What is being taught?
Skitt
is being taught in schools about English grammar.
Are expressions like "between you and I", "he gave it to you and I", and "it
is you and I's property" endorsed wholeheartedly as correct and proper
grammar? The word "me" is almost never heard in the first two expressions.
I am positive that it is not what I was taught when I was still in school.
Is the whole grammar thing now being avoided in schools, and if so, when did
that start?
The strange thing is that even relatively older people are now treating the
"you and I" combination as a non-declinable entity, except for the strange
possessive I showed above. Is it that the older folk don't want to be out
of touch with the latest fashions?
The incorrect use of "whom" and "whomever" also appears to be rampant. Is
the language really changing, or is grammatical ignorance growing? Maybe it
is both -- I am still of the opinion that language change often stems from
the poor education of the masses.
Just sayin' ...
--
Skitt
Education helps the ignorant, but not the stupid.
Donna Richoux
Language acquisition and language change have very little to do with
school. People learn a language (or more) before they set foot in a
school, and they learn it even if they never set foot in one. They
learned languages before schools were ever thought of, or writing,
either. There's a part of our brains that listens to other human beings,
stores up examples of sounds, attaches meanings, sorts them out, and
provides us with things to utter. Nothing to do with books or lesson
plans.
Now that this "for Fred and I" * sort of use has gathered momentum, we
hear it more and more and more. I hear it on TV just about daily. The
more it is said, the more evidence our brain collects that this is the
normal way of saying it. Some of us still hold on to the old way, but I
tell you, in ten years, if 95% of the people say "for Fred and I," I
might feel awfully strange about saying "for Fred and me." Like an old
coot or crackpot or rustic. Like a mistake.
Schools don't have a good track record at stopping or fixing these
changes. Quite a few people will tell you that the schools are to
*blame* for this one, by making a lot of people unsure about when to say
"Fred and I" and when "Fred and me." You can lead a student to water,
but he may draw the wrong conclusion.
* I don't think it's right to limit the point to "you and I" which is a
special case for several reasons.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
tony cooper
wrote:
I don't remember learning points of grammar similar to the above in
school. I learned it from me mum. Much earlier than I took classes
where English grammar was covered, my mother would correct any errors
I made of this sort.
The same process is being used by my daughter-in-law. The
grandchildren (1st grade and kindergarten) are being taught correct
usage in their daily conversations. Naturally, there's some slack
allowed for age and "who/whom" hasn't been covered. The general
groundwork is already being established, though.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Skitt
> Skitt wrote:
... and therein lies the problem -- what to do with the young ones --
should they be encouraged to use "between you and me", or should they be
left alone to say whatever they hear around them?
> Schools don't have a good track record at stopping or fixing these
> changes. Quite a few people will tell you that the schools are to
> *blame* for this one, by making a lot of people unsure about when to say
> "Fred and I" and when "Fred and me." You can lead a student to water,
> but he may draw the wrong conclusion.
Sad, isn't it?
> * I don't think it's right to limit the point to "you and I" which is a
> special case for several reasons.
OK, call it "X and I", then.
--
Skitt
Skitt
> "Skitt" wrote:
I don't remember who taught me English grammar, but I know that it wasn't my
parents. They were struggling with English much more than I was. All I
know is that I was second-best in my high school English class, taught by
"there ain't no such animal" Mr. Threlfall (I only attended three semesters
of American high school), and I think I was taught grammar then (in
1949-1950).
> The same process is being used by my daughter-in-law. The
> grandchildren (1st grade and kindergarten) are being taught correct
> usage in their daily conversations. Naturally, there's some slack
> allowed for age and "who/whom" hasn't been covered. The general
> groundwork is already being established, though.
Your daughter-in-law, not being an NES, probably uses very good English.
--
Skitt (AmE)
No NESsie, but oh so close ...
Cheryl P.
Surely, both happens. Or did. I seem to remember something about formal
grammar instruction being reduced shortly after I got through the local
educational system. Of course, the primary and biggest influence was my
parents' efforts to get me to speak slowly and correctly. But I was
definately taught grammar in school, at least, up to Grade 8 or so. I
think after that we were supposed to know grammar, although this was not
always the case. I know my Grade 8 teacher, a great woman, taught
grammar (among other things).
--
Cheryl
Eric Walker
> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
"nothing".
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
Eric Walker
[...]
> I don't remember learning points of grammar similar to the above in
> school. I learned it from me mum. Much earlier than I took classes
> where English grammar was covered, my mother would correct any errors I
> made of this sort.
I suspect that the best source and corrective is reading. The child or
adolescent who has been set on the path of reading well-written books
will soon enough calibrate his or her usage patterns by what is in those
books, if reading is indeed a habit.
tony cooper
wrote:
Not that I remember everything about who gave me what lessons 60-some
years ago, but it was my mother who taught me structure and
vocabulary. In school I learned the mechanics. English class in
school was all about diagramming sentences and learning the parts of
speech and the function of the parts. In school I may have learned
"why", but I already knew "how".
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar.
>
> Are expressions like "between you and I", "he gave it to you and I",
> and "it is you and I's property" endorsed wholeheartedly as correct
> and proper grammar?
Of course not. They're corrected and corrected again. They're
treated as horrible errors. Often by teachers who use them whenever
they're not specifically concentrating on them.
> The word "me" is almost never heard in the first two expressions.
>
> I am positive that it is not what I was taught when I was still in
> school. Is the whole grammar thing now being avoided in schools,
Not at all.
> and if so, when did that start?
>
> The strange thing is that even relatively older people are now
> treating the "you and I" combination as a non-declinable entity,
> except for the strange possessive I showed above. Is it that the
> older folk don't want to be out of touch with the latest fashions?
>
> The incorrect use of "whom" and "whomever" also appears to be rampant.
> Is the language really changing, or is grammatical ignorance growing?
In that case, the language is really changing. Or, rather, has really
changed. Indeed, the OED says "no longer current in natural
colloquial speech". Which seems a bit extreme to me (I think that I'm
among a large number who use it when it immediately follows a
preposition), but it indicates the extent to which it's a battle
that's lost.
> Maybe it is both -- I am still of the opinion that language change
> often stems from the poor education of the masses.
As others have said. Language learning rarely has much to do with
language teaching. The most that education typically does is to drive
home the fact that certain things will mark you as "uneducated" and
that certain things aren't considered proper in certain formal
(typically written) registers. But once people got to start hearing
how famous people actually talked in unscripted situations (on radio
and television), the battle to pretend that "only the ignorant speak
like that" was essentially lost.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The body was wrapped in duct tape,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |weighted down with concrete blocks
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |and a telephone cord was tied
|around the neck. Police suspect
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |foul play...
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:59:08 -0700, Skitt wrote:
>> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
>> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
>
> I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
> "nothing".
As someone who has a son going into seventh grade, I have to wonder
what you base your belief on.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |When you rewrite a compiler from
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |scratch, you sometimes fix things
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |you didn't know were broken.
| Larry Wall
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Peter Moylan
> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar.
