After posting, I picked up the Mark Twain autobiography again, and the next page was "Comment on Tautology and Grammar."
I suppose we all have our foibles. I like the exact word, and clarity of statement, and here and there a touch of good grammar for picturesqueness; but that reviewer cares for only the last-mentioned of these things. His grammar is foolishly correct, offensively precise. It flaunts itself in the reader's face all along, and struts and smirks and shows off, and is in a dozen ways irritating and disagreeable. To be serious, I write good grammar myself, but not in that spirit, I am thankful to say.
He finishes with humor about his distrust of such people, and says, "They stop at nothing."
A reminder from Clemens that being a stickler has its limits. Thank goodness this board isn't demanding. But . . . there has been a bit of humorous twitting here and there.
and here and there a touch of good grammar for picturesqueness
Lol! Well put. There's a long and robust and worthy tradition of pointing out the limits of correctness. Augustine wrote:
Whether we say 'inter homines' or 'inter hominibus' has no influence on him who wants to know the facts. Likewise, is barbarism anything else than to pronounce a word with other letters and sounds than they used to do who spoke Latin before us? Whether 'ignoscere' ('to forgive') is pronounced with the third syllable long or short is of no interest to the person who asks God to forgive him his sins.
At work we recently interviewed a woman whose cover letter told us she liked us because of our "strong interest in pubic service." Of course I was the only one to notice this, at like the 10th round stage of interviews, and of course I had the bad fortune to notice this before I had to sit across a table from her for 15 minutes. Of course I had a bit of a cold and fever that day too. Of course I pointed the error out to one other person, who shared it with everyone else. And of course they'll hire her - no one else seemed to care about that or the glaring error on page one of her writing sample, and it's not like I would dare express a negative opinion about someone the boss so obviously is going to hire. Sometimes it seems more embarassing to be the type of person who notices errors than the type that makes them. I'm generally not the grammar police type, but pubic service ... c'mon.
Chortle. I've been involved in evaluating applications to a research seminar for faculty. Three applicants all cited the same major education theorist in their essays as a significant influence on their thinking. Only one of the three got close to spelling his name correctly. Does not make a good impression.
Having been away over the weekend -I saw 31 comments on this thread. I thought great - a new discussion on jazz. How wrong I am!! I would always put the full stop out of the quotes (note use of term full stop!!!!), but I was never that good at English anyway, so who am I to say what is right? Music Me - from my fairly frequentt visits to Europe, including France, I get the impression that a lot of companies, particularly in retailing and simialr, like to use English (American?) to show how cool, relevant, uptodate etc they are with younger customers. In Belgium three months ago we were utterly amazed at the increasing amount of English in shop windows, including a number of retailer names. Music Me is just part of that movement. Everyone there appears to be able to speak English really well - I actually wonder why we teach foreign languages in schools now. I heard a very eminent professor at University of London argue that the only reason to teach a foreign language now is because of the cultural reasons given that American Englsih is so widespread everywhere. He suggested that by 2050 over 70% of the World will speak American. Music Me is part of that process.
The US norm is all periods and commas inside all speech marks, regardless of the logic of which linguistic unit the punctuation belongs to.
This is correct. Editored! also:
He said, "I can't believe Emu charges $9 for a ten minute 'album.'" Likewise for 'club' in your example.
He kept runnin'. Or, "He kept runnin'."
A great resource for this stuff is the English-only forum at Wordreference.com. Almost every question you can think of has been asked and answered there. There are other language forums as well...even a German one!
He suggested that by 2050 over 70% of the World will speak American. Music Me is part of that process.
Given that the last actual stat I saw was around 25% of the world being able to converse in English, I'm pretty confident that is bull. And putting a trendy English word in your store name is far from evidence of "speak[ing] American" - as evidenced e.g. by the existence in France of knitwear stores with names like "Sweaty". English still tends to cluster around airports, tourist centers, and business and political transactions. If you want to talk to any people outside those spheres you still need to speak another language. Not to mention more basic ethical concerns about whether you want everyone else to do all the work for you. Moreover, the forms of English that are growing fastest at the periphery are hybridized forms that are neither US nor UK English, more like pidgins that are developing for e.g. Vietnamese and Thai folk to talk to each other, with vocabulary and structures borrowed from both of their own languages - a native English speaker would struggle in those media. Sorry to rant a little on this, but the "whole world speaks English" line, especially voiced by British or American people, eminent or otherwise, strikes me as self-serving wish-fulfilment in light of any actual evidence.
Not to get into an argument, but 70% speaking English means that 70% will have the ability to speak English, not meaning that 70% will speak English as their first language. We rarely come across people under their late 20s in much of Europe who do not have the ability to coverse in English to some extent. Elsewhere, in The Gambia, for example, everyone between 5 and 25 had some English, often very good. In China and India it is the main foreign language, so I can see where the point comes from. There was a TV programme over here a couple of years ago that suggested that we are very close to half the World speaking English as either first or second language on a regular basis. I'll try see if I can find you the reference to the lecture - the main thrust was that teaching languages is crucial but that you can no longer justify it by saying that English speakers (particularly in England) need to learn a language to get by abroad. As you probably know, most schools here teach French, which ought to be behind, eg, Spanish or German in popularity.
