clawing your eyes out

[Alan J Rosenthal]

Some spelling errors just make you want to claw your eyes out.
This evening's example: expatriate spelled "ex-patriot".

Fucking moron. If you are writing, how can you not realize that the
words you choose have meaning and the meaning matters?

[TimC]

On 2014-03-02, Alan J Rosenthal (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

If you were patriotic, you would have stayed despite the fact that
your country is turning to shit!

--
Thus sprach TimC
A computer's attention span is only as long as its power cord.

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <2014Mar1.2...@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu>,

Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
>Some spelling errors just make you want to claw your eyes out.
>This evening's example: expatriate spelled "ex-patriot".

It's called an "eggcorn", and an object of serious linguistic study.
They generally happen when one uses a word in writing that one has
only heard spoken. (The converse -- "spelling pronunciation" -- is
more common, since written English tends more towards recondite
vocabulary than spoken English does.)

Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about linguistics
makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.

-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

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On Sun, 02 Mar 2014 07:26:05 +0000, Garrett Wollman wrote:
[...]

> Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about linguistics
> makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.

But less difficult if it is self-inflicted. Sometimes it's more bearable
to just shut up. I have a lot of skeletons in that closet.

--
WD

Who is Entscheidungs and what is his problem?

[LP]

On 2014-03-02, Garrett Wollman <wol...@bimajority.org> wrote:
>
> It's called an "eggcorn", and an object of serious linguistic study.
> They generally happen when one uses a word in writing that one has
> only heard spoken.

My favourite example recently was "80hd" instead of adhd.

For years I'd heard "yosemite" spoken, but hadn't seen it written down.

When I eventualy did see it written, my internal pronounciation of it was
completely wrong, to the point that I completely failed to make the
association that it was the same place.

It took several years before I realised what had happened and corrected
my mental model.

Luckilly I had never had cause to read the word out loud, so got away with
it - but your post made me wonder if there was a term for that sort of mental
disconnect?

-Paul
--
http://paulseward.com

[Alan J Rosenthal]

wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) writes:
>Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about linguistics
>makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.

I've learned more than a little about linguistics, actually.

I've heard the term "egg corn". But giving it a name doesn't make those
performing the behaviour any less luserly.

Thinking that "acorn" is actually "egg corn" isn't as stupid as the example I
cited, because "egg corn" doesn't have other existing meaning.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <leumed$2gbf$1...@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, on 03/02/2014

at 07:26 AM, wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) said:

>Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about
>linguistics makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.

Or makes it easier.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

[John Burnham]

On Mon, 03 Mar 2014 08:11:08 -0500, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:

> In <leumed$2gbf$1...@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, on 03/02/2014
> at 07:26 AM, wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) said:
>
>>Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about linguistics
>>makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.
>
> Or makes it easier.

Only if you don't get it. Most linguists I know find linguistic pedantry
to be risible.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <1bt*TT...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, on 03/03/2014

Let the linguists deal with hardware and software where precision
matters and they may change their minds. It is *not* true that too
understand all is to forgive all.

[Alan J Rosenthal]

John Burnham <jo...@jaka.demon.co.uk> writes:
>Most linguists I know find linguistic pedantry to be risible.

I agree that complaining about double negatives, split infinitives,
"me and Sally" as a subject, etc, is silly [footnote]. Especially in
speech or things like text messages and web forum postings.

But surely the purpose of speaking is to communicate something. If you
choose your words sufficiently poorly, you fail to communicate. It took
me a while to figure out what that moron actually meant by "ex-patriot".
Assuming that he was attempting to communicate rather than to confuse,
he's a moron. Ceasing to live in a country and ceasing to feel patriotic
about that country are completely different concepts, and he's failing
to distinguish between them, which is stupid.


[footnote] For example, when you say "I don't see anybody", 'anybody'
is also a negative word. It's grammatically incorrect in my dialect
to say "I don't see somebody". In a different dialect the replacement
for 'somebody' is 'nobody' rather than 'anybody'; it's just a different
dialect, operating under the same principles. It's entirely clear what
you mean if you say "I don't see nobody". Pedants who claim that this
means that you _do_ see _somebody_ are also morons.

