A tuba player's grammar

[sceuphonium]

I have a writer friend; he's been a newspaper reporter, had several books published, and has been editor and publisher for several small magazines. His take on grammar and spelling: "Correct is what an educated readership will let you get away with."

He will then inform you at considerable length that English has no real rules, just 'accepted usage'. Furthermore, what is accepted changes over time and from one readership to another.

A hundred years ago Mark Twain and a number of newspaper and magazine editors undertook a project to simplify spelling, getting rid of silent 'k' and 'gh', 'gh' sounded as f, and replacing 'ou' with u; thus 'through' would be written as 'thru'. Many of the changes took, and today they are considered perfectly correct. Some, such as 'nite' are commonly used in advertising and informal writing, and some are forgotten and now just considered wrong.

Once upon a time all nouns, not just proper nouns, were capitalized. Remember "perfuit of happineff" in the Declaration of Independence? We don't do that anymore. The word y'all was considered the mark of an illiterate southerner; ain't was considered a horribly incorrect false contraction... and yet the spell checker on Tubenet accepts both happily, though not "Tubenet". I was taught it was wrong to begin a sentence with 'And' or 'But'... but today this is common practice in fiction writing, especially in dialog. Some college writing course recommend this practice.

Much of what we now consider wrong will someday be accepted by everyone except English teachers and humorless pedants... and much will still be considered wrong. This is simply the way our language evolves...

[gwwilk]

I have a writer friend; he's been a newspaper reporter, had several books published, and has been editor and publisher for several small magazines. His take on grammar and spelling: "Correct is what an educated readership will let you get away with."

He will then inform you at considerable length that English has no real rules, just 'accepted usage'. Furthermore, what is accepted changes over time and from one readership to another.

A hundred years ago Mark Twain and a number of newspaper and magazine editors undertook a project to simplify spelling, getting rid of silent 'k' and 'gh', 'gh' sounded as f, and replacing 'ou' with u; thus 'through' would be written as 'thru'. Many of the changes took, and today they are considered perfectly correct. Some, such as 'nite' are commonly used in advertising and informal writing, and some are forgotten and now just considered wrong.

Once upon a time all nouns, not just proper nouns, were capitalized. Remember "perfuit of happineff" in the Declaration of Independence? We don't do that anymore. The word y'all was considered the mark of an illiterate southerner; ain't was considered a horribly incorrect false contraction... and yet the spell checker on Tubenet accepts both happily, though not "Tubenet". I was taught it was wrong to begin a sentence with 'And' or 'But'... but today this is common practice in fiction writing, especially in dialog. Some college writing course recommend this practice.

Much of what we now consider wrong will someday be accepted by everyone except English teachers and humorless pedants... and much will still be considered wrong. This is simply the way our language evolves...

The writer's claim that if the reader gets the message then it's correct English isn't too far from the mark. But that was still a poorly constructed sentence by any reasonable standard.

[MikeW]

Editorials in the New Scientist magazine have pointed out that any article criticizing someone else's grammar or spelling is almost certain to contain grammatical and/or spelling errors (I will leave participants in this thread to find their own errors..and I have noticed a few). They posit that this is either natural justice at work, or a conspiracy among compositors to bring holier-than-thou authors down a peg or two (Chooky Embro called it "dento-pedicarianism", the tendency of a mouth to collect stray feet).

I learned English in England, but I was a member of the first generation to be taught by the "immersion" method; we were given large slabs of "good examples", and required to write large number of essays, in the expectation that our writing would be improved by imitating the good examples. What we were never taught were(or is that was ?) the rules that hold it all together, leaving us in agonies of indecision over the finer details of the language.

On this side of the Atlantic, I have met several very capable people whose careers have been blighted by an inability to construct even the most basic readable sentences, which seems to arise from the frankly appalling standard of English teaching in North American schools (even worse than in England).

Anyone for a quick round of Phonics v. Whole language v. Rote learning ? or shall we all just go back to tubas ?
At least when we stick to tubas, you all seem to know what you are talking about.
(there are caps aplenty in there somewhere, and you are welcome to wear whichever suits you best)

[Donn]

My current theory: part of the problem is an increase in literacy. In the sense that more people write more. Email, text phone messages, spouting nonsense on Tubenet, whatever.

We learn the written language by reading it, and today we're reading the language from each other, rather than from experts who write for newspapers, books and other such relics of the past. If an error creeps in, like "loose" instead of "lose", people may become so accustomed to seeing it that it looks right. (You all know that one; here's another similar but more obscure one: "tack" vs. "tact". `Take a different tack' means to approach from a different angle - `tack' here is a sailing maneuver. I would like to go on about `jealous' vs. `envious', but enough.)

