The murder of the english language

[tunesmith]

Ok... so here I go being a dick.

I am fairly certain the word referring to the passing of currency from one party to another for products or services is "paid" not "payed."

Jules, what does it take to get a spell checker in here?










Like I said... I'm a dick.fuuck

Tunes.

[Ari]

By the way, do you guys know ieSPELL ?

It has been very useful to me. You can spell-check before you post.

Best

Ari

[DigitMus]

Better get a new dictionary - payed is perfectly legitimate and correct - in fact in Webster's it's listed first, with the notation "also, paid". Having said that, I think current usage is generally that "payed" is used as the past tense (He payed me.) while 'paid' is used to describe a condition (The paid bills go in that pile.).
Umm, doesn't this belong in the moan zone?

Scott

[tunesmith]

Yeah... glad I opened my yapper.

Please disregard everything I say while I go take a spin through John Mayer's "My Stupid Mouth"

Peace...


Tunes

[pounce]

there is plenty of other abuse of the language to complain about. my girlfriend writes copy for things like signs and manuals and we are both kind of type "a" personalities, so we have a list of peeves about improper use of language.

saying feel when you should be saying think is my big peeve now.

and the constant infusion of slang from "popular" culture is getting tiresome. kids pretending to be wordsmiths when they cannot speak properly in the first place isn't helping the language, spelling, or grammar at all.

ha - paid/payed is the least of our worries. in my dictionary paid was listed as the primary spelling. payed might be used in the context of "he payed out a section of the line" as opposed to "i get paid on thursday". all is good.

i suspect jules will move this to the moan zone where it belongs

[Bobalou]

Originally posted by pounce
i suspect jules will move this to the moan zone where it belongs

I feel you're right!

[doorknocker]

http://m-w.com/

There's also an 'audio' button where you can listen to the words in question. It's a godsend for non-english-mother-tonguers like me......

Andi

[denial]

I love it when software installers give the option if I want English or American English. Next
I can see in the not too distant future there will be American Japanese.

Another one I like is the word "anyways". Drop the "s" kids cause the word already indicates more than one way.

Here's another: the phrase "Could care less". This just dosn't make sense in the context that it gets used. Should be "Couldn't care less" if you really don't give a ****.

Anyways, I guess that's just how it goes. Whatever!

[Remoteness]

I could care less!

[Jules]

Hi Steve!



Spell checkers already have and I am sure if future will be again, looked into...

[Midlandmorgan]

Now you got me started...

- Alot...wasn't a word until enough people started getting it wrong...its a lot, people.

- What are 'peeps?' Is that something to do with baby chickens?

- Irregardless: another jewel of non-existence

- (For you psycho-babble types) For 200 years it was 'schemata,' now, thanks to the wonders of modern street talk, its 'schemas'

- They're arr gazillions uf udder eggzampls, butt eye gist dont half the payshuns er tyme two go threw dem awl.



Anal retentitive and proud of it...

Ken

[dave-G]

I would just love to see less of the their <--> they're <--> there, and the your <--> you're.



ok, so I'm a dick too (or "to")

-dave

[Ruphus]

Is speling realy inportent?
Ok, I shal giv it a trial.

Ruphus

PS: I´d like to take the opportunity to thank you fellas for being so understanding with us foreign illiterates.

PS2: "A lot" seems a special case for me while typing. Almost each time the space key slips through and I have to go back and separate it to "a_lot", funny automatism ... Maybe its like this for other typers too. (?)

[7rojo7]

Payed is the simple past of the verb (action word)" to pay", paid is the past participle (to be used with auxilliary (helping) verbs). examples: 1; I payed it. 2; it's been paid. Clear enough? If you really know your language you shouldn't complain about people who don't know it as well as you do, you should feel proud that you've attained a certain linguistic proficiency and help your fellow loquator to better his without insulting his intelligence.

[kevinc]

I can`t spell rediculas. As in this this thread is ridiculas, rediculess,
radiculass.

Can anyone help me ?

[2leod]

"Can anyone help me ?"
Dictionary.com

"Give a man a spelling, and he's good 'till the next word...
Teach a man to spell and he's Cliff Claven for the rest of his life!"

With a grin and a nod toward Mark's sig line.

[hodad]

I find the constant misspelling of "definitely" most annoying.

Before the internet I was not so constantly bombarded by horrid grammar and worse spelling. The scary thing is that these misspellings get planted in my brain & threaten to supplant the correct spellings. Soon, I fear, I will become one of THEM.

Or you could look at it this way: standardized spellings didn't really exist until the 1700's or so. So one could see the internet and all its linguistic abuses not as a bad thing, but instead as a culture casting off its grammatical and orthographic shackles, opening itself to creative possibilities that had all but vanished during the tyrannical reign of dictionaries and grammar books.

Still and all, I really wish people would learn to spell "definitely."

[dave-G]

I almost forgot "quite" <--> quiet

[Rick Sutton]

I notice that the words "then" and "than" are used for each other. Thought it was a typo for awhile, but the continued misuse makes me think that it is really intentional. As in " I'd rather use a Neve 1073 then a Vintech anyday".
So, you're going to use the Neve and patch a Vintech behind it in series? Or use one and after that use the other? Or were you trying to state a preference? A preference would seem to indicate the use of the word "than". I often have to read statements several times to figure out what the poster intended. OK, I got my little pet peeve off my chest. Going to get off the computer than go to work. Cheers, Rick

[kosi]

Oh god, let there be lite !

