 |
 |
 |
 |
#1115562 - 12/06/09 01:05 PM
Re: The Grammar and Spelling Thread
[Re: Kitty]
|
slickpeaches
Member
Registered: 07/04/08
Posts: 96
Loc: USA
|
Kitty in conjunction with next years reunion will lief to all attendees but me and the town councilman or our wild fb reporter either her better leaf 
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
#1115573 - 12/06/09 01:20 PM
Re: The Grammar and Spelling Thread
[Re: Kitty]
|
slickpeaches
Member
Registered: 07/04/08
Posts: 96
Loc: USA
|
In conjunction with NFL rules the most local game must be shown which is either New England or Philly here now but knowing me so well as you do I'm looking at Bettertrades now so I can learn about greater crop deals the Saints will only be on here when Super Bowl 44 is here then the party shifts to timeshare of town councilman 
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
#1119605 - 12/11/09 11:38 PM
Re: The Grammar and Spelling Thread
[Re: Kitty]
|
slickpeaches
Member
Registered: 07/04/08
Posts: 96
Loc: USA
|
The only namby-pamby debate for next summer will Kitty queenbee and Yetta Nother except the challenge of we 3 RCS '80 in the game of their choice after we flunk your grammar & spelling test  Since we know not yet who is in charge but talk is now to invite other classes too just bring in all past RCS to your old homestead for party Now the biggest dunce will go in the corner put on his cap 
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
#1119610 - 12/11/09 11:59 PM
Re: The Grammar and Spelling Thread
[Re: Kitty]
|
slickpeaches
Member
Registered: 07/04/08
Posts: 96
Loc: USA
|
It won't be a problem with this old crop duster of RCS '80 since snow has covered it now until next spring Can't expect much from a 66 final average man Good thing the other 2 didn't take English class the same time as me since I had BOCES they did not 
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
#1120010 - 12/12/09 07:11 PM
Re: The Grammar and Spelling Thread
[Re: slickpeaches]
|
VM Smith
Diamond Member
Registered: 11/28/05
Posts: 34280
Loc: Reality
|
By Carolyn See
Friday, December 4, 2009
THE LEXICOGRAPHER'S DILEMMA
The Evolution of "Proper" English from Shakespeare to "South Park"
By Jack Lynch
Walker. 326 pp. $26
WP BOOKSTORE
This delightful look at efforts through the centuries to define and control the English language turns out to be a history of human exasperation, frustration and free-floating angst. People tend to go nuts around the English language. Of course, most of us are nuts anyway, but the language is always there, in the ether, or staring at us from a page, and if we're feeling particularly cranky, it never fails to provide a ready excuse for us to fly off the handle. I get afflicted with that crankiness when a television anchor describes a Chihuahua rescued from drowning as "very unique," or a woman I scarcely know pronounces "forte" as "fortay," or when a close relative of mine, when she descended (with enthusiasm!) into the life of the underworld, began to say, "He don't." I wanted to tell her, "Commit any crime you like. Just don't murder the language while you're at it!" Many of us are irritable most of the time (unless we're in love or just bought a motorcycle), and our language continually offers up imperfections and anomalies for us to be irritable about. In the words of a waiter who once brought me a menu in a way-too-authentic Chinese restaurant, there's always "something in there you're not going to like!"
Jack Lynch, who also has written on Shakespeare and edited Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, gives us not a history of the English language but a history of those who have tried to make sense of it. He divides them into "prescriptive" and "descriptive" linguists: The former try with all their might to purge the language of undesirable words and constructions; the latter, acting on the theory that the language is untamable, simply try to describe its current use. (That, too, seems futile often enough -- like describing a tidal wave as it booms by.)
ad_icon
After an amusing and very interesting introduction, Lynch begins with John Dryden. (Don't worry: Lynch dutifully goes back later to 1066, the Norman Conquest and the "marriage" of Anglo-Saxon and French.) But Dryden -- famous, esteemed by all (or most, anyway) -- was one of the first English writers to revisit his work and revise it in accordance with certain rules of Latin grammar. One of the reasons this book is so much fun is that you get to see how relatively new and recent and lively modern English is. At the end of the 17th century, Latin grammarians were just becoming influential in English society. The English language itself didn't have a formal grammar, but Latin did, and it seemed sensible to think that the rules of this revered dead language might easily be applied to bumptious, wildly growing, very-much-alive English. Dryden set about lopping prepositions off the ends of his sentences (they're not called prepositions for nothing!) and spent time sticking his split infinitives back together.
The idea of "good" English as opposed to "bad" was coming into play. This, Lynch says, had to do with the rise of the middle class -- a set of interlopers who had had the luck and nerve to earn some money, and thus aspired to fake their way into the outer realms of the ruling elite. One of the necessary tools for this was knowledge of how the language was spoken and written by those who lived at the top.
For those who have taken their share of English classes, all this material might seem familiar, but that doesn't diminish the pleasure of seeing Jonathan Swift, in the 18th century, being driven ape-crazy by the use of contractions like "wouldn't" and trendy abbreviations like "mob" for the Latin "mobile vulgus" (fickle crowd). "Mob" had the effect of "very unique" on Swift, and years after he first wrote a screed on the topic, he still flung himself into a rage when a woman he knew used the word in conversation: "Why do you say that?" he railed, "never let me hear you say that word again." When the woman asked what she should say instead, he answered, "The rabble, to be sure." People are crazy, that's the long and the short of it, and even with one of the biggest, most imaginative and attractive languages on the planet, they will discover ways to fiddle with it. After Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, which, although certainly opinionated, was largely descriptive, there arose those pesky, prescriptive Latin grammarians who did everything they could to hammer English into a Latin mold. Then, when the American Revolution came along, a patriot named Noah Webster compiled a uniquely American dictionary, taking the opportunity to thumb his nose at Johnson in the process. Then came the long decades in which a group of dedicated scholars labored to put together the Oxford English Dictionary. The first installment appeared in 1884, the last in 1928. A lot of very learned people got sick and died during the execution of this valiant project, and as soon as it was finished -- sooner, even -- it required extensive revision. And more revision. And then came the hordes of people with nothing better to do with their lives than to carp about the differences between "who" and "whom" and a mountain of split infinitives, because the language, besides providing a convenient subject to be enraged at, also offered a refuge for otherwise unemployable cranks.
The unseemly squabbling never lets up, actually. The author revisits the tempest in a teapot that recently surrounded the teaching of ebonics in the Oakland, Calif., school system. (The critics went out of their way to be both racist and smug.) And before that, there was the scorn heaped upon the editor of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, a man who thought it helpful to include words that people were using by the dawn of the '60s, like "hipster" and "drip-dry." Scholars went berserk, of course. And that's what this book is about: humans going berserk. In the end, this language mania is probably preferable to sitting on the couch watching television, enduring an angst-attack over how Kate Hudson lets her jaw go slack when she smiles. That's truly crazy, which is why we're fortunate to have a language over which to pitch our fits.
_________________________
The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.
John Hay (1872)
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
#1120358 - 12/12/09 11:59 PM
Re: The Grammar and Spelling Thread
[Re: Kitty]
|
slickpeaches
Member
Registered: 07/04/08
Posts: 96
Loc: USA
|
I learned so much good English so long ago but I forgot most of it by now good thing for Kitty expecting the worst out of me but getting the best here as long as you don't start on Shakespeare talk like we know who did too much when is your speech recital planned I can't come in full dress since the clothes would never fit me I hope I can remember the lines better this time around
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Moderator: FL1 Staff, FL1 Mod, FL1 Tek Deluxe, FL1 Mod 2, FL1 Office, FL1 Mod 3
|
|