>
> Are expressions like "between you and I", "he gave it to you and I", and
> "it is you and I's property" endorsed wholeheartedly as correct and
> proper grammar? The word "me" is almost never heard in the first two
> expressions.
>
> I am positive that it is not what I was taught when I was still in
> school. Is the whole grammar thing now being avoided in schools, and if
> so, when did that start?
>
> The strange thing is that even relatively older people are now treating
> the "you and I" combination as a non-declinable entity, except for the
> strange possessive I showed above. Is it that the older folk don't want
> to be out of touch with the latest fashions?
I spent years trying to stop my daughter from saying things like "he
gave it to you and I". It had no effect. Her teachers had more influence
than I did, so she copied what her teachers said.
(But I don't know where her teachers got it from. Presumably not from
their teachers.)
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Nick
> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:59:08 -0700, Skitt wrote:
>
>> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
>> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
>
> I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
> "nothing".
Certainly in my case that was the case. I was taught a few rules -
including when to use "you and I" and when to use "you and me" (mentally
drop the "you and" and see which sounds right), and not to use "nice"
and similar. But there was no system of rules or structure behind it.
--
Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu
Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
John Dunlop
> Certainly in my case that was the case. I was taught a few rules -
> including when to use "you and I" and when to use "you and me" (mentally
> drop the "you and" and see which sounds right), and not to use "nice"
> and similar. But there was no system of rules or structure behind it.
I remember our teacher asked us to write down our answers to the question
"How do you go to school?". The two most common answers were "to learn"
and "because I have to".
--
John
Steve Hayes
So how many actually answered the question?
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Donna Richoux
> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>
> > On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:59:08 -0700, Skitt wrote:
> >
> >> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
> >> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
> >
> > I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
> > "nothing".
>
> Certainly in my case that was the case. I was taught a few rules -
> including when to use "you and I" and when to use "you and me" (mentally
> drop the "you and" and see which sounds right),
I just want to point out that there's a problem there and it is the main
objection I have in focusing on "you and I". Usually that guideline
about dropping the first term and seeing what sounds right works just
fine, but it *doesn't* work for "between you and me." When you drop the
first term, you get "between me" which is sounds just as nonsensical and
bad as "between I."
So, in that case, the guideline doesn't guide. There's a dual nature to
"between" that is more than simple "to, for," etc.
I don't know a simple label for the "for Fred and me" construction. A
compound pronoun phrase?
> and not to use "nice"
> and similar. But there was no system of rules or structure behind it.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
John Dunlop
> [John Dunlop:]
>
>> I remember our teacher asked us to write down our answers to the
>> question "How do you go to school?". The two most common answers were
>> "to learn" and "because I have to".
>
> So how many actually answered the question?
I doubt if even the few of us who thought the teacher was asking by what
means we go to school accepted her assertion that "how" cannot mean "for
what reason".
--
John
Eric Walker
> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:59:08 -0700, Skitt wrote:
>
>>> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
>>> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
>>
>> I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
>> "nothing".
>
> As someone who has a son going into seventh grade, I have to wonder what
> you base your belief on.
What Will Rogers did.
I admit it's not a matter I follow closely, but also folk with school-age
children have made remarks to that effect in my hearing within this
decade.
Eric Walker
[...]
> But once people got to start hearing how famous
> people actually talked in unscripted situations (on radio and
> television), the battle to pretend that "only the ignorant speak like
> that" was essentially lost.
Must we presume that they all infallibly make the equation
famous /= ignorant?
Bertel Lund Hansen
> Language acquisition and language change have very little to do with
> school. People learn a language (or more) before they set foot in a
> school, and they learn it even if they never set foot in one. They
> learned languages before schools were ever thought of, or writing,
> either. There's a part of our brains that listens to other human beings,
> stores up examples of sounds, attaches meanings, sorts them out, and
> provides us with things to utter. Nothing to do with books or lesson
> plans.
I agree completely with all of your answer. It's a fine
description of how language works, and why we no longer speak
like the stone age people.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> ... and therein lies the problem -- what to do with the young ones --
> should they be encouraged to use "between you and me", or should they be
> left alone to say whatever they hear around them?
Whether you do one or the other, it won't really change anything.
Maybe if grammatical errors were punishable by death, but even
then I wouldn't feel too sure.
In Danish you will find precisely the same change, and not only
with young people.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> Surely, both happens. Or did. I seem to remember something about formal
> grammar instruction being reduced shortly after I got through the local
> educational system.
There are several conditions today that weaken the teaching and
the learning in school.
First of all the world is much more complex than what it used to
be, and therefore the stuff that is being taught, has to cover a
larger area.
Secondly the primary influence today comes from people one's own
age. Young people listen to and copy other young people, and
since the communication channels have exploded, they are exposed
to this sort of influence to a degree never seen before.
Thirdly a lot of people, who in the old days would have chosen to
shut up in public because they realized their own limitations (or
had these carefully pointed out), use the many ways of
communication in public media available today, the result of
which is a stream of language of varied quality.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:35:18 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> But once people got to start hearing how famous people actually
>> talked in unscripted situations (on radio and television), the
>> battle to pretend that "only the ignorant speak like that" was
>> essentially lost.
>
> Must we presume that they all infallibly make the equation
> famous /= ignorant?
No, just "famous != someone whose language didn't hold them back".
For things like "whom", it probably doesn't even matter whether they
only pay attention to, say, presidents and other high-ranking
officials or scientists or the like.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Just sit right back
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | and you'll hear a tale,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | a tale of the Stanford red
|That started when a little boy
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | named Leland did drop dead
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:39:15 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
>> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:59:08 -0700, Skitt wrote:
>>
>>>> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
>>>> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
>>>
>>> I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
>>> "nothing".
>>
>> As someone who has a son going into seventh grade, I have to wonder
>> what you base your belief on.
>
> What Will Rogers did.
>
> I admit it's not a matter I follow closely, but also folk with
> school-age children have made remarks to that effect in my hearing
> within this decade.
I just asked my son. He said he's not sure, but he thinks they
started covering that sort of thing (in public school) in second
grade.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Politicians are like compost--they
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |should be turned often or they start
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |to smell bad.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Christian Weisgerber
> Language acquisition and language change have very little to do with
> school.
Except when you study a foreign language in school. And we all
know that people who learned a language that way have impeccable
grammar. Oh wait...
(Two key terms here are "procedural knowledge" and "declarative
knowledge".)
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Evan Kirshenbaum
I don't think I've ever encountered a dialect in which it could.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |First Law of Anthropology:
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 | If they're doing something you
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | don't understand, it's either an
| isolated lunatic, a religious
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | ritual, or art.
(650)857-7572
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>John Dunlop <dunlo...@ymail.com> writes:
>
>> Steve Hayes:
>>
>>> [John Dunlop:]
>>>
>>>> I remember our teacher asked us to write down our answers to the
>>>> question "How do you go to school?". The two most common answers
>>>> were "to learn" and "because I have to".
