
Paris ⇨
I’m sorry if my description of the strange direction markings was unclear. My experience was several decades ago, and the signs that confused me may have been aberrations. A quick Googling finds no clear example of the type of sign I meant.
I like to use "affect"and “effect” in ways that are archaic but technically correct. Like “That plan will effect positive change” or “His affect during the interview seemed off”. I do this becase I’m an asshole in a few ways. I am trying to get better.
Yes, it was all in one line, but Quick Style Chooser seems to make the difference ( I prefer those darker lines between posts and red signs on new posts on Sultan theme ).
It may have been an old, forgotten sign that was to mislead the approaching Nazi troops
I learned a new word today: concatenated. 
Thanks. ( I’ll probably never need it )
I wouldn’t consider either of those examples to be archaic. The first one is quite common and conventional. The second is a bit more unusual in that particular phrasing, but “affect” and “affective” have the widely used contemporary meaning that connotes mood or attitude (e.g.- SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder), so that’s also quite unremarkable.
Regarding being an asshole, I should also add that there are sometimes benefits to that in specific and limited situations. I recommend assholism as a skill you should keep handy. In fact I was just an asshole a couple of hours ago, loudly denouncing the chip card terminals that are always – always – temperamental at one particular chain of grocery stores. The cashier informed me that they work for everyone else. It didn’t, of course.
So I informed the cashier that they may indeed work for everybody else, but then again, my several different cards always work everywhere else, but never reliably in their fucking stores – their fucking stores alone – and I wondered whether the cashier was in fact expressing an informed opinion based on a statistically reliable sample, or had any theories consistent with my empirical evidence, such as was being exhibited right there in front of our eyes. Then I tried it again exactly the same way and then it worked. I pointed out that I did nothing different: first their stupid machine didn’t work, and then it did. “So it must be all my fault”, I said, and stalked out. As I say, assholism has its virtues, in the right time and place, as a necessary means of restoring some justice in the world.
Could someone please tell me how the ascii drawing is supposed to look? Like, maybe draw a picture in some other program and link to it? I’m very confused at what’s attempting to be conveyed. I have no idea what “theme” I’m using - I haven’t touched anything in the settings, ever. Even better if you can find a picture of an actual road sign, so that I, like, actually believe what you’re saying.
I see bad spelling in Mexico all the time. “Bulcanizadora” on the side of the highway, for example.
If you haven’t adjusted your settings then you have the broken Sultanthemes by default.* At the bottom of your SDMB page is a horizontal blue bar. Click on the left where “Sultanthemes” appears and change this to “Straightdope v3.7.3.” This will fix Code tags and several other bugs as well.
One error in the diagram is the horizontal arrow: the arrows I saw were slanted, though now, decades later, I’m not sure if they were slanted slightly upward or slightly downward. In any event, the arrow was pointing “mostly” rightward and I eventually learned that the intent was to direct driver to continue onward without turning right.
ETA: * - I always use laptop, not smartphone. Sultanthemes may be an important improvement for smartphone display.