[David Cameron Staples]

On 4/03/14 12:11 AM, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <leumed$2gbf$1...@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, on 03/02/2014
> at 07:26 AM, wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) said:
>
>> Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about
>> linguistics makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.
>
> Or makes it easier.
>

Just about every feature of the language you are using now (whatever
language that is) can be traced back to what fifty, or a hundred, or
five hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand, years ago were mistakes,
and roundly condemned as such at the time.


Ref., eg.: Appendix Probi, which marks as explicit mistakes all the
processes which turned Latin into the Romance Languages.

--
David Cameron Staples | staples AT unimelb DOT edu DOT au
Melbourne University | ITS | Hosting | Unix Operations
He said "it's all in your head", I said "So's everything", but he
didn't get it. -- Fiona Apple: _Paper Bag_

[Wojciech Derechowski]

On Tue, 04 Mar 2014 22:54:18 +0000, Alan J Rosenthal wrote:
> John Burnham <jo...@jaka.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>Most linguists I know find linguistic pedantry to be risible.

[...]

> But surely the purpose of speaking is to communicate something. If you
> choose your words sufficiently poorly, you fail to communicate. It took
> me a while to figure out what that moron actually meant by "ex-patriot".

Which reminds me of two saleswomen who were rearranging forniture in their
office. It took me a while to figure out why they couldn't log in to their
boxes afterwards. The keyboard of one ended up in front of the display of
another. It took full five sec. before I realised what happened, a true
higlight of my career as security geek sice I was called on scene as such.

[John Burnham]

On Tue, 04 Mar 2014 22:54:18 +0000, Alan J Rosenthal wrote:

> But surely the purpose of speaking is to communicate something. If you
> choose your words sufficiently poorly, you fail to communicate.

Indeed. That is the primary test in my opinion - have you successfully
communicated the concept to someone else ? The one caveat I would mention
is that people do judge you on how you communicate so usage that I would
find acceptable in informal communication would ring warning bells if I
saw it, say, on a job application letter.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <fYs*M0...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, on 03/05/2014

at 09:55 AM, John Burnham <jo...@jaka.demon.co.uk> said:

>Indeed. That is the primary test in my opinion - have you
>successfully communicated the concept to someone else ? The one
>caveat I would mention is that people do judge you on how you
>communicate so usage that I would find acceptable in informal
>communication would ring warning bells if I saw it, say, on a job
>application letter.

While I might reject a candidate for using the incorrect word, I would
never reject one for violating arbitrary rules[1] of grammar, e.g.,
for dangling participles.

[1] Some of which are Latin rules inappropriately imposed on
English.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <lf5n1a$7n2$1...@dont-email.me>, on 03/05/2014

at 10:19 AM, David Cameron Staples <cats...@gmail.com> said:

>On 4/03/14 12:11 AM, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
>> In <leumed$2gbf$1...@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, on 03/02/2014
>> at 07:26 AM, wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) said:
>>
>>> Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about
>>> linguistics makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.
>>
>> Or makes it easier.
>>

>Just about every feature of the language you are using now (whatever
>language that is) can be traced back to what fifty, or a hundred, or
>five hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand, years ago were
>mistakes,

Do you believe that all mistakes are created equal? Would you want
your doctor to write a homophone of the word he had in mind if your
life depended on the difference?

[John Burnham]

On Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:57:56 -0500, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:

> While I might reject a candidate for using the incorrect word, I would
> never reject one for violating arbitrary rules[1] of grammar, e.g., for
> dangling participles.
>

I was more thinking (as an extreme example) of someone sending you their
CV written entirely in txtspk or l33tspeak or l0lspeak. Those maybe
acceptable means of communication in an informal situation but not in a
job application.

[David Cameron Staples]

On Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:52:43 -0500, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:

> In <lf5n1a$7n2$1...@dont-email.me>, on 03/05/2014
> at 10:19 AM, David Cameron Staples <cats...@gmail.com> said:
>
>>On 4/03/14 12:11 AM, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
>>> In <leumed$2gbf$1...@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, on 03/02/2014
>>> at 07:26 AM, wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) said:
>>>
>>>> Putting even a small amount of effort into learning about linguistics
>>>> makes it more difficult to indulge in word rage.
>>>
>>> Or makes it easier.
>>>
>>>
>>Just about every feature of the language you are using now (whatever
>>language that is) can be traced back to what fifty, or a hundred, or
>>five hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand, years ago were mistakes,
>
> Do you believe that all mistakes are created equal? Would you want your
> doctor to write a homophone of the word he had in mind if your life
> depended on the difference?