>>>
>>> So how many actually answered the question?
>>
>> I doubt if even the few of us who thought the teacher was asking by
>> what means we go to school accepted her assertion that "how" cannot
>> mean "for what reason".
>
>I don't think I've ever encountered a dialect in which it could.
But no doubt the OED will show that someone was using it with that meaning in
1343.
Cece
Books contain this error (and others) too. The people who write and
edit them don't know any better than the students and teachers!
About 30 years ago, I noticed that a friend had begun using "you and
I" in objective positions. Earlier, she had used "you and me" there.
In a discussion of correcting grammar in letters as we transcribed
them, I mentioned that this error was spreading. She declared that
she did not make that error. I said, "Yes, you do!" She challenged
me to point it out the next time she did so. So I did. And the next
time. And the time after that. I've noticed other people who have
changed their grammar from correct to incorrect in adulthood.
(Coretta King, any number of TV journalists and anchormen, the upper
classes and educators on PBS...)
In the '50s, in parochial school, I had formal English grammar lessons
from third grade through eighth. In addition, teachers corrected us
every time we made an error, no matter what the subject class was.
Public grade school did not have grammar classes as thorough; public
high school spent time in sophomore year doing grammar. Which is too
late! The last few years, schools have treated each subject as
separate. If grammar is the lesson, only grammar is corrected
(assuming the teacher knows grammar). If spelling is the lesson, only
spelling is corrected. If composition is the lesson, neither grammar
nor spelling is corrected as the only thing the teacher is supposed to
worry about then is content. And when the paper is written for
history or science or whatever class? Huh!
In th eearly grades, children can be taught better English than their
parents use. Really! Think of the children of immigrants, when the
parents speak just enough English, and that heavily accented but the
children are fluent.
John Dunlop
> [Evan Kirshenbaum:]
>
>> [John Dunlop:]
>>
>>> I doubt if even the few of us who thought the teacher was asking by
>>> what means we go to school accepted her assertion that "how" cannot
>>> mean "for what reason".
>>
>> I don't think I've ever encountered a dialect in which it could.
>
> But no doubt the OED will show that someone was using it with that
> meaning in 1343.
Even 1340. I think it's still used across the north of the UK.
--
John
Bertel Lund Hansen
> > Language acquisition and language change have very little to do with
> > school.
> Except when you study a foreign language in school. And we all
> know that people who learned a language that way have impeccable
> grammar. Oh wait...
I would expect their grammatical knowledge of the foreign
language to pretty much match that of their own, provided the two
languages are not too unrelated in structure.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Donna Richoux
> Steve Hayes:
>
> > [Evan Kirshenbaum:]
> >
> >> [John Dunlop:]
> >>
> >>> I doubt if even the few of us who thought the teacher was asking by
> >>> what means we go to school accepted her assertion that "how" cannot
> >>> mean "for what reason".
> >>
> >> I don't think I've ever encountered a dialect in which it could.
Me neither.
> >
> > But no doubt the OED will show that someone was using it with that
> > meaning in 1343.
>
> Even 1340. I think it's still used across the north of the UK.
The Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) has one measly
little citation showing "how" being used to mean "why":
See also Quhow. Add: 1. a. Also, = how is it that? why?
-- And if thou be to ly at the altar, how wantst
thou a priest to say thy soule masse? Birnie Kirk-b. xi.
A little digging shows that was "The blame of kirk-buriall" by William
Birnie, pub. 1606.
John Dunlop
> The Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) has one measly
> little citation showing "how" being used to mean "why":
>
> See also Quhow. Add: 1. a. Also, = how is it that? why?
> -- And if thou be to ly at the altar, how wantst
> thou a priest to say thy soule masse? Birnie Kirk-b. xi.
>
> A little digging shows that was "The blame of kirk-buriall" by William
> Birnie, pub. 1606.
A more recent example:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/how-should-we-huv-tae-speak-english-when-we-re-no-1.830101
--
John
Evan Kirshenbaum
I should note that I am well acquainted with a form *based on* "how"
that means "why": "how come", which the OED calls originally American
and cites to 1848, although the quotations sound unnatural to me until
the 1957 one.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |choice between learning and using
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
|industry, let me just say it was
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |nice knowing all of you. :-)
(650)857-7572 | Randal Schwartz
Adam Funk
> On Aug 17, 6:33 pm, Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:18:15 -0400, tony cooper wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > I don't remember learning points of grammar similar to the above in
>> > school. I learned it from me mum. Much earlier than I took classes
>> > where English grammar was covered, my mother would correct any errors I
>> > made of this sort.
>>
>> I suspect that the best source and corrective is reading. The child or
>> adolescent who has been set on the path of reading well-written books
>> will soon enough calibrate his or her usage patterns by what is in those
>> books, if reading is indeed a habit.
> Books contain this error (and others) too. The people who write and
> edit them don't know any better than the students and teachers!
Even worse, childrens' books contain them.
--
No right of private conversation was enumerated in the Constitution.
I don't suppose it occurred to anyone at the time that it could be
prevented. [Whitfield Diffie]
Robin Bignall
<em...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:18:15 -0400, tony cooper wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> I don't remember learning points of grammar similar to the above in
>> school. I learned it from me mum. Much earlier than I took classes
>> where English grammar was covered, my mother would correct any errors I
>> made of this sort.
>
>I suspect that the best source and corrective is reading. The child or
>adolescent who has been set on the path of reading well-written books
>will soon enough calibrate his or her usage patterns by what is in those
>books, if reading is indeed a habit.
I used to think that, Eric, but nowadays I wonder if it's true. In
public transport systems in the UK quite a lot of people read during
their trips, even if it's only the sports and gossip pages of
red-tops. These papers might be questionable with regard to their
style but the grammar is usually fairly sound.
Get lots of these readers onto the Internet, though, and they write
exactly as they speak: "I wouldn't of gone..." even though they might
have read the correct version quite recently. I'm no longer sure that
an ability to read fairly well leads to a matching ability to write
grammatically.
--
Robin Bignall
(BrE)
Herts, England
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
I guess that to them the "correct version", as you put it, is just a
different way of expressing things - a way that is not theirs.
It is possibly more important to them to use a shared language among
their friends both face-to-face and online. The English in newspapers
is, to them, a slightly different "read-only" language.
Those who watch TV will be exposed to a considerable amount of American
English (in American accents). While some AmE words and phrases are
imported into BrE, the AmE of TV shows and movies is "read-only" (well,
"hear-only").
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Eric Walker
[...]
> I guess that to them the "correct version", as you put it, is just a
> different way of expressing things - a way that is not theirs.
>
> It is possibly more important to them to use a shared language among
> their friends both face-to-face and online. The English in newspapers
> is, to them, a slightly different "read-only" language.
