Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: slavekal
Some folks even try to use big, fancy words, but they don't bother to look up the spelling (Shakespear, viseral?).
While my spelling and grammar tend to be passable, I am certainly not inclined to look up the spelling of a word, when I could use that time to express myself better instead. After all, who cares if some nitpick is upset with the spelling. It's far worse to lose the readers who are actually making an honest attempt at reading and understanding, or to fail to fully convey one's meaning, which is what can easily happen when one spends audit time on spelling instead of content and semantic clarity.
Incidentally, what the -bleep- is a "big, fancy word?"
For the most part, people who- like me- employ an extensive vocabulary, do so in order to avoid monotony in writing, or to convey the intent with as much precision as possible. That assists in reaching some readers, although some also find it harder to read, since they end up having to either guess at the meaning of those words, or look them up (there's that thing again, looking stuff up). Vocabulary sizes can differ by orders of magnitude, after all. That doesn't mean that all who use an extensive vocabulary have to be doing so out of vanity. Some simply realize that any approach will be a compromise, and choose to make as few compromises with the text itself as possible.
quote:
How adults don't know the difference between YOUR and YOU'RE is beyond me. And of course there is the old favorite, confusing DOMINATE with DOMINANT. It is kind of amusing to see a profile from a self proclaimed goddess who thinks that alot is one word.
Let's have a look at this from a few different angles...
First, there's the one you're talking about: people who are simply careless. Those are usually accompanied by a number of very distinct errors, and the absence of certain other errors, unless they are intentionally writing that way, which tends to only be the case with people who are writing phonetically (which falls under the heading of the other angles), or who are using l33tspeak or some other intentional mangling.
Second, as far as the spelling "alot" is concerned, it's actually in some dictionaries, notably the one my browser uses. It is also notable that from a prevalent linguistic point of view, actual use is the real reference, meaning that "alot" is really an emerging word, whose primary use is demonstrated in the phrase "a lot of people post here alot." The alternative is to go with the definition based approach, in which case I'd note that Her Majesty the Queen's English- as well as the American misspellings thereof- hasn't always had the same form. Its spelling, its vocabulary, and even its grammar, has changed over the years, and will continue to do so. In that view, it is desireable and inevitable that some will be out of sync with the normative form, to allow the language to continue to evolve.
Third, there are people with disabilities that affect their ability to spell, and in some cases to even properly distinguish the letters they are writing. Regardless of any errors that may arise, it is plain ignorance to fail to acknowledge that there is a substantial amount of effort that has already gone into writing. That level of effort, which I- unlike you- have had the opportunity to witness firsthand, is a substantial credit to those people, and dismissing someone with the motivation and fortitude to overcome such a disability just saves the good ones for less ignorant or less nitpicky people than yourself.
Fourth, there are a number of non-trivial issues with not having English as a native language, e.g.: - Germanic languages readily construct compound words on the fly ("alot" is how we'd do it in Afrikaans, Danish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, etc.), which English used to do, but now mostly does in trademarks; this reduction in the productivity of the English language is bound to cause some mistakes to occur when those who are native speakers of compound-productive languages write English text. Mistakes that aren't all that easy to avoid.
- Regarding "your," "youre," and "you're," those three are not phonetically distinct, which raises the bar significantly for a non-native speaker or one that relies on phonetics (many dyslexics do). These people readily distinguish the semantics of the three, but not the spelling. Also, in some languages, the relevant bar construct doesn't even have an explicit syntactic representation. (English is terribly redundant in terms of vocabulary, grammar, syntax and idiomatic inventory, as you hopefully know.) That makes it akin to being red-green color blind and having to discriminate red-green color contrast on a regular basis.
- Many of the contractions in English are for all intents and purposes not distinguishable from a suffix in writing or speech. Several languages, including my own, use suffix based conjugations for many of the things where English uses contractions, sometimes also employing a form of the suffix as a particle in the constructs where English will not allow a contraction. That is almost certainly how English will end up, as well. Some languages that have gone through this transition already will lend themselves to confusing these. Note that many courses in English will tend to emphasize the need to use contractions to lend a natural feel to the language, often long before the students have an adequate comprehension of the concepts involved, or of the uncontracted forms, thus adding to the risk of introducing a lasting confusion. A vocabulary, of course, doesn't help at all with this.
Finally, the English vocabulary, and its obscure, convoluted spelling conventions- the result of several major transitions in spelling that have been partially overlapping with the codification of standards- has a very large set of words that are either phonetically identical or have identical spellings, or both.
But, sure. It's incomprehensible how people can fail to keep the "simplest" matters straight. To you, at least. That's a limitation all of your own (well, in all fairness, you do share it with some other nitpicks), and sadly enough, it seems to be of your own making. Really, how retarded is that?
I find it fully comprehensible that, given as much time to study my language as e.g. nephandi has spent studying yours, you still won't be able to distinguish between something as simple as the number "one," the indefinite article "a" / "an," and the definite article suffix equivalent to "the." For me, it requires actual concentration to be aware of the distinction between "en" (one), "én" (one), "en" (a/an), "ei" (a/an), "et" (a/an), "-en" (the), "-a" (the), and "-et" (the), since they're part of my native language. For you, however, there will be hours upon hours of rote memorization, and you'll still be making more mistakes with it than nephandi does with am/are/is or your/you're, while making less sense.
And, of course, from what I've seen of your posting so far, the content will be less interesting, as well.
For a self proclaimed slave (Princeton definition follows), you're rather free with your sarcasm.
slave, n.:
a person who is owned by someone
someone who works as hard as a slave
work very hard, like a slave
someone entirely dominated by some influence or person; "a slave to fashion"; "a slave to cocaine"; "his mother was his abject slave"
Or were we going with the "actual use" version?
The one that allows "alot?"
Health,
al-Aswad.
P.S.: English punctuation is not universal, either, and quoted punctuation associates the "wrong" way.
< Message edited by Aswad -- 7/18/2009 7:32:46 PM >
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Spelling/Grammar (again?) - 
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