Change in RD Pedantry? Prepone support group. Cousin Brothers. Postpaid?

[Antariksh Bothale]

Since hardly anyone else on this group bothers to post, here I am again.

So, I was going through Readers Digest some time ago, and I found this article about how Indian English is slowly taking over the world.

In general, I have found RDs language related articles slightly pedantic and prescriptivist, but this seems to have changed in the past couple of years. The article in the September 2010 issue was particularly nice.

Anyhow, I guess everyone on this group knows that prepone is essentially an Indian English word. The opposite of postpone in UK/USA is advance, a verb any person raised in India would find extremely clumsy and unwieldy. I have always been a strong proponent of this prepone, for the simple reason that I see no reason why it shouldn't exist.

pre- is a highly productive morpheme, and considering that it is semantically the opposite of post- it makes perfect sense to use it to modify pone, which comes from the Latin verb ponere, to put.

I think someone on the Lit group made a rather sarcastic remark some time ago that people were using prepone on a Lit group—I am sure he meant to wave the correctness flag in our direction. Except, language correctness is defined with sterner stuff. 

There is also the issue of having cousin brothers and cousin sisters. Prescriptivists will tell you that in EnglishLand, one is allowed to have only cousins, and it is a grave sin to classify them as brothers or sisters in the same sentence.

For speakers of Indian languages with a different term for each relation within 2 degrees of connect, the paltry vocabulary that an otherwise word-rich English provides is bound to be inadequate. How can speakers who need to use bua, mama, phoopha, sadu-bhai, saas, samadhi, devar, jeeja, jeth, bahu, saali, babhi and about as many more appellations in daily life be asked to make do with aunt, uncle and <relation> in law? Cousin brother goes only a short way in filling this gap, but it is a step indeed.

Anyhow, that article brought my notice to another Indian coinage—postpaid.

It is interesting in two ways: first off, it has been derived from pre-paid, so we have a case of a post- morpheme word being derived from a pre- morpheme one. Secondly, if you put it on the table and analyze it, you will realize its weirdness: pre-paid is clear. It has been paid for, pre- the event. post-paid, and you are into trouble—if it's going to be paid for later, it is surely not post-paid?! 

Of course, this is just fun to investigate. It goes without saying that post-paid is correct usage, simply because Indians made it so.

Interestingly, a post-paid envelope used to be one in which the postage was already paid. That is, it was a pre-paid envelope in modern parlance. 

[Ameek Singh]

I dont know if it is strange or what, but I distinctly remember having this particular discussion with my english teacher in school, about the same particular article from RD. Guessing from my memory, I think it was atleast 6 years ago, in 8th or 9th class. Has RD been recycling it's articles from the archives..?!

And, she had the same opinion as you, approving the use of the word "prepone".

[Antariksh Bothale]

Bless her. 

As I said, RD often has articles about language, and there indeed was one about prepone about 6-7 years ago. That article's tone was less liberal, however. They aren't recycling; it's just that prepone has to feature in any discussion about Indian English

2010/11/4 Ameek Singh <ameek...@gmail.com>

I dont know if it is strange or what, but I distinctly remember having this particular discussion with my english teacher in school, about the same particular article from RD. Guessing from my memory, I think it was atleast 6 years ago, in 8th or 9th class. Has RD been recycling it's articles from the archives..?!

And, she had the same opinion as you, approving the use of the word "prepone".

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Antariksh Bothale
Institute Secretary for International Relations
4th Year, Mechanical Engineering
IIT Bombay

[Gopalkrishna Mahale]

 

Hi,

 

This is where English differs from languages like Sanskrit, where rules have been strictly followed, resulting in the language remaining essentially unchanged since its origin, thereby facilitating the transfer of information over millennia. In English, however, rules are bent and meanings modified, occasionally leading to words having contrasting meanings over the centuries (e.g., awful). Interestingly, another article in the Reader's Digest a few years ago also talked on this very topic (e.g., the usage of 'anyways' instead of 'anyway', which is slowly gaining acceptance) albeit in a disapproving tone.

