[tilt]

Originally Posted by mayankk

*SNIP*
It was written by an ex rock breaker, current rock/metal god. I think I'll keep his version rather than the correct one.

Yeah, I realised after posting that this is a Rammstein lyric and that they used poetic licence

Cheers

[dark.knight]

I personally feel that English is always evolving, and has evolved tremendously over the past 500-600 years. In a nutshell, there is no proper English..it has always been & still is a bridging language for the world to communicate with each other. Sure there are a few hard & fast rules to ensure easy understanding but by and large English is a mix of language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons (which itself is of Latin heritage) and other European languages like German, French etc. Going by the source points English only managed to spoil pronunciations of words and go on its own to form a broad-based global tongue. Some examples are as below :

Excellent/excellente (French)- pronounced something like excel-lo'n and for its feminine version excel-lo'n-te
Delicious - (French) Delicieux - pronounced deli-cieu
Noodle (German) - from Nudel
Jungle - from root Sanskrit (Jungala) > Hindi (Jungal)

English is about 60% German (Old Saxon), 20-25% French & the rest 15-20% a mix of Sanskrit, Nordic, Hebrew, Geek, African & you name it. Grammatically also it has evolved hugely today bearing zero resemblance to what it used to be. The American English as stylish as it seems, has many grammatical weaknesses when referred to the earliest form. In short this is one language with an ever-changing template, any views Thad?

[anupmathur]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

... In a nutshell, there is no proper English..it has always been & still is a bridging language for the world to communicate with each other.
....

I dare say I find this to be a rather common 'line of defence' used by a section of the population that does not want to make the effort to learn 'proper' English and is therefore always at pains to prove that such a form of the language does not exist.
Buy hey! That's just my personal view.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

... any views Thad?

Sure!

I personally feel that English is always evolving, and has evolved tremendously over the past 500-600 years. In a nutshell, there is no proper English.

Yes and no.

Certainly it is evolving, has always, and will always. Shakespeare invented quite a few words, and, apparently, the month "July" used to be pronounced like the girl's name "Julie."

But, of course there is a proper English, with complex grammar and usage set both by rules and by custom.

There is a difference between evolution and reduction to the lowest common denominator.

Try this experiment: ask the person sitting next to you at work, "what is the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym?" Even if they know, I'd guess that there is an 80% chance they don't use the word acronym correctly. This is not some deep, complex, pedantic rule of syntax: it is a case of two common words, with usefully different meanings, which are being lost to the pit of ignorance. You can call that change, but I don't call it evolution!

[tilt]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

I personally feel that English is always evolving, and has evolved tremendously over the past 500-600 years. In a nutshell, there is no proper English.. *SNIPPED FOR BREVITY*

There is evolution of language and there is just plain wrong. Eg.:

"None of us are..." instead of "None of us is..." - ungrammatic, but acceptable due to evolution of language.

• "Loose" instead of "Lose" (and vice versa); or
• incorrect usage of "your, you're" or "their, there and they're" etc.; or
• "I have been a member here since five years" instead of "I have been a member here for five years";
• Omitting articles (a, an, the) in sentences (a common Indian trait I notice); etc.

These are not evolution, these are just plain wrong, and anyone who hides behind the evolution argument for such things is just being adamant.

Cheers

[dark.knight]

Multi-quotes not working hence shall refer to each responder by ID

@anupmathur - I was of the same view not so long ago, and now to an extent I find sense in both views. Saying that English evolved from other languages and using that fact as an excuse for erroneously written/spoken statement is wrong. As it exists there is indeed a template for how English is expressed and that has to be stuck with until it evolves further. Nevertheless it is a fact that English came from multiple sources and one can point out big inconsistencies in the way its spoken all the way from U.S to Scotland & Ireland. With what you said, I agree.

@Thad - agree, the complex grammar & form of usage as they stand must be followed to the best of ones knowledge, not doing that would mean dilution to the point of zero comprehension. However the current trend that I'm observing is the increasing usage of euphemisms, i.e words that make very little sense.. in that way it is evolving badly these days. Though its indeed important to keep the core of the language intact by using the foundations of grammar & expression, the other areas are getting hit thanks to email & sms jargon. This leads me to think that there are less than a few people out there who can write in old-school and not feel like he/she aren't hip to the scene. I assumed that, in those times the French & Germans would've also felt slightly irritated at how English robbed their nouns & common nouns of their accent and pronounced it in a totally different manner but that is evolution I guess. That's why I was asking a question in the previous post that what if all the errors made today become part of the new English of tomorrow? Thanks for the reply.

tilt - agree, there is no excuse for misspelling, or wrongly assuming a typo to mean something it doesn't, words such as loose instead of lose, your instead of you're are part of that. I also never understood why articles are not used in English by certain people, it robs the sentence of all meaning and increasingly for the sake of convenience, they are being omitted all the time.

However my question still remains, not to doubt English as a language but to doubt if it will remain a language for long.

[anupmathur]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

....
However my question still remains, not to doubt English as a language but to doubt if it will remain a language for long.

The English language is well past 'critical mass' stage. It will live almost forever. The forms it may take, the correctness of these for the fastidious and the acceptance of these into the Oxford dictionary are what might change with time. Evolution of the language? Perhaps.

