Does the fluidity of language/grammar piss you off?

It's inevitable though.

Is there an example that prompted this question?

HI DERE

;)

It's like there are lungs, and there are cookies, but lung cookies are something else entirely...which I just expelled because I was laughing so hard.

Gea, hit dōn a ic onfōn hit.

Take, for example, the "male/female" : "man/woman" debate. This should be relatively clear-cut and free of ambiguity; both pairs of words imply membership in one of the two biological sexes, with "male/female" being adjectives that cross species and "man/woman" being nouns explicitly denoting human beings. However, gender politics throughout the ages have made such a big deal about women being anything other than wives/mothers that the noun was also used as a direct synonym for the adjective, leading to a whole bunch of unnecessarily antagonistic bullshit. It's not necessary but we're stuck with it because hey, language is fluid!

Fuck that.

(Basically this entire thread is a big middle finger to J0hn for all but calling me a sexist on the Presidential debate thread.)

time for an ILX break, maybe?

In answer to the question: no. I like flow. People have always battled over connotations of words and I think there's some point to that but to be honest in any political struggle there ought to be bigger fish to fry.

I don't think J0hn was, but I'll let him speak for himself. I certainly wasn't, though. I'm not trying to bring down the hammer of the Feminist Language Police or anything, just trying to explain why some folks are bothered by that particular usage and why I try to choose a different one despite its clumsiness.

xxpost

In Tristram Shandy Sterne refers a lot to a "man-midwife".

In answer to the question, the only thing about language fluidity that bugs me is when homonyms, malapropisms and certain misspellings bust into standard written English as the norm. Depressingly evident reading online article/newsblog site comments posts written by brain-dead, cloven-hoofed bigots.

Dan I just misread you is all. I don't think you're a sexist, I misread something you said as sexist. My bad D. You have known me long enough that I would think you'd assume "J0hn is missing the point" before you'd assume "J0hn has understood me and is attacking me on the basis of his deep understanding and ability to read with nuance and full comprehension" rite.

The fluidity doesn't piss me off (it IS inevitable) but I am highly suspicious of using propaganda wrt politcal aims. Why is 'chinaman' or 'jewess' bad? 'Cause they were in use in a period when many English-speaking people were, in the majority, highly prejudiced against Jews and Chinese but <i>their formation</i> isn't much different from other descriptive epithets ('epithet' itself not originally necessarily derogative) based on national, ethnic or religious origin or identification. Saying that 'woman' as an adjective implies greater humanity is tenuous unless you think it likely that our first 'female president' will be a stoat or a magpie. The best way to treat a human female with humanity is to acknowledge that humanity and act accordingly, not to train a new generation to jump over linguistic hurdles that may do little other than train them some orthodox way of speaking but leave their essential prejudices intact.

The best way to treat a human female with humanity is to acknowledge that humanity and act accordingly, not to train a new generation to jump over linguistic hurdles that may do little other than train them some orthodox way of speaking but leave their essential prejudices intact.

That seems to imply that you can't just do both. Plus, I think you're not giving the power of language to influence perception enough credit. I may be remembering inaccurately, but I seem to recall a case in a Intro to Linguistics class where certain languages had the less or more words for color and as a result members of those cultures would see two colors, wildly different to our eyes, as the exact same color.

Plus, at least in my case, I'm not advocating any change in the orthodoxy, but instead changing through common usage and maybe being an advocate for others to do the same if the debate has already been brought up.

Oh man, I'm in total unfocussed undergrad mode right now, sry guys. Gotta get going anyway.

would it just be stating the obvious to say that the female->woman thing is jumping right past gender equality?

sapir-whorf strikes again?

i'm sure there is some truth in sapir-whorf but this

members of those cultures would see two colors, wildly different to our eyes, as the exact same color.

(my emphasis) is probably way overstating the case.

Of course you can do both, Nick, and I acknowledge that people don't want to be called words they think are offensive but the origin of their offense isn't in the words but in the intent behind them. You can call a person a ni**er, colored, black, or African-American, or whatever but the most important thing is how s/he is treated. I can bear being hated and despised a lot better if I have equal rights and economic opportunity.

It isn't that I don't think that talking about the political implications of words is futile, but much of the offense people take seems sought out and I'd much rather talk about concrete shit that would do people a whole lot better.