 

Regards,

Gopalkrishna Mahale.

 

P.S.: I had made that 'sarcastic' remark about 'prepone' a few months ago.

[Gopalkrishna Mahale]

Hi,

 

The case of 'cousin' can be considered to be similar to 'student'. And, the usage of 'postpaid' you have pointed out is not solely Indian. See http://www.wireless.att.com/answer-center/main.jsp?t=solutionTab&solutionId=KB65978, http://www.telenor.rs/en/Consumer/Roaming/Postpaid-Roaming/Roaming-Partners/Europe/Slovakia/Telefonica-O2/ and http://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Call_Charges_boo/2-0450_d0e1.htm.

 

Regards,

Gopalkrishna Mahale.

[Sham Thanekar]

Gopal's reply puts across exactly what I wanted to say in a better fashion, but there are still a few points I'd like to add.

Agreed, English is an incredibly rich language that has a larger vocabulary than any other language in the world; agreed, it's so adaptable that it takes words from languages of nearly every region in the world and amalgamates them into the language. Because of the sheer number of words, it is far easier to compose quality poetry in English than in any other language. Despite all this, IMO it is this very wealth of the language that makes it somewhat poor.

Language is first and foremost a means of communication, a means to convey a thought to another person(s), which one should be able to do in the simplest possible fashion. How useful can a language be, that is not only difficult to learn but also difficult to understand? One devotes an inordinate amount of time learning English than any other language, time which can be spent learning something more constructive. We're indeed very lucky to have grown up speaking English, and we're somewhat proficient in what is perhaps the most difficult language in the world.

Take Japanese for example... From whatever limited knowledge of Japanese I have, IMO it strikes the perfect balance between wealth and simplicity. Practically each and every syllable used in the Japanese language can be fit onto one page of a textbook... whereas you could easily make a small textbook writing every syllable used in English. So what if the Japanese can't speak other languages perfectly? They make do with whatever syllables they have and still manage to get the message across. And Japanese has words for objects that we'd never think of making words for, so it's quite a rich language too, without the confusion of having 10 synonyms and 10 antonyms for everything. (Now if only they had a uniform script for everything..)

Or take Malay for example.. they've modified English spelling in such a way that any and every ambiguity in pronunciation is removed and incorporated these modified words into their language. I would personally go and kiss the feet of the people who first decided to do this, as they have successfully removed what is perhaps the biggest flaw in the English language. Malaysia may be a purist's hell, but hey, Malaysians probably learn the language far more easily than we do... to hell with the spelling, they get the message across.

Which, is perhaps what the prepone/advance is all about. Now at this point I really have no idea whether I'm arguing for or against prepone, as I've been guilty of English puritanism myself several times in the past, and will probably continue to be so.

Sham Thanekar
Junior Undergraduate
Department of Chemical Engineering
IIT Bombay

[Antariksh Bothale]

There's a lot on the table now, so here're my replies, and mind you, this mail is going to be long.

This is where English differs from languages like Sanskrit, where rules have been strictly followed, resulting in the language remaining essentially unchanged since its origin, thereby facilitating the transfer of information over millennia. In English, however, rules are bent and meanings modified, occasionally leading to words having contrasting meanings over the centuries (e.g., awful). Interestingly, another article in the Reader's Digest a few years ago also talked on this very topic (e.g., the usage of 'anyways' instead of 'anyway', which is slowly gaining acceptance) albeit in a disapproving tone.

Whenever people talk of English or Sanskrit, there is always this tone of regret, as if English is this erring child that we just somehow have to put up with, while Sanskrit is this mama's boy, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. This is a mindset that I consider extremely puerile and highly misinformed. Needless to say, I think it makes little linguistic sense. 

