(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

Sort of managed to calm down from yesterday's apoplexy. Which is a win of a kind. I didn't break any obvious blood-vessels; I have not run amok through the neighbourhood screaming at the top of my voice; I haven't as yet menaced anyone for not being in possession of the relevent facts.

I mean, I don't expect too much from folk: not everyone will ever know who Wittgenstein was or what his views on things were - but not to know whether Winston Churchill was a fictional character or not was just a step too far for me to take lying down.* 

I do wonder sometimes whether we deserve to be part of the dominant culture on the face of the planet?

I do know that many English speaking people don't appear to be worthy of using the language of Shakespeare: perhaps we should leave it to the people who care about it a trifle more like the French and the Germans.


Gods, I'm full of it at the moment.


*Almost a perfect 'Colemanball'.

Comments

[e4q.livejournal.com]

english is good BECAUSE people mess with it.

hell, even shakespeare messed with it. he couldn't even settle on a spelling for his name.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

i think we probably do need to communicate that much. whether you or i want to hear any of it is moot.
wouldn't it be nice if everybody used english imaginatively? some of the most pompous bores speaking perfect RP could do with that lesson.
we all have secret codes, teenagers and doctors more than most, but there is always a point where talk among the group needs to be relayed out of that group again. i suppose most teenagers have a version they talk to their friends and a version to their parents or at school, most kids are aware they have at least two registers. in fact, this was how i explained why they would need to learn another specialised language to talk about their subject.

i suspect we rather agree on this subject...
another thing i used to do in the class room was to pretend not to know what my students were saying and trill in my best julie andrews "i'm terribly sorry i have no idea what you are saying. can we try that again in english?"

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong: IMO everyone's entitled to their own version of English: and if they use it imaginatively and well, those usages will be up for incorporation into the wide body of English, should they last the course. Almost the same with accents: everyone's entitled to their own/their peer group argot/whatever as long as they can also use RP (or the American equivalent, perhaps given the US cultural hegemony) which (also IMO) are the most intelligible forms of the language.
An universal tongue needs a standard by which the other varients are judged, else it ceases to be an universal tongue. And then what's the fucking point? Do we really need to comunicate that much? Is an universal language of communication even a good idea?
If the answer to either of the two latter questions is yes, then care should be taken to ensure that standards are kept and communication is possible with some exchange of meaning. For example: a broad Geordie accent needs translating to Americans, in fact I could sometimes use some interpretation as well. Makes sense therefore to have Geordie announcers all over the BBC: let's limit the worldwide audience.
Completely bizarre, again in my humble opinion.

[jimi45.livejournal.com]

are you sure churchill was real? i always though he was one of those bogeyman type characters british parents invented to scare their children. sort of, "mind harold wilson or the winston monster will come get you!"

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Look, don't ask me to be nice about an Harrovian....but on a more serious note, Wilson was more the monster to scare the kids, but neither comes close to:
"Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher" the derivation of which comes from the removal of free school milk when she was Education secretary.

Maggies one decent act was that she resisted the introduction of library book charging. I don't know if it balances the rest.

(I think I may have slipped some proper English into this reply by accident)

[winterlion.livejournal.com]

Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it (*)

(*) - Math too. - Calvin.
*heee*

Thing about English is it's so very -adaptable-. It's also suitably vague. One wouldn't want to use it for anything requiring precision in definition (and thus evolves jargon) but otherwise it's pretty much an ideal trade language.
Go figure. Cheers!