<i>The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.</i>

Were that this were true but I've spent years trying to formulate into words attitudes and sensations that I feel very concretely but lack a vocabulary to express.

<i>members of those cultures would see two colors, wildly different to our eyes, as the exact same color</i>

I don't buy this. You may not care much to differentiate colors, but if pressed anybody could figure out a way to desribe them. We use green as a category in which we include 'kelly', 'pea', 'sea', etc., maybe even 'teal', but if someone lese wants to say that 'teal' is definitely in blue rather than green, why should I care as long they don't keep wearing their leg-warmers in that color?

i <3 the fluidity of language/grammar so much

You can call a person a ni**er, colored, black, or African-American, or whatever but the most important thing is how s/he is treated.

http://home.millsaps.edu/mcelvrs/woman_ironing.jpg

its just a little reminder of what a profound and vast thing we use so naturally - you cant put it in a box you just cant so there!

members of those cultures would see two colors, wildly different to our eyes, as the exact same color

In college studied the language of a guy from Africa whose native tongue had no word for orange, not even borrowed. Even though he spoke fluent English, when we showed him an orange sheet of paper or notebook or whatever, he would call it either "red" or "brown" (even when repeating the exchange in English), when to us it was clearly "orange."

uh yah this happens all the time everywhere - its called not being very interested in colors

omg i held up pantone 3385 and 3405 and he called them both 3395!

It was actually 3384 and 3402, but you're right, it was a complete non-experience, I was just posting for the fuck of it. Thanks for pointing that out.

what im trying to say here is color is a particularly bad example to use in this argument as the demarcations can be drawn anywhere - in this african dudes cultures color wheel orange is just on the cusp of two colors hes translating as red and brown.

weve got all sorts of names for colors in between yellow and green that most people dont know - theyd just say yellow or green if you showed them examples.

now is that affecting their ability to perceive these in between colors? anyone w/working eyes could tell the difference between kelly and army greens if you held some swatches up - still theyd prob call them both green.

uh but yah sorry if that was snippy adam it was actually the quoted text that got me going

No worries, I was just saying that the weird part of the experience was that the guy DID know the word 'orange', like I said, fluent English speaker, but we couldn't elicit it from him. I see what you're saying though, colors are not a particularly great example.

In my experience with learning other languages, though, is that they do express similar concepts differently, and this tends to color (sorry) people's perceptions. I think in the same way as one language changes over time meaning can drift and with it perception.

That's all really vague and I'll try and think of some examples.

Hi! I am a speaker of fluent and impeccably grammatical english. It's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Fluidity of language/grammar is all I have in this world!

We use green as a category in which we include 'kelly', 'pea', 'sea', etc., maybe even 'teal', but if someone lese wants to say that 'teal' is definitely in blue rather than green, why should I care as long they don't keep wearing their leg-warmers in that color?

Have you read Chromophobia? I just read it, and I'm not sure I dug most of it, but there's a bit at the end that looks at language-words and perceptions of colors that was pretty good (and covers a lot of territory others are bringing up here), and a bit after that about how different cultures represent rainbows. Newton saw five "basic" colors in the rainbow but wanted it to be seven to match up with the musical scale. But if you look at paintings of rainbows, different cultures reproduce them differently -- some with only two or three stripes, some with more. So while it's perhaps true that anyone from any culture can distinguish different colors (barring, you know, colorblindness etc.) in the way you describe, it's also true that they will interpret the colors different -- categorize, associate, etc. -- which is to say, they will see and understand them differently.

But you're OTM about the legwarmers.

Hours after the fact, I'm now pissed about stupid allisions in sung Italian. WRITE OUT A NOTE FOR EVERY SYLLABLE, DOUCHEBAGS.

"Elisions". (*ducks*)

"The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse - a fear of corruption or contamination through color - lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge color, either by making it the property of some "foreign body" - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic. Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Writers have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century. David Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analyzing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at color as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville's "great white whale", Huxley's reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier's "journey to the East", Batchelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art."

aha C is this actually good? i can't decide whether it sounds great or terrible -

But English had no word for orange (colour) until the orange (fruit) reached England.
Until then they managed perfectly well with yellow, red, gold etc.
Not sure of my point, btw.

I'm all about the fluidity of spelling!

i love the fluidity of language

But English had no word for orange (colour) until the orange (fruit) reached England.
Until then they managed perfectly well with yellow, red, gold etc.