Since freshie year, many people have asked me what the most efficient language in the world is, or what is the easiest, or what is the most <insert adjective here> language. In 2 cases out of 3, that certain adjectiveness is not even defined in the domain of languages. For eg. how do you even begin to define efficiency of a language? Number of words per sentence? Number of words per info conveyed? How do you then standardize info conveyed? Even if you can do this, I doubt what purpose it will achieve.

Since Sanskrit has been a dead language for several centuries now, people somehow think it came from heaven by fax (Yes, I know this is from The Da Vinci Code). It was a language, a human language, and there was definitely a lot of development and evolution of Sanskrit too, only that it happened millennia ago. The Aryans didn't directly begin to speak perfectly grammatically well-formed sentences. You get my point.

While it can be argued that Panini's Astadhyayi is essentially a prescriptive text, that laid down rules, surely Panini did not think of and come up with Sanskrit grammar all by himself. Agreed, what we consider as Sanskrit is what Panini declared as Sanskrit in his book, it is still some sort of a language snapshot of those times. 

So, I don't really see how people claim that Sanskrit is an unchanging language. It does not change now, because, surprise!, people don't speak it any more.

As a parallel analogy, if English were to become dead tomorrow, and were to be discovered by people 2000 years hence, the grammar books of today and the literary works of today would provide a reliable snapshot of what English was like, just like the Veds and grammar works of Sanskrit tell us what Sanskrit was like.

Language is first and foremost a means of communication, a means to convey a thought to another person(s), which one should be able to do in the simplest possible fashion. How useful can a language be, that is not only difficult to learn but also difficult to understand? One devotes an inordinate amount of time learning English than any other language, time which can be spent learning something more constructive. We're indeed very lucky to have grown up speaking English, and we're somewhat proficient in what is perhaps the most difficult language in the world.

What you have written contradicts what you mentioned in the beginning of the paragraph. A language is a means of communication. Do you think a native English speaker cares if English is tough to acquire by foreigners? It is not English' fault that it is ubiquitous, and it is certainly not English' responsibility to simplify itself. Hindi is a nastily difficult language to acquire too. What if it were in English' place? Would you then castigate it for being too difficult?

If you are against the fact that a seemingly difficult and irresponsible language like English has become the lingua franca of the world, and if you would rather have Japanese or Sanskrit in its place, your sentiments are probably justified, but they are completely out of the scope of this group, I guess, since these things are controlled not by linguistics but majorly by politics. 

Take Japanese for example... From whatever limited knowledge of Japanese I have, IMO it strikes the perfect balance between wealth and simplicity. Practically each and every syllable used in the Japanese language can be fit onto one page of a textbook... whereas you could easily make a small textbook writing every syllable used in English. So what if the Japanese can't speak other languages perfectly? They make do with whatever syllables they have and still manage to get the message across. And Japanese has words for objects that we'd never think of making words for, so it's quite a rich language too, without the confusion of having 10 synonyms and 10 antonyms for everything. (Now if only they had a uniform script for everything..)

So, Japanese has an easy syllabic structure. So what, exactly? On one side, you have people who think their language is awesome because it has lots of sounds while you are now hailing Japanese for just the opposite. Arabic speakers, Thamizh speakers, Marathi speakers, I have had so so so many people act all snobbish about their language because it has more sounds. 

Languages having 10 synonyms and 10 antonyms for words would generally qualify as being rich, but I guess it is English' fault. As for having words for everything, it doesn't really tell much if a language has extra nouns. In case of verbs and adjectives, maybe it is interesting to observe. Anyhow, read this.

Yes, English has spelling issues. Yes, it is difficult to learn, and confusing like hell. Yes, it is riddled with inconsistencies. Is it unfair that such a language is the international language? Probably. Does it make English any better or worse than any other language? No.

[Sham Thanekar]

If you are against the fact that a seemingly difficult and irresponsible language like English has become the lingua franca of the world, and if you would rather have Japanese or Sanskrit in its place, your sentiments are probably justified, but they are completely out of the scope of this group, I guess, since these things are controlled not by linguistics but majorly by politics.