So I suppose if we're corrupting each other's spelling and language, then it falls on us to try to fix it up a little once in a while. Heartily approve of this thread: wouldn't hurt the tuba player's image a bit if we could be a little more literate, in the sense of writing well. If you think it might be silly to worry about this, try this experiment: take a message that was written to a particularly poor standard, and clean it up. Then re-read the message as if it had been written that way to start with, and see if it doesn't seem more intelligent and thoughtful. The same words, formed by the same intellect, just spelled and punctuated to a common standard, but what a difference!

[UDELBR]

I have been catagorized(by various, sometimes highly placed, individuals) in a variety of ways. I am mean, racist, bigoted, backward, a country hick....

Ah, but do you have an anonymously-posted hater poll dedicated to you?

[TubaRay]

I have been catagorized(by various, sometimes highly placed, individuals) in a variety of ways. I am mean, racist, bigoted, backward, a country hick....

Ah, but do you have an anonymously-posted hater poll dedicated to you?

So far, I can only aspire to that important achievement. Do I get any credit that the $5 Trillion Dollar Man casts me as clinging to my guns and religion? After all, he's the president.

[UDELBR]

Do I get any credit that the $5 Trillion Dollar Man casts me as clinging to my guns and religion?

Another bitter clinger! We should start a club. Right around November.

[tbn.al]

and yet the spell checker on Tubenet accepts both happily

What Tubenet spell checker? Where? Huh? Have I been missing something all these years?

[PhilGreen]

My two favourites on grammar, pronunciation and spelling:

1. Capitalisation is the difference between helping Uncle Jack off the horse and helping Uncle jack of the horse!

2.I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead --
For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear;
And then there's dose and rose and lose --
Just look them up -- and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart --
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!


There is another one but it's soooo long that I'll post a link instead.

http://www.mipmip.org/tidbits/pronunciation.shtml" target="_blank" target="_blank

[TubaRay]

Do I get any credit that the $5 Trillion Dollar Man casts me as clinging to my guns and religion?

Another bitter clinger! We should start a club. Right around November.

I'm already signed up. I'll be there. You can count on it.

[PMeuph]

and yet the spell checker on Tubenet accepts both happily

What Tubenet spell checker? Where? Huh? Have I been missing something all these years?

Probably the Firefox spell checker....

[imperialbari]

In another public, more or less so, a poster complained the activities of the grammer police.

As the kind person I rarely pretend to be, I promised never turning him in to the grammer police.

[PMeuph]

.......... I promised never turning him in to the grammer police.

But would you turn him in to the grammar police.....

[imperialbari]

The only problem coming from bad spelling, aside from the social stigma, is when the semantic content is blurred. Today I was sent off on a wild goose surprised by a travel tuba suddenly entering a thread on a giant tuba. In that case I gave a lecture on a type of spelling errors far too common among Americans trying to operate in German terms. In other situations an innocent question is better used like here:

viewtopic.php?p=287123#p287123

[MikeW]

Probably the Firefox spell checker....

For the benefit of Microsoft users, Firefox is a browser common on Linux, but I've heard there is also a Windows version. It hadn't occurred to me, but I guess that must be where the spell checker lives - it nags me instantly when I mis- spell a word, so it can't be on the Tubenet server. Something new every day...

Now that could really be fun... if everyone has a separate spell checker in his browser, we could all be using different dictionaries with different personal additions. Do I see babel looming ? At least my browser seems to be set for American spelling, which should minimize my English-isms.

[GC]

Firefox is on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Plus Macs have built-in spell-checking functionality.

I prefer Firefox personally because of its wealth of extensions and plug-ins. To each his own.

[MikeW]

The "plugin" feature is a security hole a mile wide, a standing invitation to

Down boy! take one of your pills and remember you're retired now!

[rusty]

a plenty

laquer

air leek

[rusty]

hay jus sayin] bentuba7 needz 2 chek hiz pwn spellin b4 hee tellin evry1 else 2... ur rite tho eye shud b contributin moar; butt theres alot ov hawt hornporn on hear distractin Me! sumday i wil hav 100,00 postz n bee teh tubenet 1337\

[imperialbari]

hay jus sayin] bentuba7 needz 2 chek hiz pwn spellin b4 hee tellin evry1 else 2... ur rite tho eye shud b contributin moar; butt theres alot ov hawt hornporn on hear distractin Me! sumday i wil hav 100,00 postz n bee teh tubenet 1337\

Very intertesting!