Whorf/Sapir strikes again. It's not true though, there was an Old English word 'geoluhread'.

yah f that 1984 bullshit language is fluid it can do whatever u want

maybe better than the colour thing are phrases found in one culture that other cultures don't have any place for, without any obvious reason why. I'm sure there are dozens of books on such phrases, but there's one I saw (They Have a Name For It, I think?) that deals with them as phrases that aren't really translatable between languages/cultures, referring to what is self-evident in one culture yet completely alien to another, despite what you'd expect to be strong enough links between the cultures.

one not particularly alien one that I liked anyway was radfahrer - one who flatters superiors and browbeats inferiors.

I LIKE TALKING

Thomp, I'm not sure it's good at all, though there are some good enough bits, and it is the sort of book that will strike a certain type of person as good (I think Anthony E. told me he loved it) (and that's not meant as a dig on Anthong or on the book), but it has the great benefit of being very, very short. And it is not toxic to read, even if one might not buy into it.

not what you say its th spirit with which u say it

it's said

niggAH!? tonal english

98^7

yeah it always bothers me that english collapses aspect into tense so that when i talk other people can't tell whether i'm talking about the definite past, durative past, periodic past, etc

o wait that never happens

more like

x`^C

Hours after the fact, I'm now pissed about stupid allisions in sung Italian. WRITE OUT A NOTE FOR EVERY SYLLABLE, DOUCHEBAGS.

lol if me being a dumbass led to this this post then I retract my apology

i need people to stop speak english Y'COMPRENDE SPX WITH ENGLISH SUBTEXT

referring to what is self-evident in one culture yet completely alien to another, despite what you'd expect to be strong enough links between the cultures

yeah its always interesting how cultures who don't have explicit terms for things are just incapable of understanding those things!

example i always think of is the dative case, which we don't really have in english, but they still have in german, and IIRC from german iii/iv (which was 12 years ago) marks the possession of an indirect object. and because we don't have that one in english we're pretty fuzzy on the concept. which must be why our banking system is so much worse-off than the swiss/german banking axis. also why i always borrow shit from other people without asking.

and what i wouldn't give for plus-que-parfait in english! . i'll be like "i got up and brushed my teeth my morning" and people can't ever tell which came first.

context tells me that you got up first

yes but HOW DO YOU KNOW the fluidity isn't fooling you!?!?

experience tells me people don't brush their teeth in bed

apparently you've never met a grade a baller

I'm not being your roommate, moonship.

It's not really a claim of "incapable of understanding", though, it's a claim of "interpreting differently". You might be able to explain the concept of "suadade" to me, but I probably won't think of myself as feeling suadade until I have had the concept explained to me, which is to say, when it becomes part of my personal language toolbox (even if it's not part of English per se).

One of my classmates told a woman today she should "put some sizzurp in your baby's leche to shut it up." It was so beautiful.

One thing I really want is a way to answer a negative question, along the lines of "oui/si/non" in French. That, and a better ungendered pronoun system.

Uh huh!

"are you not overdoing it?"
"i am not"

^^ proof english is broken

Or merely flexible.

i don't get your suadade argument. are you saying you can't feel suadade without knowing the word? are you saying you can't communicate the feeling of being suadade without knowing the word? neither of those things is true.

breath control vs GARGLE BITCH N U STILL AINT HITTIN TH JOINT NASTY AST HO DONT E'EN JAHLA FUCKTALK GO TO KONCENTRATION KAMP KANT READ N BEAT U N CHESS, SMACKS 4 ALLAJAL That's just how i feel to lazy. I got short patience

we pray(pray,pray)
We got to pray
Just to make it today

--Stanley Kirk Burrell, 1990

I'm sorry, Michael White.

i don't get your suadade argument. are you saying you can't feel suadade without knowing the word? are you saying you can't communicate the feeling of being suadade without knowing the word? neither of those things is true.

you could start with spelling it correctly

I'm saying you can't understanding yourself as feeling saudade without knowing the word. It's not as if saudade is somehow real and testable -- it's an interpretive framework. I mean: "I thought I felt nostalgia all that time, but it turns out it was saudade!" I'm saying: You're more likely to think of a feeling as saudade, and act as if it were saudade, if you have a word for saudade. Otherwise, you might just act as though it were nostalgia.

And I don't want to say that language acts as an iron grid, but I think it plays a very strong influence.

[Heh, oops, sorry about the typos, I knew it looked a little off!]