I never made any mention or lamented the fact that English is ubiquitous, I've just alluded to the fact that we have studied it. And c'mon, man.. this is a language group.. there ought to be freedom of speach. At least I haven't posted anything about random language-unrelated topics.

So, Japanese has an easy syllabic structure. So what, exactly? On one side, you have people who think their language is awesome because it has lots of sounds while you are now hailing Japanese for just the opposite.

My opinion. Everyone else can go stick some-or-the-other part of their body in some-or-the-other place where it doesn't belong. So there. </sarcasm>

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[Mukund Madhav]

@Sham,
There was no <sarcasm>. So there can't be any </sarcasm>

[Antariksh Bothale]

No-one is curtailing freedom of speech here. But in case the conclusion I drew about your mail was wrong, I would like to know what the point was.

[Sham Thanekar]

My point: If you cut, chop, mutilate the language classification tree and eventually simplify it, you could grade languages on this scale:

simplicity-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----wealth/awesomeness/complexity/shittyness

English, the vocab-rich, flexible, structureless language, falls on the extreme right and is the benchmark with which complexity of any language should be compared (English = 1. All other languages < 1). Japanese is very close to 0.5. I likeses 0.5. I hateses 1.

On 4 November 2010 22:50, Antariksh Bothale <antariks...@gmail.com> wrote:

No-one is curtailing freedom of speech here. But in case the conclusion I drew about your mail was wrong, I would like to know what the point was.

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[Sham Thanekar]

You know, like Goldilocks. 0.5 is just right.

[Mukund Madhav]

No you cannot. Sanskrit is a very rich language. And it is simple.
Simplicity means that if a -> b in one case, then a always -> b.
Wealth means that there exist c, d such that a = c = d. as opposed to just a alone.
Putting simplicity and wealth at opposite ends of a chopped off tree is just wrong.

[Sham Thanekar]

It's a spherical tree. Whatever. As Antrix said, Sanskrit has just stopped evolving. And the crazy number of sounds involved do make it complex in a way.

[Antariksh Bothale]

Anyhow, this is courtesy Mehul:

The Maharashtra Tourism website is in English, Marathi and Japanese. Now isn't that cute.

http://www.maharashtratourism.gov.in/

Agreed that the JP version doesn't work right now, but still.

[Gopalkrishna Mahale]

 

 

Hi,

 

I have included my views inline.

Regards,

Gopal. 

 

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Antariksh Bothale <antariks...@gmail.com> wrote:

There's a lot on the table now, so here're my replies, and mind you, this mail is going to be long.

This is where English differs from languages like Sanskrit, where rules have been strictly followed, resulting in the language remaining essentially unchanged since its origin, thereby facilitating the transfer of information over millennia. In English, however, rules are bent and meanings modified, occasionally leading to words having contrasting meanings over the centuries (e.g., awful). Interestingly, another article in the Reader's Digest a few years ago also talked on this very topic (e.g., the usage of 'anyways' instead of 'anyway', which is slowly gaining acceptance) albeit in a disapproving tone.

Whenever people talk of English or Sanskrit, there is always this tone of regret, as if English is this erring child that we just somehow have to put up with, while Sanskrit is this mama's boy, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. This is a mindset that I consider extremely puerile and highly misinformed. Needless to say, I think it makes little linguistic sense. 

 

The superiority of a language over others has not been asserted. I was expressing my fascination for linguistic prescription, which is as intense as your aversion for it.

 

Since freshie year, many people have asked me what the most efficient language in the world is, or what is the easiest, or what is the most <insert adjective here> language. In 2 cases out of 3, that certain adjectiveness is not even defined in the domain of languages. For eg. how do you even begin to define efficiency of a language? Number of words per sentence? Number of words per info conveyed? How do you then standardize info conveyed? Even if you can do this, I doubt what purpose it will achieve.

