As I was writing that entry, I was also wondering whether I would wind up feeling the same way about transliterated Hebrew if I ever learned Hebrew (or at least enough of it to match my small knowledge of Greek) ... and the bidirectional typing issues. (IIRC, there are features in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) web specification to handle that, BTW. Dunno that it helps with the typing of it, but there are features for the display.)
As to butchery of one's own language, I've heard of Parisian teens doing some icky stuff to French (but I got the impression that they grow out of it). Part of what we've got in the US is pocket dialects that shift too frequently to track easily and have blurred and overlapping geography. And part of it is just ... cussedness, I suspect. The "can't be bothered" aspect bugs me too. I love this language.
I **LOVE** English, too. The cussedness, as you call it, is exactly my objection in this matter. I'm in the Midwest, land of little-to-no dialect (actually, that's a whole separate issue.) It's all the people who say "I seen him" or "me and him..." etc. , despite having a decent education and, rich or poor, all having had ready access to TV,who drive me nutty with this habit. Even Jerry Springer speaks with appropriate subject-verb agreement. It's a *choice* to speak the lazy English and by that very fact, the choice to do so rankles me.
Apparently "even Jerry Springer" isn't appropriate. There was a This American Life (NPR radio show) about him, and apparently he was a brilliant progressive politician who ended up with a sleazy tv show for reasons that I can't remember. (This assumes that the segment about his was factual--"This American Life" doesn't always label fiction and non-fiction.
I didn't mean Jerry's personal linguistic choices were gramatically incorrect at all. He's clearly intelligent; he's politically savvy and knows how to appeal to the large, lowest-common-denominator segment of the population. I was more referring to his audience and their verbal skills (or lack thereof.) I should have stated that more clearly :-)
Re: Ah ha ha! I was just gonna post the same thing!
As to butchery of one's own language, I've heard of Parisian teens doing some icky stuff to French (but I got the impression that they grow out of it). Part of what we've got in the US is pocket dialects that shift too frequently to track easily and have blurred and overlapping geography. And part of it is just ... cussedness, I suspect. The "can't be bothered" aspect bugs me too. I love this language.
Re: Ah ha ha! I was just gonna post the same thing!
The cussedness, as you call it, is exactly my objection in this matter. I'm in the Midwest, land of little-to-no dialect (actually, that's a whole separate issue.) It's all the people who say "I seen him" or "me and him..." etc. , despite having a decent education and, rich or poor, all having had ready access to TV,who drive me nutty with this habit.
Even Jerry Springer speaks with appropriate subject-verb agreement. It's a *choice* to speak the lazy English and by that very fact, the choice to do so rankles me.
Re: Ah ha ha! I was just gonna post the same thing!
Apparently "even Jerry Springer" isn't appropriate. There was a This American Life (NPR radio show) about him, and apparently he was a brilliant progressive politician who ended up with a sleazy tv show for reasons that I can't remember. (This assumes that the segment about his was factual--"This American Life" doesn't always label fiction and non-fiction.
Jerry Springer