Is that a strawman I smell burning?

If my life depended on a homophone or homograph, I would hope that my
doctor would phrase things in a way that disambiguated, because some
things *are* mistakes. And that sort of mistake happens in medicine too.
(Although less commonly than you might think, because a lot of medical
language is less a language than a code.)

[Peter Corlett]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
[...]

> Do you believe that all mistakes are created equal? Would you want your
> doctor to write a homophone of the word he had in mind if your life depended
> on the difference?

Ah, the good old hypo- versus hyper-. You'd have thought that the medical
community would have realised they're inviting the fuckup fairy to tea and
started to use different words.

Or is that used as a shibboleth? I certainly find that similar basic mistakes
are useful to spot tree-huggers who are well-meaning but don't understand any
of the science, and can thus quickly ignore anything further they have to say.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <lf9mos$n9s$1...@mooli.org.uk>, on 03/06/2014

at 11:39 AM, ab...@mooli.org.uk (Peter Corlett) said:

>Or is that used as a shibboleth?

I believe that the shibboleth is inflamable versus nonflamable.

[Shmuel Metz]

In <lf7va2$9qm$1...@dont-email.me>, on 03/05/2014
at 07:52 PM, David Cameron Staples <sta...@unimelb.edu.au.NOSPAM>
said:

>Is that a strawman I smell burning?

No. Semantics do matter, and real problems have occurred as the result
of getting them wrong, even down under.

[Alan J. Wylie]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:

> In <lf9mos$n9s$1...@mooli.org.uk>, on 03/06/2014
> at 11:39 AM, ab...@mooli.org.uk (Peter Corlett) said:
>
>>Or is that used as a shibboleth?
>
> I believe that the shibboleth is inflamable versus nonflamable.

No! Please don't remind me of the srqrengrq vqragvgl fbyhgvbn.

The horrors. The horrors.

<Crawls away, whimpering/>

--
Alan J. Wylie http://www.wylie.me.uk/

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; firedrake.r "Roger Bell_West" opted for empiricism:

> Shmuel Metz wrote:
>>I believe that the shibboleth is inflamable versus nonflamable.
>

>"Let's find out." [whooosh] [aiieeeeee]

- but was that flammable, or inflammable? (- [a])

- love (and, perhaps more significantly, was that that, or who), ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--
[a] - "I like rhetorical questions;
I usually get them right."
- joann l.dominik, 6/95

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; "Seymour J. Shmuel Metz" credulated:

> ab...@mooli.org.uk (Peter Corlett) said:
>>Or is that used as a shibboleth?
>
>I believe that the shibboleth is inflamable versus nonflamable.

- no, not so; _the_ shibboleth was, and always will have
been, "shibboleth" or, at least, the word so represented
in the latin alphabet: if this were not and had not been
the case, shibboleths would not be tho-termed.

- love, ppint.

[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--

"only two groups of people in society actually behave
in a completely logical, self-interested way: one of
these is economists themselves; the other is psychopaths."
- "the trap" - bbc2 18/3/07 [3/18/07 for merkins] 21:55 GMT

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; fl...@dgp.toronto.edu "Alan J Rosenthal" feetnoted:
[]

>[footnote] For example, when you say "I don't see anybody", 'anybody'
>is also a negative word. It's grammatically incorrect in my dialect
>to say "I don't see somebody". In a different dialect the replacement
>for 'somebody' is 'nobody' rather than 'anybody'; it's just a different
>dialect, operating under the same principles. It's entirely clear what
>you mean if you say "I don't see nobody". Pedants who claim that this
>means that you _do_ see _somebody_ are also morons.

- does your comprehensive condemnation cover the reverend
charles lutwidge dodgson and his creations?

- love, ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--

Vat girls - the missing piece to the puzzle of Utopia.
- "quadibloc" (j savard) on rasfwr 16:08:03 gmt 14/8/10 (8/14/10 for merkins)

[Maarten Wiltink]

""ppint. at pplay"" <v$af$pp...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:20140309.033...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk...

> - hi; fl...@dgp.toronto.edu "Alan J Rosenthal" feetnoted:

>> [...] "I don't see nobody". Pedants who claim that this

>> means that you _do_ see _somebody_ are also morons.
>
> - does your comprehensive condemnation cover the reverend
> charles lutwidge dodgson and his creations?