Given that the last actual stat I saw was around 25% of the world being able to converse in English, I'm pretty confident that is bull. And putting a trendy English word in your store name is far from evidence of "speak[ing] American" - as evidenced e.g. by the existence in France of knitwear stores with names like "Sweaty". English still tends to cluster around airports, tourist centers, and business and political transactions. If you want to talk to any people outside those spheres you still need to speak another language. Not to mention more basic ethical concerns about whether you want everyone else to do all the work for you. Moreover, the forms of English that are growing fastest at the periphery are hybridized forms that are neither US nor UK English, more like pidgins that are developing for e.g. Vietnamese and Thai folk to talk to each other, with vocabulary and structures borrowed from both of their own languages - a native English speaker would struggle in those media. Sorry to rant a little on this, but the "whole world speaks English" line, especially voiced by British or American people, eminent or otherwise, strikes me as self-serving wish-fulfilment in light of any actual evidence.
Isn't that a sort of arrogance of its own: not recognizing that the range of Englishes (if I may) is much greater than what is represented by peoples of British descent? I won't say that 70% is not a number that hides great diversity of use of English vocabulary and syntax. However, no one has ownership of English (despite the grumblings of "nativist" Americans) and such ownership is largely a fiction (see French). Indeed, it's only been in the last two centuries that people of any one "nation" could be considered mutually intelligible to one another.
I totally get the first/second language distinction - obviously nowhere near those numbers will be native. But there are other issues. In publlic discussions of this there's a lot of playing fast and loose with what is meant by "speak English" - how well? across what range of topics? what variety of English? - and the presence of second language instruction is not necessarily good evidence of widespread actual fluency (Britain and the US are great examples!). And with all due respect (none of this is actually aimed at you), personal experiences of meeting folk who speak English have a confirmatory bias - when you travel you tend most easily to meet those who can speak English. (And for various reasons - as one African friend put it, of course we speak English to your face, you have the power and the resources). Stats (very imprecise stats to be treated with massive caution) from the year 2000 for India were: total population 1,100,000,000; of which English speakers (all kinds, but almost all second- and third-language speakers) 232,226,000. That's less than 25 per cent, in a country where, as you say, English is the main foreign language and closely tied to certain sectors of the economy. It's also over 850,000,000 Indians who do not speak English. There will have been some change since 2000, but I would think not on an order of magnitude of doubling. Not to deny for a second that there are areas where a lot of English is spoken or where English is dominant (even 25% of the world is after all 1.5 billion+ people) - in Norway recently I was told English is not classified as a foreign language any more in their education system - just that media generalizations about 'half the world' being able to speak English gloss over a lot of issues and don't seem to sit well with relevant sectors of research or any actual statistics that I've been able to locate (unless by "speak English" you mean "can buy train tickets").
I was responding to the assertion that all those folk would soon "speak American". Recognizing the diversity of Englishes was actually my point, though I was rolling too many points together. You are right, we (whoever "we" is) don't own English.
Have to go teach now, though I would rather discuss this :-)
Oh, and @greg, I do agree that the utilitarian argument for language learning by English-speakers is weak in many cases (though still valid for specific tasks/individuals). Other arguments are stronger.
Yeah, though as with global Englishes, they are entitled to repurpose words. I saw another reference to a French knitwear store (in an article on this) called "Le Sweatshop". Must....go...prepare...for...class.
Oh well, arguing about global linguistics outside their hearing obviously was the wrong choice of strategy. Someone who isn't an academic should think of something more practical.
Yes sadly I have got to finish preparing tomorrow's teaching to be able to continue the academic debate. Six pm here already so the need is getting urgent....
If Balidor pops up in March, I might just have to take up their offer to rejoin for a month at half price. Maybe. Now that I've been away from emu for a few weeks, I'm seeing more clearly just how much I grew to detest the quality of the service, especially now that I keep running into bad tracks that I hadn't noticed before.
Comments
After posting, I picked up the Mark Twain autobiography again, and the next page was "Comment on Tautology and Grammar."
He finishes with humor about his distrust of such people, and says, "They stop at nothing."
A reminder from Clemens that being a stickler has its limits. Thank goodness this board isn't demanding. But . . . there has been a bit of humorous twitting here and there.
At work we recently interviewed a woman whose cover letter told us she liked us because of our "strong interest in pubic service." Of course I was the only one to notice this, at like the 10th round stage of interviews, and of course I had the bad fortune to notice this before I had to sit across a table from her for 15 minutes. Of course I had a bit of a cold and fever that day too. Of course I pointed the error out to one other person, who shared it with everyone else. And of course they'll hire her - no one else seemed to care about that or the glaring error on page one of her writing sample, and it's not like I would dare express a negative opinion about someone the boss so obviously is going to hire. Sometimes it seems more embarassing to be the type of person who notices errors than the type that makes them. I'm generally not the grammar police type, but pubic service ... c'mon.
This is correct. Editored! also:
He said, "I can't believe Emu charges $9 for a ten minute 'album.'" Likewise for 'club' in your example.
He kept runnin'. Or, "He kept runnin'."
A great resource for this stuff is the English-only forum at Wordreference.com. Almost every question you can think of has been asked and answered there. There are other language forums as well...even a German one!
Have to go teach now, though I would rather discuss this :-)
Oh, and @greg, I do agree that the utilitarian argument for language learning by English-speakers is weak in many cases (though still valid for specific tasks/individuals). Other arguments are stronger.
I've now asked if it will be available in UK and Europe
If Balidor pops up in March, I might just have to take up their offer to rejoin for a month at half price. Maybe. Now that I've been away from emu for a few weeks, I'm seeing more clearly just how much I grew to detest the quality of the service, especially now that I keep running into bad tracks that I hadn't noticed before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVZl2u8TD5I