Buildings of GUILT

[Rebochan]

I like my title better!

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City of language

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."

I thought, "Yes, but today many just throw their stones on a pile named 'whatever'.

Those who give not a whit that scores of those buildings are falling down vastly outnumber the few of us on the municipal repair crew. Almost no one takes notice when occasionally people are killed by stones falling from buildings. People regularly stumble over these stones in the street. Soon the fallen stones will amass to the point people will be unable to walk the streets.

A great number who attempt to put their stone in a building pay no heed to proper fit, or smoothing the mortar. Many ignore the architect's plans, choosing to place their stone 'wherever'. Numerous new-fangled buildings, while built quickly, are exceedingly ugly.

Still, most take no notice of the unsightly newer structures, kicking street stones away as they walk, ignoring the occasional stumble that keeps them from hearing friends, especially old friends.

Many even deride the repair crews and the architects, who nonetheless struggle to keep the city beautiful and in good repair, and the streets clear of fallen stones.

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I'm kinda diasppointed that this guilt piece didn't use the "modern buildings vs. old buildings" as a wider metaphor for Christianity or something. But I like the idea that in this glurge, nobody notices when buildings come to life and murder innocent passersby.

[Aud 1]

Has anyone actually read some of those oft longed for handwritten documents? People used abbreviations all the time. In letters I have from my 5x great grandparents from the Civil War they used initials for people and shortned version of place names. Reading a medieval manurscript is as much an exercise in figuring out what abbreviations they used as it is translating the Latin.

People have used language to include and exclude for a long time. There isn't some fantasy age where everything was spelled rite [sic]. If the language building is rickety at least it holds a lot of speakers.

[AQB, Max's DHB]

I'm sorry. I don't get it. Am I going to hayul? Or will a building fall on me?

[geminilee]

At one point in time I felt much like the author of this piece (although I never would have expressed it in horrific glurge) because I was under the mistaken impression that language is an end, rather than a means to an end. Schools help foster this idea: there is a "right way" to punctuate, spell, etc., and people who have not thought it through may not realize that this is just an effort to make communication easier by standardizing things so that meanings are more clear. Language is just a tool for expressing thoughts, and as the thoughts expressed change, the language has to, also. I am not a fan of the IM shorthand, but it is everywhere, which does indicate that there is a need for it.

[Ryda Wong, EBfCo.]

Originally Posted by geminilee

At one point in time I felt much like the author of this piece (although I never would have expressed it in horrific glurge) because I was under the mistaken impression that language is an end, rather than a means to an end. Schools help foster this idea: there is a "right way" to punctuate, spell, etc., and people who have not thought it through may not realize that this is just an effort to make communication easier by standardizing things so that meanings are more clear. Language is just a tool for expressing thoughts, and as the thoughts expressed change, the language has to, also. I am not a fan of the IM shorthand, but it is everywhere, which does indicate that there is a need for it.

I went through this exact same transformation (i.e. from a strict language maven to having a more fluid view of the process.) Really, I think the latter is far more reasonable, and more in keeping with the history of language.

[inkrose115]

Originally Posted by Ryda Wong, EBfCo.

I went through this exact same transformation (i.e. from a strict language maven to having a more fluid view of the process.) Really, I think the latter is far more reasonable, and more in keeping with the history of language.

Well said. If I run into anyone who acts anal about English remaining fixed and unchanging, I babble to them in old english.

Originally Posted by geminilee

At one point in time I felt much like the author of this piece (although I never would have expressed it in horrific glurge) because I was under the mistaken impression that language is an end, rather than a means to an end. Schools help foster this idea: there is a "right way" to punctuate, spell, etc., and people who have not thought it through may not realize that this is just an effort to make communication easier by standardizing things so that meanings are more clear. Language is just a tool for expressing thoughts, and as the thoughts expressed change, the language has to, also. I am not a fan of the IM shorthand, but it is everywhere, which does indicate that there is a need for it.

I divide changes in the language into two categories: those which add something to the language (good) and those which take something away (bad). For instance, a while back there was a debate on here about the usage of the phrase "beg the question." The original, proper, meaning was to create a circular argument - for example:

A -"All cows are brown."

B - "Here is a black-and-white cow."

A - "Then it's not a cow, because all cows are brown."

A is begging the question.

Today, the phrase is often used in place of the more correct "raise the question." There's no good reason for this - the person doing so is presumably under the erroneous impression that it makes them sound more intelligent. If we allow this new usage to supplant the old one, we have lost a useful shorthand phrase describing a logical fallacy, while the new usage isn't needed because there's already a perfectly good phrase that takes no more effort to use.

Genuinely new usages - such as the verb "to Google" - are fine by me. I agree that language is an evolving thing; I just try to do my little part in making sure the evolution goes in a useful direction.

If I were to put this in the terms of the OP, I would probably say something like: "Don't be afraid to put in new stones, but make sure the structure is still stable and you're not taking out some vital support." But then my head would probably explode.

[Tantei Kid]

I thoroughly applaud a lot of language change, such as ditching the subjunctive for the most part, getting rid of "whom" and such. But I'll be in the cold, cold ground before I let something like apostrophes for plurals go on unchecked. Heck, even the possessive "it's" and "who's" are logical, though I don't like them. Language is supposed to get easier, not harder.

[Salamander]

You know what I think is a greater injustice than the non-crime of modifying the English language through use?

Taking a short metaphor and stretching it signficantly beyond its breaking point.

[Esprise Me]

Those who give not a whit that scores of those buildings are falling down vastly outnumber the few of us on the municipal repair crew.

When I read this sentence, I thought it was going to be about tribal languages dying out and cultures being lost because of major world languages homogenizing the planet. Had I noticed this was in Glurge Gallery, I probably would have realized that was a bit too intellectual.

Rather than quoting everyone in such a short thread, I'll just say that I wholeheartedly agree with geminilee, Grendel, and Salamander. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but I hear (from the New York Times Book Review) that this is a good book on the subject.