there grammers pothetic

reply to post by Vanitas


sacrosanct is expressing an opinion . you tried to assert that or frame that in such a way as to make it seem like it were stated as a fact. this thread and every thread on this website is a place for opinions. it's free speech; considering rules and decorum and all. And you don't have to post on this thread if you don't like it.
Your ilustrious proffessor was indeed clever. English hasn't been spoken for a while. But all language changes. Why conform to mental constructs of a language when those constructs were bent and then welded onto an organic like structure? it is unnecessarily difficult. reasons like the latin based structure rules. this thread is cool, and i dare say thou hast done thy best to kill it, vanitas. where is thy veritas? one must have veritas to balance out vanitas.

Originally posted by Vanitas
reply to post by SearchLightsInc

 

Ah - finally: the official statement issued by the Ministry of Silly Talk...!

Now I am relieved.
Case closed.

[edit on 31-10-2009 by Vanitas]

I guess now you can sleep soundly, cuddled up to your latest Oxford Dictionary edition, while spelling a bunch of nonsense in your sleep. There are many more important things to life then making sure someone is spelling everything correctly. The fact that you care so much for other's grammar just makes you sound like a control freak.

I'm sure you'll get over it.

reply to post by Vanitas
A week late in responding, apologies.
I believe Marshall McLuan also said, "The medium IS the message", if this is the case, then all those protesting, or feigning, inability to do better, would do well to remember that is the point of OP.
With suspect grammar, and I don't mean to malign the unintended gaffs made by almost all on board here, you expose a certain lack of care or education as respecting the language.
The medium being this or any other board, the message being, if you care not to convey your thoughts precisely, why would I care what you have to say?



[edit on 11/3/2009 by LAUGHING-CAT]

Not all of us where so lucky to have a decent education to take advantage of. This isnt a sob story just a POV you should look into.

I'll give you my point-of-view as a learner of English as a Foreign Language, but let me just state 2 points first:
- I am a grammar nazi (there, said it)
- my keyboard really sucks, so blame any spelling mistake on it!

English speakers learn English orally before learning to read or write, thus they are capable to quickly understand homophones (they're/there/their), but foreign speakers of English often learn to read and speak at the same time (although this is changing). What's more, they have easier access to written English than to spoken English, so 90% of their contacts with English are through written materials.
This is why I really despise grammar mistakes (or lexical mistakes for that matter):
- it makes it hard to understand to foreign members of ATS, and there are quite a lot of us out here. Although I like to think of myself as quite smart, I've been stunned by sentences like "Your saying that...", wondering where the verb was, because I saw it as a verbal group (possessive adjective + noun).
- also, it's your mother tongue, for god's sake!

I dont think ive ever had it all explained to me...What do you want to me to do? Take a time out so i can learn them all SPECIALY for you? lol Its not going to happen.

reply to post by SearchLightsInc

Are you from the UK, by any chance? Here, it saddens me that kids get sent to school (at the expense of taxpaying adults like me) and come out not even being able to write in their own language. Looking at school-leavers today, I'm actually impressed that kids can spend 12 years in education with so little to show for it. The sorts of mistakes that young adults commonly make now ("should of", "your/you're", not using full stops) were drummed out of my generation when we were 8 or 9. Not just through being taught grammar (in fact, even then we were taught shamefully little), but mainly through our work being corrected by teachers. Unfortunately correcting children's work is now considered elitist and "a value judgment". All work is equally "valid", which begs the question of what school is actually for.

And I'm not being snobbish, because I've observed that even less bright people from my generation write better English than many supposedly clever people currently leaving school. However, there is in the UK this idea that proper education is inherently elitist because not everyone is as good at learning. Never mind the idea that learning is something that benefits everyone, and that exams and pressure are there as incentives, not as punishments. So instead children spend all day playing interactive video games.

A teacher friend told me that the current idea in British educational "theory" is "What can the children teach us?" I kid you not. So the teacher is the sole beneficiary: he/she gets paid for the "education" they get from their pupils.

You couldn't make it up.

