Posts by BenWilson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Yeah, but who's advocating that? Or anything like that? That's just a straw man.
No, it was actually a story about my experience of speaking Hochdeutsch, and how adhering to some arbitrary standard is actually unhelpful in many settings. I'm sorry if it was unclear. I'm not sorry if it was poorly punctuated.
Mark
I don't 'trust you'. Why should I? Convince me, rather than bully me, and maybe I will. You're not my teacher.
Explain to me the semantic difference between "Maori" and the same word with a line in there that isn't on my keyboard. I can certainly see a syntactic difference, but semantically they are identical.
I don't think we're disagreeing that much now, though. You're just saying that a high level of formality is required in some circumstances. I don't disagree, even if I think it's totally lame. I adhere to it myself, generally, just to avoid stupid arguments with pedants. Not because I agree with them, but because it's a waste of life even talking to a pedant about the value of pedantry, since there's absolutely no way they will ever see it from your point of view. But that doesn't make it right, what they're doing, and that's all I'm saying. Meaning is what is important. Clearing up ambiguity. Delivering information. Not the border around the page, or font, unless they in some way hinder the actual clarity.
-
No, it is not. It is incorrect and has no semantic meaning.
It has as much meaning as the person uttering it intended it to have. Because they are a human being, and language is for communicating, not beating people over the head with, because they happen to be slightly less educated than you.
-
Stephen, we're closer than a hair's breadth. I don't have any problem with people polishing up their work. The problem is with other people pointing out the lack of polish, like it's a really important thing. It just isn't that important.
Of course I know that Hochdeutsch is not that normal in Germany, because I have utterly failed to understand any number of native speakers who diverged from it (having learned only Hochdeutsch myself). But I did not then insist that I was right and they were wrong about their own language. I simply tried another way, until understanding was reached. In fact, I found that my polished and grammatical German got me in trouble, sometimes. Imagine talking to someone who says in a perfect BBC English accent "I'm sorry, my good man, but I can't understand a word you are saying", when you are talking in perfectly normal (for your town) and clear English. You tend to think they are being a wanker. It was only when I made it clear that German was not my first language, that failure to comprehend was forgiven totally, indeed they were usually impressed that I had bothered.
Yet most languages have at least one standard grammar, pronunciation and spelling, and people turn their noses up at failure to observe those conventions in a formal setting.
Some people do. I don't. The more formal the setting, the more I want to understand people rather than get stupidly bitter on irrelevances. I seriously think that making a fuss about such things hinders thought and communication far more than it helps it. You only have to move out of your home town once to realize how fucked up and annoying it is when people piss on about minor lexical differences, and how totally impossible it is to communicate when they do it if the language is foreign. It's called pedantic because it's what a teacher does, not the other 99% of the population, who just want to exchange ideas with their fellow man.
-
Mark, saying that insisting other people change their language to be your language is a form of fascism is not synonymous with "anytime someone asks you to do something you think is pointless, it's fascism."
Of course I was using the word 'fascism' in an exaggerated way, and not suggesting any kind of Godwin thing. It was being used like the "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld, who was just a dick who insisted on particular behavior from his customers or he wouldn't give them any nice soup. Any reader who isn't too busy looking for my missing umlauts knew this.
-
But, please, explain to me why, anytime someone asks you to do something you think is pointless, it's fascism.
I think you better ask yourself that one, since it's not a belief I've ever expressed or held.
-
Funnily enough, their insistence isn't encouraging anyone. I will indeed go ahead using words which have been used in the Kiwi English lexicon for my entire life exactly as they always were, because I do not pretend to be a Maori speaker. If I ever get a Maori translation done of anything I produce, I'll go with whatever the translator feels comfortable with, and be damned happy with them for mastering something so obscure, however imperfectly. If anyone seriously wants to get bitter about the little lines, then they can just do without the translation, like everyone knows they can anyway.
-
No. This is not correct. An umlaut has no value in Māori.
Depends on the purpose. If anyone reading it interprets it as whatever that line over the a is called, then they read it right, by the almost 99% certain intention of the author. They will both understand it, and be able to say it correctly if they are trained in the subtle differences in Maori vowel pronunciations. Well, to be honest, they will say it in a way that will make some tribal elders happy and other ones furious, since the whole insistence on 'correct' spellings and pronunciations of a language that was never written, and was spoken in many different ways, is a form of language-fascism that tries to kill off other modes of communication. And it fails for any living language. Only on dead languages can such pointless stickling make sense, because it is talking about what may have been correct at some other time than now. What is correct now is whatever people who are using the language continually are doing, and if that rides roughshod over every convention ever invented by earnest teams of scholars, that's too bad for them. I have no qualms about using American spelling all the time, despite it being 'technically' incorrect anywhere but America, simply because I actually like the way they have simplified things. Does anyone notice? Only pedants. Everyone else reads the words for their meaning, and passes over the missing letters without noticing.
Is Maori a dead language? Or do people actually want it to be used? Any time you have a language which is not allowed to be used without someone correcting you on irrelevant details, you have a language that no one will want to use.
-
It's not pedantry to respect how a language is transcribed. The path you describe leads to ignorance and disrespect of any culture or language.
Except, of course, the increasingly large culture and language of all the people who couldn't give a shit about typos, and just want the content.
As I thought I pointed out above, if the meaning is clear, then the macron can't matter. If it does matter, the meaning is not clear, and it moves to being an important typo. "Maori" is a good example. You can put all the macrons and extra a's you like in there, but it won't add or subtract from the meaning which everyone already knows.
I speak German, and frequently carry on work discussions with German clients in German, often on Skype. I've never once been pulled up on leaving out an umlaut (despite knowing that the word actually has an umlaut) because from the context it's clear what I meant. No customer or colleague has ever wasted their own time or mine picking me up on something so damned unimportant. And picking them up if they have made some pissly mistake in English is a surefire way to piss them off and discourage their use of my language.
I'm not suggesting that no proofreading is ever needed. I proofread almost everything I write. What I am saying is that I have little time for anyone who insists on not being able to use a document because of pedantic details, or insists on being insulted by them, or even uses them as a reason to dispute something in the document.
I frequently do minor edits in Wikipedia, to clarify things that are written without proofreading, or by people who don't speak good English. But what I'm doing is mere housework. They are the people who made Wikipedia. It would never have got anywhere near its current size if every edit had to have a subeditor proofreading it. Proofreading is a good thing to do, but it should not be a show-stopper. That is a path to full scale time wasting.
-
Mark, the BanWolson is a good example of an irrelevant typo since everyone will know what you meant. The rest of your sentence is ambiguous, despite being grammatically perfectly formed. So you've given the perfect example of exactly where pedantry can go wrong. I presume that was your intention?
-
Just to descend into font geekery for a moment, there are a few reasons:
I could add another good one: Does it really matter? So long as the meaning is adequately conveyed, or can be easily found out, there's a lot to be said for just getting a document out, however many technical typos there are in it. I'd rather the functioning of government and academia wasn't held up by such concerns, considering how slow moving they already are.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 899 900 901 902 903 … 1066 Older→ First