Since Sanskrit has been a dead language for several centuries now, people somehow think it came from heaven by fax (Yes, I know this is from The Da Vinci Code). It was a language, a human language, and there was definitely a lot of development and evolution of Sanskrit too, only that it happened millennia ago. The Aryans didn't directly begin to speak perfectly grammatically well-formed sentences. You get my point.

 

 

The statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is debatable.

 

While it can be argued that Panini's Astadhyayi is essentially a prescriptive text, that laid down rules, surely Panini did not think of and come up with Sanskrit grammar all by himself. Agreed, what we consider as Sanskrit is what Panini declared as Sanskrit in his book, it is still some sort of a language snapshot of those times. 

So, I don't really see how people claim that Sanskrit is an unchanging language. It does not change now, because, surprise!, people don't speak it any more.

 

There are places in India (Mattur in Karnataka and some others in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan), where people converse in Sanskrit.

 

As a parallel analogy, if English were to become dead tomorrow, and were to be discovered by people 2000 years hence, the grammar books of today and the literary works of today would provide a reliable snapshot of what English was like, just like the Veds and grammar works of Sanskrit tell us what Sanskrit was like.

 

And, Sanskrit hasn't been discovered all of a sudden. It has been passed on from generation to generation in the form of texts and other literature. And, if English becomes dead in the future, it is possible that words (or meanings) becoming obsolete with time may become incomprehensible unless documented.

 

Language is first and foremost a means of communication, a means to convey a thought to another person(s), which one should be able to do in the simplest possible fashion. How useful can a language be, that is not only difficult to learn but also difficult to understand? One devotes an inordinate amount of time learning English than any other language, time which can be spent learning something more constructive. We're indeed very lucky to have grown up speaking English, and we're somewhat proficient in what is perhaps the most difficult language in the world.

What you have written contradicts what you mentioned in the beginning of the paragraph. A language is a means of communication. Do you think a native English speaker cares if English is tough to acquire by foreigners? It is not English' fault that it is ubiquitous, and it is certainly not English' responsibility to simplify itself. Hindi is a nastily difficult language to acquire too. What if it were in English' place? Would you then castigate it for being too difficult?

 

Hindi (like most Indian languages and unlike English) is phonetic. Hence, I can comprehend the destination of a bus (written only in Kannada) in Bangalore by knowing only the script. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti. What I mean to say is that all langauges are difficult to learn, but the phonetic nature of a language simplifies the understanding of a part of it.

 

If you are against the fact that a seemingly difficult and irresponsible language like English has become the lingua franca of the world, and if you would rather have Japanese or Sanskrit in its place, your sentiments are probably justified, but they are completely out of the scope of this group, I guess, since these things are controlled not by linguistics but majorly by politics. 

Take Japanese for example... From whatever limited knowledge of Japanese I have, IMO it strikes the perfect balance between wealth and simplicity. Practically each and every syllable used in the Japanese language can be fit onto one page of a textbook... whereas you could easily make a small textbook writing every syllable used in English. So what if the Japanese can't speak other languages perfectly? They make do with whatever syllables they have and still manage to get the message across. And Japanese has words for objects that we'd never think of making words for, so it's quite a rich language too, without the confusion of having 10 synonyms and 10 antonyms for everything. (Now if only they had a uniform script for everything..)

So, Japanese has an easy syllabic structure. So what, exactly? On one side, you have people who think their language is awesome because it has lots of sounds while you are now hailing Japanese for just the opposite. Arabic speakers, Thamizh speakers, Marathi speakers, I have had so so so many people act all snobbish about their language because it has more sounds. 

 

Tamil has lesser sounds than most languages.

 

Languages having 10 synonyms and 10 antonyms for words would generally qualify as being rich, but I guess it is English' fault. As for having words for everything, it doesn't really tell much if a language has extra nouns. In case of verbs and adjectives, maybe it is interesting to observe. Anyhow, read this.

