PirateHead wrote:
I don't even begin to buy your ignorant nonsense about it being hard to transition between dialects or modes of speaking. When I traveled to Norway, I learned that millions of Norwegians speak, read, and write as many as 3 or 4 dialects of the Norwegian language. Moreover, millions of Americans speak in Ebonics or other dialects in their personal time but are competent communicators with "correct" English in a professional or scholarly setting. And I'm saying this is real experience; I routinely interact with people who have been brought up to have no discernable communication skills, even to the point where some can't even grasp that they're supposed to try to make themselves understood. A person who knows enough to switch to a different form of speaking in a professional environment understands this concept, whereas I regularly see a number of people who don't. Clearly the ability to adapt speech patterns to different environments is a learned behavior and is not universal. Note that I tend to use quotation marks when I speak of "correct" or "proper" English; this is because the very notion of correct and proper English is a tool used by the upper classes to discriminate against all lower classes. I find it tiresome that class warfare inevitably gets dragged into any discussion of standards in language. I recognize that "the powerful" tend to put a premium on education and speech, but a language without any notion of proper usage is completely ungrounded. Where standards are firm, they are easier to teach, thus maximizing literacy and benefiting everyone. It certainly catches my eye that you describe non-canonical uses of English as "bad" or "broken misspeak", and reference of the "venues where it doesn't have any place" -- meaning, of course, venues where power-holding people are listening. No, meaning these forums for one. If someone isn't making even the minimal effort to be understandable, then I find communicating with them to be extremely tedious and as a result I'll tend to avoid their posts, even if it turns out I could have given them useful information. If getting to the heart of the problem requires parsing a lot of "u" and "liek" and severe run-on sentences, it's too taxing for me and I'll find someone else to help. If a person sends me an instant message in that style, I'm likely to ignore them. To their credit I seldom see people take this to an extreme in their bug reports. But it's incredibly common to see these traits:
| |
I recently read a news article about a study conducted in Scandinavia, that clearly showed a lack of ability to focus on tasks for longer periods of time in newer generations. The study shows actual changes in brain patterns that seem to indicate the brain adapting to a style of communication where it favors short bursts and juggling many simultaneous tasks. The main benefactors in this change seem to be things like twitter, SMS messaging and facebook.
| |
I don't even begin to buy your ignorant nonsense about it being hard to transition between dialects or modes of speaking. When I traveled to Norway, I learned that millions of Norwegians speak, read, and write as many as 3 or 4 dialects of the Norwegian language. Moreover, millions of Americans speak in Ebonics or other dialects in their personal time but are competent communicators with "correct" English in a professional or scholarly setting.
It does take some education to teach "proper" English to someone who does not learn it at home, and those who do not spend an enormous amount of time perfecting their "proper" English may always be identifiable as non-native speakers, but fluency is absolutely an attainable goal for any student. Lack of regular communication is a much greater obstacle to fluency and literacy, which is entirely consistent with the finding that people who text and chat regularly are much less likely to have poor literacy than their peers.
Addendum:
Note that I tend to use quotation marks when I speak of "correct" or "proper" English; this is because the very notion of correct and proper English is a tool used by the upper classes to discriminate against all lower classes.
The power-holders have a very specific dialect of English which is nuanced and well-documented. They teach it to their children and place great importance upon its mastery, giving them the ability to discern other members of their class from the rest. Meanwhile, everyone who does not learn it at home must go to great trouble and spend an quite a large amount of time learning to speak it.
It certainly catches my eye that you describe non-canonical uses of English as "bad" or "broken misspeak", and reference of the "venues where it doesn't have any place" -- meaning, of course, venues where power-holding people are listening.