That might be plausible were their "different way of expressing things"
really a *way*--that is, a systematically different mode, which I guess
would qualify as a dialect. But I believe that in virtually every case,
it is not a regular mode but rather something that varies almost
randomly. Say it to them either grammatically or ungrammatically and
they will scarcely (if at all) notice any difference: neither would seem
"right" or "wrong". They themselves simply parrot whichever they have
heard most (or most recently).
In my earlier remark, I referred to "well-written books". Of course, it
is hard to decide a priori which books that a child or adolescent might
read are "well-written", much less to guide him or her to them, but I
suppose it's so that as the twig is bent, so grows the tree, and folk
like Robert Louis Stevenson are probably a good beginning.
Eric Walker
> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:39:15 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>
>>> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:59:08 -0700, Skitt wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
>>>>> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
>>>>
>>>> I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
>>>> "nothing".
>>>
>>> As someone who has a son going into seventh grade, I have to wonder
>>> what you base your belief on.
>>
>> What Will Rogers did.
>>
>> I admit it's not a matter I follow closely, but also folk with
>> school-age children have made remarks to that effect in my hearing
>> within this decade.
>
> I just asked my son. He said he's not sure, but he thinks they started
> covering that sort of thing (in public school) in second grade.
I would be interested in knowing what "that sort of thing" encompasses.
(I am assuming that this refers to public schools.) Even as far back as
my day, being told in the 6th grade what a verb and a noun were was,
according to our teacher, advanced material we weren't actually supposed
to be getting then. I no longer recall if we parsed sentences in junior
high (or high school), but I tend to doubt it. That was in New York
City; my lady, who went to school in a quasi-rural town in Virginia, and
who is younger than I, tells me they were diagramming sentences in
elementary school, perhaps the 4th grade. So I guess it varies.
Are they now (or still) diagramming or otherwise parsing anywhere up to
high school?
Eric Walker
> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:35:18 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> But once people got to start hearing how famous people actually talked
>>> in unscripted situations (on radio and television), the battle to
>>> pretend that "only the ignorant speak like that" was essentially lost.
>>
>> Must we presume that they all infallibly make the equation famous /=
>> ignorant?
>
> No, just "famous != someone whose language didn't hold them back". For
> things like "whom", it probably doesn't even matter whether they only
> pay attention to, say, presidents and other high-ranking officials or
> scientists or the like.
I think there's effectively a double negative there, but I see what you
mean. Nonetheless, "someone whose language didn't hold them back" is
unrelated to "someone who is ignorant", another way of saying that
ignorant people can become famous (indeed, not being ignorant seems a
handicap in this age).
One of the aspects of using sound English that I rarely see mentioned in
these sorts of discussions is esthetics and satisfaction. There is, at
least for some, a satisfaction--often a deep satisfaction--in doing a job
right, what Veblen called "the instinct of workmanship", and closely
related (arguably, I suppose, the same thing, though I differ on that) is
the esthetic satisfaction in seeing a properly crafted sentence. An ill-
crafted sentence may convey its freight as competently as a well-wrought
one, but it is somewhat the difference between a cardboard box and a
holiday-wrapped gift.
OT Sidebar: my usenet program's spell checker didn't like "esthetics",
but "aesthetics" passes it. That strikes me as bizarre.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:16:17 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>
>> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:39:15 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>>>
>>>> Eric Walker <em...@owlcroft.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:59:08 -0700, Skitt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Listening to what is being said on television, I wonder what, if
>>>>>> anything, is being taught in schools about English grammar. . . .
>>>>>
>>>>> I believe the answer, literally and with no (direct) sarcasm, is
>>>>> "nothing".
>>>>
>>>> As someone who has a son going into seventh grade, I have to wonder
>>>> what you base your belief on.
>>>
>>> What Will Rogers did.
>>>
>>> I admit it's not a matter I follow closely, but also folk with
>>> school-age children have made remarks to that effect in my hearing
>>> within this decade.
>>
>> I just asked my son. He said he's not sure, but he thinks they
>> started covering that sort of thing (in public school) in second
>> grade.
>
> I would be interested in knowing what "that sort of thing"
> encompasses. (I am assuming that this refers to public schools.)
For him, it did through fourth grade. He's been in a private school
since then.
> Even as far back as my day, being told in the 6th grade what a verb
> and a noun were was, according to our teacher, advanced material we
> weren't actually supposed to be getting then. I no longer recall if
> we parsed sentences in junior high (or high school), but I tend to
> doubt it.
We certainly did in Chicago in the '70s. My (public) high school
(and, I believe, junior high) used Warriner's _English Grammar and
Composition_. Basic sentence diagramming was done earlier, probably
in elementary school.
> That was in New York City;
We've had lots of experience in AUE with people assuming incorrectly
that they can extrapolate New York to the rest of the country.
> my lady, who went to school in a quasi-rural town in Virginia, and
> who is younger than I, tells me they were diagramming sentences in
> elementary school, perhaps the 4th grade. So I guess it varies.
>
> Are they now (or still) diagramming or otherwise parsing anywhere up to
> high school?
I'd hope not diagramming. God, what a waste of time. I'll see if I
can get my son to tell me what sorts of grammar things they've done.
I'm sure that they were doing "What's wrong with this sentence?"
exercises, where the notion was to catch agreement errors and wrong
parts of speech, back no later than second grade. His "second grade"
answer was specifically to the question about when they learned about
parts of speech.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |You cannot solve problems with the
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |same type of thinking that created
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |them.
| Albert Einstein
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Bob Martin
>I just want to point out that there's a problem there and it is the main
>objection I have in focusing on "you and I". Usually that guideline
>about dropping the first term and seeing what sounds right works just
>fine, but it *doesn't* work for "between you and me." When you drop the
>first term, you get "between me" which is sounds just as nonsensical and
>bad as "between I."
In that case try substituting "we" or "us".
R H Draney
>
>OT Sidebar: my usenet program's spell checker didn't like "esthetics",
>but "aesthetics" passes it. That strikes me as bizarre.
Firefox is the same way...wonder what it does if I use the ligature....
æsthetics
Nope...same squiggly red underline there too....r
--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.
Bertel Lund Hansen
> One of the aspects of using sound English that I rarely see mentioned in
> these sorts of discussions is esthetics and satisfaction. There is, at
> least for some, a satisfaction--often a deep satisfaction--in doing a job
> right, what Veblen called "the instinct of workmanship", [...]
If a person has a different perception than yours about what is
correct, he will deeply enjoy a sentence (or paragraph) that will
make your toes wriggle.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> Firefox is the same way...wonder what it does if I use the ligature....
> æsthetics
Æ and æ are not a ligatures. They are independent letters. The
mistake has to do with the fact that both in print and
handwriting it looks like a and e put closely together, and also
maybe because that is the way we use if the proper letter is not
available (quite an acceptable solution for foreigners).
The ligature, that is often mistaken for æ, is œ which is
composed of o+e.