Argh there are too many typos. No more talking about language before I've had coffee.

which is douchier, being a spelling cop or apologizing to a spelling cop?

as someone who lives with a french person, i can testify that yes it is certainly possible to have things you want to say and express without having the words for them, but i can also testify that those feelings and things you want to express end up in a blunt, muddled, almost cro-magnon puddle pushing against the front of the inside of your skull if you can't find the words you need for it

now yr talking abt a second language which is a whole nother deal

casuistry i still don't understand what you're saying. first you say nostalgia's not real and testable, but then there's a notion that you might act as if it were something else and not nostalgia?

The fact that emotions like saudade exist in other langauges is proof that they prexist language, no?

moonship, are you implying that I'm a speling cop?

Or what Tracer said, apparently.

That seems like more or less what I'm saying. I'm saying "nostalgia" is a concept, and as a concept it is construct we use to understand our feelings, rather than a chemical in our brain that causes us to feel "nostalgia". And that our feelings are subject to interpretation -- ones like "nostalgia" and "saudade" more than most, perhaps!

MW, no, it is not.

Well, OK, it depends on what you mean by "preexist".

Words are like cats in their herdability.

the issue of language, culture, and brain chemistry is multi-faceted and under-explored. Somebody should get on that one.

Anyway, saudade is basically half of Baudelaire's poems. I forget what words he used to describe those feelings

Ohhhh, he invented words, if I remember correctly. Fascinating

People get tricked by language, see 'robin redbreast':

http://www.mlahanas.de/Cyprus/Fauna/image/EuropeanRobin.jpg

I forget what words he used to describe those feelings

I believe it was something along the lines of:

Mesdames et Monsieurs, c'est Burt Stanton

Casuistry, I think that nostalgia (originally meaning extreme homesickness) may be influenced by language (association and usage, for example) but the pang that one feels exists even if we don't have a specific word for it. Conceivably, before the importation of nostalgia, apparently calqued on heimweh in the 18th Century, we had 'homesickness' in English but had to express nostalgia by resorting to exposition instead of just relying on a single word. I mean, just because English doesn't have a single word for 'I'm really hungry for something really spicy' doesn't mean that we don't understand that concept.

that just means that the feelings pre-exist a specific word, not that they pre-exist language (and that's leaving aside the issue of whether or not "nostalgia" really describes the same feeling as "heimweh" and how we would ever be able to tell)

Nostalgia, since the 20's has come to mean longing for the past more than longing for one's homeland, or at least so say the lexicographers. As Simone Signoret famously put it, "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."

Anyway, max, I am as capable of imagining 'pre-existing language' as I am of imagining infiniti.

"the issue of language, culture, and brain chemistry is multi-faceted and under-explored. Somebody should get on that one."

I think the Communication departments at most universities are trying to do it. Also, the Cultural Anthro. departments.
I was surprised to find the Anthropology department much more concerned with the links you are describing - I figured it would be all about tiny pottery shards.
Wrong! The Anthro. departments are generally the most progressive - more so than, say, Journalism.

Anyway, saudade is basically half of Baudelaire's poems.

I think spleen in French, is different than saudade.

the description I've read of saudade is, a longing for something that might not ever have existed, etc. etc. Sounds spleeny to me.

Of course, my knowledge of anything Portuguese or whatever is basically non-existent

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/01/31_perception.shtml

A paper published this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports the idea - but with a twist. The paper suggests for the first time that language affects perception in the right half of the visual field, but much less, if at all, in the left half.

The paper, "Whorf Hypothesis is Supported in the Right Visual Field but not in the Left," is by Aubrey Gilbert, Richard Ivry and Paul Kay at UC Berkeley and Terry Regier at the University of Chicago.

This new finding is suggested by the organization of the brain, the researchers say. Language function is processed predominantly in the left hemisphere of the brain, which receives visual information directly from the right visual field. "So it would make sense for the language processes of the left hemisphere to influence perception more in the right half of the visual field than in the left half," said Regier, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago who proposed the idea behind the study.

The team confirmed the hypothesis through experiments designed and conducted in psychology professor Ivry's lab at UC Berkeley.

"We were thrilled to find this sort of effect and are very interested in investigating it further," said Gilbert, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the study's lead author. The experiments tested UC Berkeley undergraduates and also a patient whose brain hemispheres had been surgically separated.