Lewis Carroll not being a pedant, I suspect not.

Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink

[Wojciech Derechowski]

Ehem, no. Not at all. Take "Sets of Concrete Propositions, proposed as
Premisses for Sorites. Conclusions to be found." and this, for instance

(1) Babies are illogical;
(2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile;
(3) Illogical persons are despised. (*)

*) Wordsworth 1996

[Shmuel Metz]

In <20140309.031...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk>, on 03/09/2014

at 03:13 AM, v$af$pp...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk ("ppint. at pplay") said:

> - no, not so; _the_ shibboleth was, and always will have
> been, "shibboleth" or, at least, the word so represented
> in the latin alphabet: if this were not and had not been
> the case, shibboleths would not be tho-termed.

Are you referring to doubling the B to indicate a dagesh or to the
question of whether to transliterate a Thav as "Sav", "Thav" or "Tav"?
Be glad that you don't have to distinguish Aleph from Ayin.

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; maa...@kittensandcats.net "Maarten Wiltink" erred:

> ppint. at pplay"" <v$af$pp...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk> wrote in message

>> - hi; fl...@dgp.toronto.edu "Alan J Rosenthal" feetnoted:
>>> [...] "I don't see nobody". Pedants who claim that this
>>> means that you _do_ see _somebody_ are also morons.
>>
>> - does your comprehensive condemnation cover the reverend
>> charles lutwidge dodgson and his creations?
>
>Lewis Carroll not being a pedant, I suspect not.

‹- vide the king and alice; hatta and heigha (sp?), which
develops into the long-running fight between the lion and
the unicorn, with mutually agreed truce periods for refresh-
ments including cake: and in particular, the king's comments
to alice, regarding the acuity and subject of her vision - ?

- love, ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--

"in a well-governed country, poverty is something to be ashamed of;
in a poorly-governed country, wealth is something to be ashamed of."
- attrib. confucius [ref. needed for quote]

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; "Seymour J. Shmuel Metz" enjoined:

> ppint. at pplay") said:
>> - no, not so; _the_ shibboleth was, and always will have
>> been, "shibboleth" or, at least, the word so represented
>> in the latin alphabet: if this were not and had not been
>> the case, shibboleths would not be tho-termed.
>
>Are you referring to doubling the B to indicate a dagesh or to the
>question of whether to transliterate a Thav as "Sav", "Thav" or "Tav"?
>Be glad that you don't have to distinguish Aleph from Ayin.

- oh i am; believe me, i am. sometimes it seems to me
that the history of human languages is the story of the
progressive simplification of a spoken system or systems
and written systems representing them originally designed
to prevent, or at least limit to the absolute minimum, all
possible communication between individuals and also between
groups thereof, of any size (of groups, or of individuals).

- and sometimes i suspect malign influence, if not design...

- love, ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--

"homeopathic compression: throw away the data and transmit the spaces;
the data to be reconstructed from the spaces by virtue of these having
remembered its shape. the only compression method more effective with
increasing original data density." - yr hmbl srppnt, 1st october 2004

[Ben Coleman]

On 3/5/2014 02:46, Wojciech Derechowski wrote:
> Which reminds me of two saleswomen who were rearranging forniture

^^^^^^^^^

On this group, Shirley that's not a typo?

Ben

[Julian Macassey]

On Mon, 3 Mar 2014 10:57:02 +0000 (UTC), LP <use...@lpbk.net> wrote:
>
> For years I'd heard "yosemite" spoken, but hadn't seen it written down.

I could never fond "La Hoy-Ya" on a map, even when they
told me it was near Sandy Eggo.



--
The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to
be asleep to believe it. - George Carlin

[Joe Zeff]

On Sun, 06 Apr 2014 00:48:19 +0000, Julian Macassey wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Mar 2014 10:57:02 +0000 (UTC), LP <use...@lpbk.net> wrote:
>>
>> For years I'd heard "yosemite" spoken, but hadn't seen it written down.
>
> I could never fond "La Hoy-Ya" on a map, even when they
> told me it was near Sandy Eggo.

When my father moved out here, back in the '30s, he thought that it was
pronounced "La Jo-la," because he'd never studied Spanish.

--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
Stop listening to voices outside your head
and listen to the ones inside for a while.