 

He is as entitled to have an opinion on language as we are.

 

Yes, English has spelling issues. Yes, it is difficult to learn, and confusing like hell. Yes, it is riddled with inconsistencies. Is it unfair that such a language is the international language? Probably. Does it make English any better or worse than any other language? No.

 

No language is better or worse than any other.

[Ameek Singh]

I am taking a minor in "language & Literature" and feel kind of an obligation to myself to contribute to this discussion. In the first stage of our course, the prof discussed "creole". She forced some of the purists to think again, that why is adhering to grammatical rules, correct phrasing of sentences so important so as to forget the point of 'language', which is to basically communicate,get your point across. Why the new words being added to English, like "chutney/ bazaar / prepone" was wrong or right?(she did not take a stand).

 

One of the assignments in the course was the classic dystopian novel  "1984", in which George orwell describes a new language, which is being carved out of the remnants of English. This language "newspeak", had only one word for each concept, and no specific antonyms. it was just "good-ungood", and the two were enough to describe all degrees of goodness. The argument he presented was that the more you limit the vocabulory of the language, you limit the thought process, you fence in the whole population. This was a clever way of mataining their authority, thought policing the people. When there cannot be any interpretations other from the exact meaning of the words, you've taken away the beauty of language. Goin by this language

 

And then she shared the view that language is one of the most underappreciated invention of the human race. It's participation in shaping history is never given the credit it deserves. It is not just a medium of communication, it is actually one of the most important inventions of the man, allthough it may have come naturallly to him.

 

And, it will make for an interesting reading for all of you language enthusiasts on the possible conceiving of the whole language from "One Sign"

http://www.ruanyifeng.com/calvino/2007/07/ch_3_a_sign_in_space.html

 

This was a very rudimentry post, and basically reflecting the ideas from my minor course. BTW, it is an awesome course(HSS 213), makes me wake up atleast 2 days of the week...!

--
Ameek Singh

[Antariksh Bothale]

The statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is debatable.

There are places in India (Mattur in Karnataka and some others in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan), where people converse in Sanskrit.

About a lakh speakers of Sanskrit do not create enough momentum to change it Gopal. Are these people writing books and making the language they speak appear on various media? All this is necessary for languages to evolve. I am sure that they are sticking to the Panini Sanskrit, and since there isn't a lot of active literature or usage in mass media, their version of Sanskrit will evolve much less, if at all. Of course, I may be wrong with the facts here—maybe there is a lot of current literature, in which case you may please correct me.

 

And, Sanskrit hasn't been discovered all of a sudden. It has been passed on from generation to generation in the form of texts and other literature. And, if English becomes dead in the future, it is possible that words (or meanings) becoming obsolete with time may become incomprehensible unless documented.

My point exactly. Sanskrit did not happen overnight. Nor did English. If it becomes dead in the future, our current grammar texts, and this huge mass of English literature that we have would be a veritable and reliable guide to what English was like. 

 

Language is first and foremost a means of communication, a means to convey a thought to another person(s), which one should be able to do in the simplest possible fashion. How useful can a language be, that is not only difficult to learn but also difficult to understand? One devotes an inordinate amount of time learning English than any other language, time which can be spent learning something more constructive. We're indeed very lucky to have grown up speaking English, and we're somewhat proficient in what is perhaps the most difficult language in the world.

What you have written contradicts what you mentioned in the beginning of the paragraph. A language is a means of communication. Do you think a native English speaker cares if English is tough to acquire by foreigners? It is not English' fault that it is ubiquitous, and it is certainly not English' responsibility to simplify itself. Hindi is a nastily difficult language to acquire too. What if it were in English' place? Would you then castigate it for being too difficult?

 

Hindi (like most Indian languages and unlike English) is phonetic. Hence, I can comprehend the destination of a bus (written only in Kannada) in Bangalore by knowing only the script. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti. What I mean to say is that all langauges are difficult to learn, but the phonetic nature of a language simplifies the understanding of a part of it. 