There will always be a significant number of people who will remain admirers of well written English. For the rest their various pidgins will do because they use the language out of necessity; not as a matter of appreciation or love of elegant expression.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

@anupmathur - ... ... ... Nevertheless it is a fact that English came from multiple sources and one can point out big inconsistencies in the way its spoken all the way from U.S to Scotland & Ireland. With what you said, I agree.

The multiple origins of English, including ancient languages such as Greek and Latin (and even Sanskrit?), let alone French, German and Scandanavian words does not cause or excuse mistakes, but, rather, increases the complexity of the language and its forms.

What's the plural of Octapus? Octapi? No! Because it may look like Latin-origin, but it is not --- and I have forgotten the answer to that one!

The multiple origins of our language result in a fantastically complex set of word formations that are right for one word and wrong for another. There are a handful of scholars that know that stuff, the rest of us just learn it by absorption, except, of course, in recent generations a lot of it is simply being forgotten and discarded.

@Thad - agree, the complex grammar & form of usage as they stand must be followed to the best of ones knowledge, not doing that would mean dilution to the point of zero comprehension. However the current trend that I'm observing is the increasing usage of euphemisms, i.e words that make very little sense.. in that way it is evolving badly these days. Though its indeed important to keep the core of the language intact by using the foundations of grammar & expression, the other areas are getting hit thanks to email & sms jargon. This leads me to think that there are less than a few people out there who can write in old-school and not feel like he/she aren't hip to the scene. I assumed that, in those times the French & Germans would've also felt slightly irritated at how English robbed their nouns & common nouns of their accent and pronounced it in a totally different manner but that is evolution I guess.

"@Thad: " What form of English is that? I recognise my name without any special symbol attached to it (and much prefer it that way) and I'd say that, unless it is in an environement (Twitter, obviously) where the software treats it specially, it is wrong. But that's another lost battle.

I don't think that the English stole anybody's words. One of the reasons for the variety of our language is that people came, with their own languages. We are mongrels, with a mongrel language. As to the notorious obstiancy with which the British rename and mispronounce everything elsewhere (which can be seen even in place names such as Bombay), I think that people were, and are, irritated. We still can't say "Paris" properly, even though it is only 3 hours from London on the train. Or Londres, as the French would have it: they are as bad as we are!

That's why I was asking a question in the previous post that what if all the errors made today become part of the new English of tomorrow?

Certainly. It is the job of dictionaries, for instance, to define English as it is spoken, not English as it was spoken a hundred years ago. The errors and mistakes become the norm.

However my question still remains, not to doubt English as a language but to doubt if it will remain a language for long.

Very long. Even India is trying to make sure of that!

[Guite]

Originally Posted by tilt

• Omitting articles (a, an, the) in sentences (a common Indian trait I notice); etc.

I have observed the opposite trend, adding "the" everywhere! I have even observed it being used with a person's name. Example:
"..... accused the Shah Rukh Khan of stealing their movie plot"
"The Shah Rukh Khan movie Kingdom was a super ....."

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by Guite

"The Shah Rukh Khan movie Kingdom was a super ....."

But this is correct.
The "the" is not for Shah rukh khan.

[dark.knight]

Originally Posted by mayankk

But this is correct.
The "the" is not for Shah rukh khan.

Yep, I second that. The 'the' is for the movie. Come to think of it the first statement could also be correct if read differently, i.e "accused THE [as in pronounced thee (again not to be confused with Shakespearean thee which would mean 'you')] Shahrukh Khan of stealing their movie plot", if the 'the' is indeed pronounced "dhuh" and not "thee" then as pointed out by OP the statement is wrong. Okay enough tongue twisting for one day.

Interesting thing I learnt recently : The current naming of days i.e Monday till Sunday were actually named after cosmic bodies from Latin-Roman terminology which was a further translation of Hebraic terms. Sunday - Sun dias, Saturday - Saturni-Dias, Friday -Frigg (Venus), Thursday (Thosdag/Thorsdias) aka Thor/Jupiter, Wednesday - Wodan -Mercury, Tuesday - Tyrdias - Mars, Monday - Monadaeg - Moon.

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

Interesting thing I learnt recently : The current naming of days i.e Monday till Sunday were actually named after cosmic bodies from Latin-Roman terminology which was a further translation of Hebraic terms. Sunday - Sun dias, Saturday - Saturni-Dias, Friday -Frigg (Venus), Thursday (Thosdag/Thorsdias) aka Thor/Jupiter, Wednesday - Wodan -Mercury, Tuesday - Tyrdias - Mars, Monday - Monadaeg - Moon.

Yep.
As they are in Hindi.

[Thad E Ginathom]

articles confuse speakers of languages that do not use them.

I remember, also, my Japanese, head-office colleagues, highly-educated guys earning five times my salary, and pretty good at English, being completely confused by he/she.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

Interesting thing I learnt recently : The current naming of days i.e Monday till Sunday were actually named after cosmic bodies from Latin-Roman terminology which was a further translation of Hebraic terms. Sunday - Sun dias, Saturday - Saturni-Dias, Friday -Frigg (Venus), Thursday (Thosdag/Thorsdias) aka Thor/Jupiter, Wednesday - Wodan -Mercury, Tuesday - Tyrdias - Mars, Monday - Monadaeg - Moon.

It is not Roman: it is Norse.

[dark.knight]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

It is not Roman: it is Norse.

Correct sir, I read in early ages the Romans were pagan worshippers and worshipped the same gods as Nordic people as did the Greeks. Monotheism i.e Saturn worship aka Shabbat came later.