The Danish Language Council actually had to fight for the
recognition of the letter æ when UTF-8 was to be standardized.
The first draft was made without it. They proved that æ has a
history of more than 900 years in Danish.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Mark Brader
> Æ and æ are not a ligatures. They are independent letters.
In English they're considered ligatures.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto But that's what all the other
m...@vex.net individualists are doing!
Bertel Lund Hansen
> > Æ and æ are not a ligatures. They are independent letters.
> In English they're considered ligatures.
A wrong English notion about a Danish letter does not carry much
weight with me.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Nick Spalding
on 19 Aug 2010 00:28:25 -0700:
Agent's spell checker accepts either esthetics or aesthetics but chokes
on æsthetics which it wants to change to aesthetics.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
John Dunlop
[...]
> The Danish Language Council actually had to fight for the recognition of
> the letter æ when UTF-8 was to be standardized. The first draft was
> made without it. They proved that æ has a history of more than 900
> years in Danish.
I don't think the developers of UTF-8 would have taken much persuasion,
given that Unicode has always included <æ> and <Æ> (U+00E6 and U+00C6).
--
John
Adam Funk
> R H Draney skrev:
>
>> Firefox is the same way...wonder what it does if I use the ligature....
>
>> æsthetics
>
> Æ and æ are not a ligatures. They are independent letters. The
> mistake has to do with the fact that both in print and
> handwriting it looks like a and e put closely together, and also
> maybe because that is the way we use if the proper letter is not
> available (quite an acceptable solution for foreigners).
In Danish, Icelandic, and various other languages, æ is a letter.
In Modern English, it's just a ligature: "archæology" and
"archaeology" are the same word, with the same spelling, typed (or
typeset) differently.
(I would heartily endorse a campaign to bring æ, þ, and ð back into
English.)
--
It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by
first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste
of the nation. (David Sarnoff, CEO of RCA, 1939; in Stoll 1995)
Steve Hayes
Not to mention the extended Ascii characters æ (145) and Æ (146).
Bertel Lund Hansen
> I don't think the developers of UTF-8 would have taken much persuasion,
> given that Unicode has always included <æ> and <Æ> (U+00E6 and U+00C6).
It may have been another occasion then. I'll try to look it up. I
am not mistaken about the council having to argue strongly.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Bertel Lund Hansen
> Not to mention the extended Ascii characters æ (145) and Æ (146).
Extended ASCII = specific DOS and Windows 'standard'.
USO-8859-1, which is a true international standard, puts them at
198 and 230.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Evan Kirshenbaum
In English, when considering Danish, they are considered letters. In
English, when considering English, they are considered ligatures.
Since we're talking about an English word, that would appear to apply.
In Old English, they were letters, but came to be regarded as
ligatures and later became optional and then uncommon. The OED first
cites "aesthetic" in English to 1798. The word soon shows up as
"æsthetic" and "esthetic". This is long after "æ" ceased to be
considered an English letter.
There are lots of examples of things considered to be separate letters
in one languages being considered ligatures ("æ"), diacritic
variations ("ü"), pairs of letters ("ch"), or punctuation ("`") in
another.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |You may hate gravity, but gravity
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |doesn't care.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Clayton Christensen
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Bertel Lund Hansen
> In English, when considering Danish, they are considered letters. In
> English, when considering English, they are considered ligatures.
Point taken.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Adam Funk
> One of the aspects of using sound English that I rarely see mentioned in
> these sorts of discussions is esthetics and satisfaction. There is, at
> least for some, a satisfaction--often a deep satisfaction--in doing a job
> right, what Veblen called "the instinct of workmanship", and closely
> related (arguably, I suppose, the same thing, though I differ on that) is
> the esthetic satisfaction in seeing a properly crafted sentence. An ill-
> crafted sentence may convey its freight as competently as a well-wrought
> one, but it is somewhat the difference between a cardboard box and a
> holiday-wrapped gift.
What's the writing equivalent of conspicuous consumption? ;-)
> OT Sidebar: my usenet program's spell checker didn't like "esthetics",
> but "aesthetics" passes it. That strikes me as bizarre.
Do you have it set to BrE (or en_GB, if it uses that terminology)?
--
...the reason why so many professional artists drink a lot is not
necessarily very much to do with the artistic temperament, etc. It is
simply that they can afford to, because they can normally take a large
part of a day off to deal with the ravages. [Amis _On Drink_]
Garrett Wollman
>> OT Sidebar: my usenet program's spell checker didn't like "esthetics",
>> but "aesthetics" passes it. That strikes me as bizarre.
>
>Do you have it set to BrE (or en_GB, if it uses that terminology)?
"aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Jerry Friedman
...
> One of the aspects of using sound English that I rarely see mentioned in
> these sorts of discussions is esthetics and satisfaction. There is, at
> least for some, a satisfaction--often a deep satisfaction--in doing a job
> right, what Veblen called "the instinct of workmanship", and closely
> related (arguably, I suppose, the same thing, though I differ on that) is
> the esthetic satisfaction in seeing a properly crafted sentence. An ill-
> crafted sentence may convey its freight as competently as a well-wrought
> one, but it is somewhat the difference between a cardboard box and a
> holiday-wrapped gift.
If I may quote myself, I once told a friend that Gene Wolfe's writing
is as clear as crystal and Sheri Tepper's is as clear as Saran-Wrap.
But of course, as Bertel Lund Hansen said, all that is a matter of
taste. I know people who can't stand Wolfe's writing.
--
Jerry Friedman
Peter Moylan
Æ has been used both in English and in Danish for centuries, but has a
different status in the two languages.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Bertel Lund Hansen
> The definition of what is and is not a letter varies between languages.
> Æ has been used both in English and in Danish for centuries, but has a
> different status in the two languages.
Yes, I realize that now.
--
Bertel, Denmark
Adam Funk
> In article <3qe0k7x...@news.ducksburg.com>,
> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>On 2010-08-19, Eric Walker wrote:
>
>>> OT Sidebar: my usenet program's spell checker didn't like "esthetics",
>>> but "aesthetics" passes it. That strikes me as bizarre.
>>
>>Do you have it set to BrE (or en_GB, if it uses that terminology)?
>
> "aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
> pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
I'm under the impression that "esthetics" is the first choice in AmE,
with "aesthetics" as an option (followed by "æsthetics"), whereas in
BrE "aesthetics" and "æsthetics" are preferred (the OED shows the
ligature in all words from that root), with "esthetics" as an option.
But in case, I'm very surprised that an AmE spell-checker would mark
"esthetics" as wrong. It's certainly a standard spelling in the USA.
--
Classical Greek lent itself to the promulgation of a rich culture,
indeed, to Western civilization. Computer languages bring us
doorbells that chime with thirty-two tunes, alt.sex.bestiality, and
Tetris clones. (Stoll 1995)
James Hogg
> On 2010-08-19, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>
>> In article <3qe0k7x...@news.ducksburg.com>,
>> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>> On 2010-08-19, Eric Walker wrote:
>>>> OT Sidebar: my usenet program's spell checker didn't like "esthetics",
>>>> but "aesthetics" passes it. That strikes me as bizarre.