Simplifies learning considerably for foreigners. Languages do not exist to be easy to learn for foreigners. They just are. If you can learn some other language comfortably, good for you! If you can't because the other language has 31 noun cases and 100 different types of syllables, it's unfortunate, but it does not make the language good or bad.

 

If you are against the fact that a seemingly difficult and irresponsible language like English has become the lingua franca of the world, and if you would rather have Japanese or Sanskrit in its place, your sentiments are probably justified, but they are completely out of the scope of this group, I guess, since these things are controlled not by linguistics but majorly by politics. 

Take Japanese for example... From whatever limited knowledge of Japanese I have, IMO it strikes the perfect balance between wealth and simplicity. Practically each and every syllable used in the Japanese language can be fit onto one page of a textbook... whereas you could easily make a small textbook writing every syllable used in English. So what if the Japanese can't speak other languages perfectly? They make do with whatever syllables they have and still manage to get the message across. And Japanese has words for objects that we'd never think of making words for, so it's quite a rich language too, without the confusion of having 10 synonyms and 10 antonyms for everything. (Now if only they had a uniform script for everything..)

So, Japanese has an easy syllabic structure. So what, exactly? On one side, you have people who think their language is awesome because it has lots of sounds while you are now hailing Japanese for just the opposite. Arabic speakers, Thamizh speakers, Marathi speakers, I have had so so so many people act all snobbish about their language because it has more sounds. 

 

Tamil has lesser sounds than most languages.

Which makes it worse that a few of its speakers are snobbish about their language having a lot of sounds, doesn't it? :)

No language is better or worse than any other.

I am glad we see eye to eye on that. :)

 

[Sham Thanekar]

And the battle of romanticism vs. pragmatism continues.

And about 'anyways', I'll still be as rabidly against it as I've always been. If you think about it, 'anyway' expands out to 'in any way', while the same expansion carried out with 'anyways' is just wrong both grammatically and intuitively. All it is is the result of the obsession of appending any and every word with the 'z' sound.

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[Sham Thanekar]

What we need is more hot girls wearing this:





Interestingly, when I searched for 'It's anyway, not anyways' on Google, the suggestion said: Did you mean: it's anyway, and anyways

Clicking on the link didn't bring up any meaningful articles.

[Antariksh Bothale]

Well yeah, I don't like anyways either, but then, 100 years ago, I am sure people were rabidly against It is me also, insisting that it should be It is I. Such is the way languages work.

[Sham Thanekar]

But saying "It is me" is easier phonetically than saying "It is I". All "anyways" does is add an unnecessary extra sound to the word. Any idea where does the 'z' obsession comes from?

On 5 November 2010 18:05, Antariksh Bothale <antariks...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well yeah, I don't like anyways either, but then, 100 years ago, I am sure people were rabidly against It is me also, insisting that it should be It is I. Such is the way languages work.

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[Antariksh Bothale]

Cuz its kul

> Junior UndergraduateDepartment of Chemical Engineering
> IIT Bombay
>
>
>

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[sham.t...@gmail.com]

Was just discussing the vagaries of the English language with dad. At the end of it, I said (in jest, of course) that English sucks.

His reply: agreed, but it sucks mighty well
:D


Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

[Gopalkrishna Mahale]

 

Hi,

 

Another example is the use of 'pass out' instead of 'graduate'. The common usage is valid as in http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/pass-out_2#pass-out_2__2.

 

Regards,

Gopal.

[Antariksh Bothale]

I've written a post on the issues around which this thread revolved. Recent trends on the Lit group would have me paste the contents here, but I guess I will just give you the link. Have a look if interested.

Grammar, and why it's not about clarity.

Part 1 http://www.linguistrix.com/blog/?p=289

Part 2 http://www.linguistrix.com/blog/?p=340