[Rader Ranch]

lose/loose bugs me....see it all the time.

[hodad]

Here's another one that bugs me: writing "would of" instead of "would have". Didn't these folks learn the conditional tense back in high school?

[fatty]

"would of". yeah i here you on that one.

[fatty]

america is generally blamed for the "murder" of the language. would you agree? i do find it strange that americans spell a lot of words differently than most other english speaking countries. although i suppose this is just a natural evolution as a result of america breaking its ties with mother england so long ago. hence the development of "american english".

the thing that annoys me about this is that due to the abundance of american product on the airwaves, tv, movies etc, we are subliminally picking up this language and surplanting it into our own culture.

no offence intended. american english is fine for americans, just keep it to yourselfs fer christ sake!!

[tunesmith]

I have never seen "payed" used anywhere. I guess I am wrong... and a dick, which I already pointed out.

[karatemanjohnny]

I actually like rants like these. First, I'd like to say that there are different criteria I apply to different social situations. I'm not as strict here as I would be grading a paper or proofreading a business proposal.

Here are a few comments of mine, but then I've gotta sleep.

[Again, my standard disclaimer: I'm not assuming you don't know any of this. For all I know, you could be very intelligent - a multi-ethnic language specialist with advanced degrees in several langauges, who could blow away my knowledge about this stuff. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes.]

"to" versus "too" - too means "as well" or "in addition to" (using 'to' in a synonomous phrase for 'too' - tricky/bad)

"schemas" just sounds so wrong. I know it's fine, but I just like the sound of "schemata" more.

I don't like it when people say "logic" or "logically speaking," but don't mean actual logic, like the basic inductive, abductive, and deductive argument styles.

I don't like when people say things like they are relative truths, when they aren't. For example: "For me, I think 'speling" is spelled wrong. But maybe for you it's fine." I would say to that person: "It's not 'for you.' There's a standard way we spell the word and that's the 'correct' way. Save your BS politically over-correct statements for someone else. It's actually literally psychotic to be a relativist about most domains in life - we need to rely on absolute truths.

I don't like Americans getting pissy about American versus other spellings of words. Such as the "o" versus the "ou." Favorite versus Favourite.

I don't like when British get pissy about Americans butchering their language.

Also, American English is incorporating words from other cultures as well, given the vast number of cultures present here. I see it as a different language. We are creating a new language. Linguists and philosophers have a lot of ideas about how langauge is constantly changing.

If someone makes up a word, and you understand them, then there's successful communication. Even the intonation/pitch of your voice can be HUGE clues. Hence all the "e-conflicts" where people don't realize sarcasm and stuff like that.

Right there was an example. I said "e-conflicts." I looked that up on dictionary.com and there was no listing, but I bet most of you knew exactly what I meant. There wasn't much ambiguity there.

Spell checkers don't grammatical errors. None of these would be detected and your pet peeves would still be here.
These would all pass the spell checker:

to/too
than/then
their/there
where/wear

There are a lot of trends that shift the emphasis from content to grammar and such. Some teachers think it's more important that you get the list of words spelled correctly than understand what each of them means. The best solution is to have both. We need people who are sticklers for grammar, otherwise the number of misunderstandings would just go up and up.

A lot of fields in academia use words that are specific to their subject matter. These words are often obscure and not recognized by a spell checker. You can get spell checking dictionaries to use for different subjects, but that's a pain.

We need to keep in mind that the goal here (at least for me, in this setting of an online forum) is successful communication and exchange of ideas. I welcome speakers from other countries.

One final note is that there is a lot of culturalism takes place when people speak in langauges they don't know well. If someone speaks to me in broken English and I know they are struggling, I have to make sure I realize they aren't necessarily as intelligent as the equivalent American student who speaks at their level. If someone comes to me and speaks at a 2nd grade American student level of English, I can't assume they aren't intelligent. If I tried to talk to them in Spanish (which I do), I bet I would sound like a 2nd grader also. But when I speak my native American English, I sound more educated. So, we have to be aware of that.

[By the way, culturalism, another -ism word like racism or sexism, pretty much means what you might have thought it meant - basically, one culture views itself as better than another by default. The word wasn't listed on dictionary.com, but you may have understood it anyway.]

I think that's all I want to say about this - I probably won't post much more, if at all, in this particular thread. I want to get back to the audio stuff!

Also .... are my posts too long?

[Jules]

No man they are funny!

You must have swallowed an "articulate pill".

Anyhow I like it..

[karatemanjohnny]

yeah, I was in the Matrix, and Morpheus told me to take the red pill or the blue pill... and I took the articulate pill, or something.

hahahaha man I am so tired.

i'll be posting again soon enough - see you then!

[Doug Ring]

Oh ... alright then.

"Different than..."

Things aren't different than each other, or even different to each other, they're different FROM each other.

You don't say, "This differs than that", you say, "This differs from that."

Okay, I know I have a life to get...

[tunesmith]

Jules, can I delete this thread?





I've learned never to start a discussion at the end of a very long and frustrating day.

Tunes