>>> Do you have it set to BrE (or en_GB, if it uses that terminology)?
>> "aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
>> pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
>
> I'm under the impression that "esthetics" is the first choice in AmE,
> with "aesthetics" as an option (followed by "æsthetics"), whereas in
> BrE "aesthetics" and "æsthetics" are preferred (the OED shows the
> ligature in all words from that root), with "esthetics" as an option.
Under
DRAFT ADDITIONS DECEMBER 2009
the OED now has:
aesthetic, adj. and n.
and thus seems to be falling into line with all the other Oxford
dictionaries in writing "ae" instead of "æ".
--
James
CDB
only a craftsman, but she is a better writer than many in SF*. I like
her for her copious flow of ideas (consider _The Awakeners_, and
_Grass_/_Raising the Stones_/_Sideshow_) and for the spoken-tale
quality of her earlier writing, as in the Jinian series. Those would
be fun to read to children; but would be hard to get hold of them now,
I suppose.
>
*For greater certainty: Speculative Fabulation.
Bertel Lund Hansen
> It may have been another occasion then. I'll try to look it up. I
> am not mistaken about the council having to argue strongly.
Well, I was and I wasn't.
The meeting took place in 1987, and the ISO 8859-codepages were
discussed. It was not our language council but our standards
council that was involved.
I just learned that æ in ISO is described as
LATIN SMALL LETTER AE
while œ is described as
LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE
--
Bertel, Denmark
James Hogg
That makes more sense. And the Old Norse weren't around to object to
this blatant discrimination against Œ.
--
James
John Dunlop
> I just learned that æ in ISO is described as
>
> LATIN SMALL LETTER AE
ISO-8859-1:1998 names <æ> LATIN SMALL LETTER AE, but some websites say
ISO-8859-1 names it SMALL DIPHTHONG A WITH E. I suppose ISO-8859-1:1987
might have named it that, but I can't find a copy. Unicode 1.0 named it
LATIN SMALL LIGATURE AE, but it's now LATIN SMALL LETTER AE.
--
John
John Dunlop
> A more recent example [of "how" meaning "why"]:
>
> http://www.heraldscotland.com/how-should-we-huv-tae-speak-english-when-we-re-no-1.830101
>
> http://tinyurl.com/28o55wq
Looking for more examples, I went to Crystal's _The Cambridge Encyclopedia
of the English Language_ and although it doesn't say anything about "how"
meaning "why", the Oor Wullie comic strip (p. 329, 2nd ed.) has "How did I
no' think o' this before?".
--
John
Evan Kirshenbaum
I'd call that elliptical for "How is it possible that ...?" And I'm
not sure that it would work with a positive question (e.g., "How did I
think of this before?") In any case, it's not the kind of question
that could be answered by something like "To learn".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |English grammar is not taught in
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |primary or secondary schools in the
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |United States. Sometimes some
|mythology is taught under that
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |rubric, but luckily it's usually
(650)857-7572 |ignored, except by the credulous.
| John Lawler
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
John Dunlop
>> [Oor Wullie: How did I no' think o' this before?]
>
> I'd call that elliptical for "How is it possible that ...?" And I'm
> not sure that it would work with a positive question (e.g., "How did I
> think of this before?") In any case, it's not the kind of question that
> could be answered by something like "To learn".
You're right, not a good example.
--
John
John Dunlop
> You're right, not a good example.
Better examples of "how" meaning "why":
A want tae ken hou ye selt the kye for sae little.
I want to know why you sold the cows for so little.
http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/adverbs.htm
'Sure!' said Shuggie. 'We'll take thum up wi us an you kin ask ur.' 'How
me?' said Aleck.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~enl038/grammar.htm
--
John
Evan Kirshenbaum
> I'd hope not diagramming. God, what a waste of time. I'll see if I
> can get my son to tell me what sorts of grammar things they've done.
> I'm sure that they were doing "What's wrong with this sentence?"
> exercises, where the notion was to catch agreement errors and wrong
> parts of speech, back no later than second grade. His "second grade"
> answer was specifically to the question about when they learned about
> parts of speech.
So I talked with Josh about this over lunch today, and what I learned
was interesting. They covered nouns, verbs, and adjectives in second
grade, adverbs in third, subjects and predicates in fourth, "helping
verbs" in fourth or fifth, and person and number in sixth. He didn't
recognize "diagramming", so I presume they haven't, but he said they
were doing things like "underline the complete subject or complete
predicate" in fourth or fifth grade. So grammar is definitely being
taught.
On the subject of grammatical errors, though, while he said that that
was a topic, on the specific question of "between you and I", he had
no clue what might be wrong with it. Indeed, when I mentioned it, he
appeared to assume that I was giving it as a correct form to catch the
error of not having "I" last. Also, when asked to give an example of
a grammatical error, he proffered "me and you", which should be "you
and I". Now, this doesn't mean that the traditional rule wasn't
taught, but if it was, it certainly didn't take. And, indeed, what
appears to have been internalized is that "X and I" is the proper form
in any context. I'll have to pay attention and see if I can figure
out whether he does this consistently or whether "me and X" forms show
up in some contexts (correctly or not).
(Yes, that is a nice river in the first paragraph.)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Feeling good about government is like
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |looking on the bright side of any
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |catastrophe. When you quit looking
|on the bright side, the catastrophe
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |is still there.
(650)857-7572 | P.J. O'Rourke
R H Draney
>
>Evan Kirshenbaum <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> writes:
>
>> I'd hope not diagramming. God, what a waste of time. I'll see if I
>> can get my son to tell me what sorts of grammar things they've done.
>> I'm sure that they were doing "What's wrong with this sentence?"
>> exercises, where the notion was to catch agreement errors and wrong
>> parts of speech, back no later than second grade. His "second grade"
>> answer was specifically to the question about when they learned about
>> parts of speech.
>
>So I talked with Josh about this over lunch today, and what I learned
>was interesting. They covered nouns, verbs, and adjectives in second
>grade, adverbs in third, subjects and predicates in fourth, "helping
>verbs" in fourth or fifth, and person and number in sixth. He didn't
>recognize "diagramming", so I presume they haven't, but he said they
>were doing things like "underline the complete subject or complete
>predicate" in fourth or fifth grade. So grammar is definitely being
>taught.
That's close to what I went through back in the 60s and 70s...I didn't run
across diagramming until high school; instead I had "transformational grammar"
where the sentence is broken down into "subject" and "predicate", and each of
those further broken down into simpler components, until individual words and
loose morphemes like "past" or "plural" emerged at the other end....
Diagrams did occur in the process, but they took the form of trees,
multifurcating as each sentence was analyzed....r
--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.
