Let’s discuss words. Many of the words you hear, especially on television and other media, are confused, conflated, or completely misused. Many recent changes in the way words are used are corrupting the language. The corruption of language is adding to the corruption of civilization itself.
Words are extremely important because they provide the most important means we have to communicate with each other. If you don’t mean what you say and say what you mean, then it’s impossible to communicate accurately. Do you remember that famous line at the end of Cool Hand Luke, when Paul Newman gets shot? “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”? That’s what I want to talk about.
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-RDM73
Sorry to break his bubble, but gold is measured in Troy Ounces. and there are 14.6 troy ounces of gold in a standard U.S. pound (lb).
ReplyDeletePeople have been corrupting language for political purpose since forever.
ReplyDeleteBoth of these are interesting reads on the topic.
Edwin Newman: Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English? 1974 (book)
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language, 1946 (essay)
Geek
I shrugged it off in high school, but the older I get the more and more I appreciate Shakespeare. When it is well spoken, even more so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X9C55TkUP8
ReplyDeleteIt's even better in the Original Pronunciation than in Modern English: Shakespeare Original Pronunciation.
ReplyDeleteShakespeare's better when performed in the Original Pronunciation.
ReplyDelete--Larry
This is not a new phenomenon. Our modern romance languages - French, Italian, Spanish etc. - are corrupted versions of the common Latin from the Roman and early middle ages time. (Thus "Romance" language.) English itself is a corruption of the early Germanic languages from the same period. Of course, modern English has an admixture of vocabulary from all of it. That is because it has become the de facto world language.
ReplyDeleteMe, I don't fret about it too much until the bad spelling and grammar starts to seriously impede the understanding of what is said. There are a few commenters on this blog right here, who shall remain nameless, that are so bad with spelling and grammar that what they say makes no sense at all. Mind you, I'm not talking about the occasional typo or missing word, I'm talking nonsensical shit because they are too lazy to proofread and correct all the glaring errors before hitting the post button.
And auto-correct is right out of the pit, and whomever invented it will burn in hello.
I think you're missing the point of the article. He's not complaining about corruption of the language, so much as the politically motivated effort to conflate things that are really different.
DeleteI. E. He's complainant about the habit the liberals and communists have of redefining words. Racist doesn't mean racist, inflation doesn't mean printing more money, etc.
People think in language. If you control the language, you control thought - it's that simple.
DeleteGood reade
ReplyDeleteR
My mother was an old-school language teacher (taught several languages in addition to English). When writing papers for school I would often ask her to help me with the assignment-she would school me on mistaken grammar, how to organize the concepts before even starting to write, etc. One thing I learned quickly: it was hard work! However, my grades were always close to the top-not because I was smart, but because of her oversight, though she would never, ever do the writing, as that was my job.
ReplyDeleteA couple years ago I learned that the language Nazis (probably the AP Style Guide people) decided that "farther" and "further" would be condensed into only "farther". For a couple centuries there was a difference in usage of the two words, but intellectual laziness has won out-it is no longer necessary for Americans to be educated enough to know the intricacies of our language. Yet another case of dumbing down our culture and our country. Mom used to have a phrase: "slaying the King's English", and over the decades that has become more and more common-especially from teachers and newspaper editors-people who should know better but have become lazy.