Of course what I've just written is just going to fan the flames, but it's something I feel so strongly about. Throughout school now, children are encouraged to be sloppy, lazy and selfish.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by Franz]

[edit on 8-11-2009 by Franz]

reply to post by Franz


I'm a teacher in France and what your friend told you is basically true. We must not (i.e. we are asked not to) point out students' mistakes. Instead, we must "build upon what they already know" and "highlight their achievements instead of their errors".

Although I agree with all the positive thinking thing, I can't but acknowledge the shortcomings of this system. We are not allowed to teach as formally as used to be done. We are not allowed to be too demanding. Rote-learning is discouraged. We must adapt to each pupil. I've got 25 of them at the same time! How am I supposed to?

So apparently this is better for their personal achievement. They feel respected as persons. But it suppresses completely the feeling of community given by teaching the way it was done before. Before, all the pupils had the same goal to reach and had to employ the same methods to reach it. So what if there were a few drop outs that were left on the side of the road? At least the majority of them left school with a minimum of education. As of today, the general level of culture and correctness has not increased, and there are still as many dropouts.

This summer I wrote a letter of complaint that my grandmother dictated to me. I was amazed by the sophistication of her language. (and I feel bad, in retrospect, for not realizing earlier) She might have left school at 16 to work, she is more cultured than many graduates I know.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by Breizhoo]

reply to post by Breizhoo

Breizhoo - oh well, so it's not just in Britain that this nonsense is taking hold! The world is going to hell in a handcart

My standard reply to people who complain about my gramma.

"it deosn't mtater waht odrer the lteetrs are in, you can undretsand it as lnog as the frist and lsat ltteers are wehre tehy souhld be!"

reply to post by Franz


What's wrong with education being "elitist", anyway? The "elites" were usually careful to go after the best of the best. It seems this false "democracy" that we are supposed to embrace without reserve, even without questioning it (so much for democracy.....) actually means submitting to the *lowest common denominator*.
If that's so, I am all for "elitism"!
Look where the opposite of it has brought us.

Originally posted by Agent-ATS
My standard reply to people who complain about my gramma.

"it deosn't mtater waht odrer the lteetrs are in, you can undretsand it as lnog as the frist and lsat ltteers are wehre tehy souhld be!"

Not nslaicsreey.

The study that claimed that is rubbish IMO. All you've done in is change a few pairs of letters around in each word. If you'd really mixed them up, the sentence would be extremely difficult to read. Even as it is, it is more difficult to read than if it were spelled correctly.

And anyway, what you're talking about it spelling, not grammar...

reply to post by Franz


What will really kick you in the teeth is thgat i did A-level english and walked out with a C

I'm not a grammar fascist, it just annoys me when people make no effort at all to write clearly - or, even worse, deliberately avoid using correct grammar and spelling because they think it's "uncool" or somehow snobbish(*). I don't see what's so snobbish about wanting to get your point across clearly, but what do I know. (And yes I deliberately used a full stop rather than a question mark there for effect )

(*) Some of my trendier Facebook friends are like this. 10 years ago they could write perfectly well; now they refuse to use punctuation or proper spelling. It annoys the hell out of me, but they probably know that because they know what I'm like.

[edit on 20-11-2009 by Franz]

Originally posted by notreallyalive

Originally posted by dragonsmusic
"Are you one of those people who care about using correct grammar?"

Actually that would be cares. See the one of rule. Are you one of those people who cares about using correct grammar?

Remove the "of those people" and you will see what I mean. As in "are you one who cares"

You're right! Thanks.

No, he isn't right. The so called "one of rule" above is meaningless because the antecedent of the subject of a relative clause (who) can point anywhere. Should it point to to the singular "one" or the plural "people"? See page 690 of the Merriam Webster Usage Dictionary. Grammarians don't agree on this point, but Webster's research indicates that in actual usage the verb far more often agrees with the object of the preposition (people) than the predicate noun (one). Webster's usage panel makes it clear through numerous examples that both are valid usages, however.

I always use the plural. Consider this sentence: "That is one of those dogs that are always biting people." The dog in question may have never bit anyone, but he is one "of those" that do--pitbulls for example.

And to go a step further, look what happens when you invert the structure of original sentence: "Of those people who care about using correct grammar, are you one?" In this example, how could you defend using "Of those people who cares..."?

Bottom line--when correcting someone's grammar, be sure you know what you're talking about.