Garrett Wollman
R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>That's close to what I went through back in the 60s and 70s...I didn't run
>across diagramming until high school; instead I had "transformational grammar"
>where the sentence is broken down into "subject" and "predicate", and each of
>those further broken down into simpler components, until individual words and
>loose morphemes like "past" or "plural" emerged at the other end....
Parochial school in the early 1980s for me, and diagramming was
definitely part of the curriculum in... want to say.. 5th grade.
(It's been a long time.) I don't believe there was any mention of it
after 6th grade. My old 9th-grade reference text, Sebranek and
Meyer's /Basic English Revisited/, doesn't make any mention of it.
Interestingly, /BER/ treats case in the noun paradigm as universal --
with all non-pronouns treated as having a zero-derivation objective
case -- which I don't believe is a popular treatment today. They also
make the claim that "predicate nouns" are always in the nominative
(compare CGEL 1.2.2(c)). The closest they get to "you and I" as a
matter of prescriptive grammar is in asserting that the object of a
preposition is always in the objective case (and by implication only,
"for you and me" is correct and "for you and I" is nonstandard).
Eric Walker
[...]
> So I talked with Josh about this over lunch today . . . .
Thank you for the effort and information. It is interesting indeed. One
of these days, I'll see if I can find a local high-school student and see
what's what hereabouts (rural Washington State).
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
Mike Lyle
> In article <3qe0k7x...@news.ducksburg.com>,
> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>> On 2010-08-19, Eric Walker wrote:
>
>>> OT Sidebar: my usenet program's spell checker didn't like
>>> "esthetics", but "aesthetics" passes it. That strikes me as
>>> bizarre.
>>
>> Do you have it set to BrE (or en_GB, if it uses that terminology)?
>
> "aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
> pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
Really? /E/ as in "bet"? That would explain the seriously irrational
reference to somebody called "Eddipus", or even "Eddapus", in an
Edinburgh show this year. Though odd, it works all right for the English
word "(a)esthetic", but "Oedipus" isn't an English word in the ordinary
way.
--
Mike.
Garrett Wollman
Mike Lyle <mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>Garrett Wollman wrote:
>> "aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
>> pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
>
>Really? /E/ as in "bet"? That would explain the seriously irrational
>reference to somebody called "Eddipus", or even "Eddapus", in an
>Edinburgh show this year. Though odd, it works all right for the English
>word "(a)esthetic", but "Oedipus" isn't an English word in the ordinary
>way.
That is the normal AmE pronunciation of "Oedipus". The erstwhile
program director of WBCN[1] went by the alias "Oedipus", and he was
from time to time called "Oedi" (as in "Eddie" -- his given name is in
fact Edward).
-GAWollman
[1] Which was in its day one of the most important album-rockers in
the country, having made the transition from classical in the late
1960s one daypart at a time.
Jerry Friedman
> In article <i4s68q$nq...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>
> Mike Lyle <mike_lyle...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >Garrett Wollman wrote:
> >> "aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
> >> pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
>
> >Really? /E/ as in "bet"? That would explain the seriously irrational
> >reference to somebody called "Eddipus", or even "Eddapus", in an
> >Edinburgh show this year. Though odd, it works all right for the English
> >word "(a)esthetic", but "Oedipus" isn't an English word in the ordinary
> >way.
>
> That is the normal AmE pronunciation of "Oedipus". The erstwhile
> program director of WBCN[1] went by the alias "Oedipus", and he was
> from time to time called "Oedi" (as in "Eddie" -- his given name is in
> fact Edward).
See also
(the Canadian upper crust).
Hear also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScdJURKGWM
--
Jerry Friedman
Adam Funk
> In article <i4s68q$nqk$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Mike Lyle <mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> "aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
>>> pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
>>
>>Really? /E/ as in "bet"? That would explain the seriously irrational
>>reference to somebody called "Eddipus", or even "Eddapus", in an
>>Edinburgh show this year. Though odd, it works all right for the English
>>word "(a)esthetic", but "Oedipus" isn't an English word in the ordinary
>>way.
>
> That is the normal AmE pronunciation of "Oedipus". The erstwhile
> program director of WBCN[1] went by the alias "Oedipus", and he was
> from time to time called "Oedi" (as in "Eddie" -- his given name is in
> fact Edward).
There's also a female character named "Oedipa", "Oed" for short, in
_The Crying of Lot 49_.
--
When you look at a photograph of the earth you don't see any
borders. That realization is where our hope as a planet lies.
[Graham Nash]
Cece
Diagramming went out about 40 years ago. At least, my niece did none
of it. She got to draw boxes around connected parts of a sentence,
apparently a forerunner of the linguist's "trees" that educrats seem
to think is the way to teach the basics (when the proper use of trees
is to help those who are learning something strange to figure it
out). In Indianapolis parochial school, we diagrammed sentence for
years. Maybe as early as third grade, maybe as late as sixth or
seventh. And I have found it useful since! Typing a letter for a
Ph.D. (chemistry), I saw "One of several are..." It came out my
fingers as "One of many is...," of course. I put the typed letter on
her desk for signature; when she came back from the lab and went into
her office, she came right back out, letter in hand, to inform me that
I had messed up the grammar and the letter would have to be retyped.
I picked up a pen and diagrammed the sentence on the desk pad. She
stared, signed, and went back into her office.
I don't remember what year any particular bit of grammar was taught
us. But I think we got all the parts of speech the first year, maybe
the first semester (noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb,
preposition, conjunction). This was before "restricted vocabulary" and
other methods of assigning age limits on books were firmly in place;
our textbooks and fun books (original Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Hardy
Boys, etc.) had sentences of all forms. (The standard sentence was
wordier and more complex than anything by Barbara Cartland.) The only
term I know I didn't hear in grade school, and learned sometime the
last twenty years, is "subjunctive."
franzi
> In article<i4s68q$nqk$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Mike Lyle<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> "aesthetics" would be the normal spelling in my flavor of AmE. (Still
>>> pronounced /E/, not /i:/.)
>>
>> Really? /E/ as in "bet"? That would explain the seriously irrational
>> reference to somebody called "Eddipus", or even "Eddapus", in an
>> Edinburgh show this year. Though odd, it works all right for the English
>> word "(a)esthetic", but "Oedipus" isn't an English word in the ordinary
>> way.
>
> That is the normal AmE pronunciation of "Oedipus". The erstwhile
> program director of WBCN[1] went by the alias "Oedipus", and he was
> from time to time called "Oedi" (as in "Eddie" -- his given name is in
> fact Edward).
>
> -GAWollman
>
> [1] Which was in its day one of the most important album-rockers in
> the country, having made the transition from classical in the late
> 1960s one daypart at a time.
>
sets the standard. Without checking the vinyl, I'm sure that his
"Oedipus Rex" -- in which Oedipus gets rhymed with platypus, by the way
-- was a near eddipus.
*Or I, for the purists among you.
--
franzi
James Silverton
I would dispute that the normal American pronunciation of Oedipus is
Eddypuss. I've mostly heard "Eedipuss" or <idIpus>
--
James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland
Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not
alan
"James Silverton" <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote
>
> I would dispute that the normal American pronunciation of Oedipus is
> Eddypuss. I've mostly heard "Eedipuss" or <idIpus>
It's always been my impression that those AmE speakers who pronounce it
"Eedipuss" have been considered slightly affected. I suppose it depends on
the speech community you find yourself a member of . . .
Robert Bannister
How do you feel about 'eekanomiks' as opposed to 'eckanomiks'?
--
Rob Bannister
Garrett Wollman
Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>How do you feel about 'eekanomiks' as opposed to 'eckanomiks'?
Unmarked. Many speakers say it both ways.
-GAWollman
Steve Hayes
Yes, that's what made me realise that left-pondians pronounced it differently.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Pat Durkin
"James Silverton" <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:i4ur1d$8p8$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Oh, don't forget the US tendency to "shwa" every unstressed
interconsonantal vowel. ED-up-us. Of course, I have seen and heard
"edafus"(edifice) for the same character.
Mike Lyle
> On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:46:51 +0100, franzi
> <et.in.arca...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Someone, and it may as well be me*, has to point out that Lehrer as
>> ever sets the standard. Without checking the vinyl, I'm sure that his
>> "Oedipus Rex" -- in which Oedipus gets rhymed with platypus, by the
>> way -- was a near eddipus.
>
> Yes, that's what made me realise that left-pondians pronounced it
> differently.
Back on the "What is being taught?" tack, Howard Jacobson has a
magnificent piece of greybeardly grizzle in Saturday's /Independent/:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-rage-rage-against-educational-defeatism-2058084.html
or
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2wprzge
--
Mike.
Skitt
> Back on the "What is being taught?" tack, Howard Jacobson has a
> magnificent piece of greybeardly grizzle in Saturday's /Independent/:
> http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-rage-rage-against-educational-defeatism-2058084.html
> or
> http://preview.tinyurl.com/2wprzge
Speaking of knowing the meanings of words, Jacobson also wrote:
If it says little for the candidate that he'd be unable to
work out how that word "perfect" was operating in the
context, it says even less that the chair of the examiners
for history positively expected him to flounder.
I think he foundered on that one.
--
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://come.to/skitt
LFS
I think he writes a better rant than he does a novel: I've just
abandoned his latest oeuvre on the grounds that Life is too short to
work out what exactly he's on about.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
Mike Lyle
> Mike Lyle wrote:
[...]
>>
>> Back on the "What is being taught?" tack, Howard Jacobson has a
>> magnificent piece of greybeardly grizzle in Saturday's /Independent/:
>> http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-rage-rage-against-educational-defeatism-2058084.html
>> or
>> http://preview.tinyurl.com/2wprzge
>>
>
> I think he writes a better rant than he does a novel: I've just
> abandoned his latest oeuvre on the grounds that Life is too short to
> work out what exactly he's on about.
Yes: I tried one once, but gave up almost at once. The rants are
sometimes a bit "OhmygodtheywantsomethingbyWednesday" contrived, too
Alec, I thought "flounder" was OK. You know: the thought of the kid
splashing about unable to swim properly. He might, as his strength gave
out, subsequently founder as well...
--
Mike.
Skitt
I considered that before I wrote my comment. Still, in the absence of any
water or mud, my preference would definitely have been "founder".
Robert Bannister
> In article <8dgj0r...@mid.individual.net>,
> Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>> How do you feel about 'eekanomiks' as opposed to 'eckanomiks'?
>
> Unmarked. Many speakers say it both ways.
You caught me. I use both, but only "ee" in Oedipus - not that I say it
all that often.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
You could never be sure with Lehrer though, whether he was using his
normal pronunciation or deliberately creating a forced rhyme.
--
Rob Bannister
R H Draney
Lehrer was (and by all accounts still is) a brilliant wordsmith [1]...if
"Oedipus" had any other standard pronunciation to him, he would have used it,
and equally clever stuff would have replaced the lines we all know and love....r
[1] vide:
"The girl that I lament for,
The girl my money's spent for,
The girl my back is bent for,
The girl I owe the rent for,
The girl I gave up Lent for
Is the girl that heaven meant for me."
John Lawler
Or consider this sequence of rime riche
from "When You Are Old And Gray":
An awful debility,
A lessened utility,
A loss of mobility
Is a strong possibility.
In all probability
I'll lose my virility
And you your fertility
And desirability,
And this liability
Of total sterility
Will lead to hostility
And a sense of futility,
So let's act with agility
While we still have facility,
For we'll soon reach senility
And lose the ability.
Tom Lehrer -- the Cole Porter of the
*Second* half of the 20th century.
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler
"When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan, and
the Wizard of Oz? There's a dirty old man!"
-- Tom Lehrer, 'Smut'
Steve Hayes
wrote:
Or
When you attend a funeral
it is sad to think that sooner or l-
ater those you love will do the same for you
and you may have thought it tragic
not to mention other adjec-
tives to think of all the weeping they will do.
Adam Funk
> You could never be sure with Lehrer though, whether he was using his
> normal pronunciation or deliberately creating a forced rhyme.
We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment
Except for the few we take home to experiment
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon
It just takes a smidgen
To poison a pigeon in the park
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
James Silverton
In economics, I would use "eck" and I think that is mostly what I hear.
Incidentally, I think the second vowel is a schwa, in ASCII IPA:
/ek@nomiks/, I think.
Garrett Wollman
James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
>In economics, I would use "eck" and I think that is mostly what I hear.
>Incidentally, I think the second vowel is a schwa, in ASCII IPA:
>/ek@nomiks/, I think.
Doubtful. More likely /'Ek@,nAmIks/. (Or, of course, /'ik@,nAmIks/
for those other speakers. I think BrE would be /,ik@'nA.mIks/ (the
"bother" vowel rather than "father").)
Wood Avens
wrote:
>Oh, don't forget the US tendency to "shwa" every unstressed
>interconsonantal vowel. ED-up-us. Of course, I have seen and heard
>"edafus"(edifice) for the same character.
>
Along similar lines, I was interested this morning to hear an American
who was being interviewed on BBC radio 4's Today programme say
"epoch", pronounced "eppuk". Most Brits I know would say "ee-pock".
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
R H Draney
>
>On Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:29:41 -0500, "Pat Durkin" <durk...@msn.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>>Oh, don't forget the US tendency to "shwa" every unstressed
>>interconsonantal vowel. ED-up-us. Of course, I have seen and heard
>>"edafus"(edifice) for the same character.
>>
>
>Along similar lines, I was interested this morning to hear an American
>who was being interviewed on BBC radio 4's Today programme say
>"epoch", pronounced "eppuk". Most Brits I know would say "ee-pock".
Well spotted...yes, for many Americans, "epoch" and "epic" are near
homophones....r