22
   

DEBASING THE CURRENCY OF LANGUAGE

 
 
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 09:04 pm
@Lustig Andrei,
Sounds rather Australian.

In Scotland everyone seemed to say Hiya in a delightful lilt.
Lustig Andrei
 
  1  
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 09:12 pm
@dlowan,
Hawaiian pidgin is fascinating. I hear it standing in the grocery line and elsewhere on a daily basis. Today I heard somebody tell her companion, who wa standing in line, after the speaker had come back from the shelves empty handed: "No more macaroni salad today." Now, I understand the language well enough now to understand that was meant was that the store was out of macaroni salad. It did not mean what we would have understood it to mean anywhere else in the English-speaking world, i.e. that the store had sold out the last of its salad. In Hawaiian there's no understanding when you use an expression like "no more' it means there had beensome and now is "no more." It simply means there ain't none. If she had said, "The delivery man never came," it would not mean that he had been expected to come but didn't make it. It would simply mean he hadn't come yet. Might show up later.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 09:18 pm
Today on NPR, somebody complained --- rightly --- about the increasing abuse of the phrase "No problem". He submitted the following exchange into evidence:

Waiter: "Would you like ketchup with your fries, sir?"
Guest: "No thanks, no ketchup for me."
Waiter: "Of course, sir, no problem."

The phrase abuse here lies in the falsely implied bravery of the waiter. As if it was an ordeal for him to miss out on serving ketchup to the guest, an ordeal that he chivalrously overcame.

____

And of course Germans will tell you how they're doing! That's why you asked, isn't it.
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 09:24 pm
@Thomas,
The Germans I wie gehen Sie to'd didn't.

They just said they were good.

Oh...you can't mean they actually all WERE feeling good, do du?
Lustig Andrei
 
  1  
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 10:16 pm
@dlowan,
I have a gut feeling about that, Deb.
0 Replies
 
OmSigDAVID
 
  2  
Reply Fri 25 May, 2012 11:46 pm
@dalehileman,
dalehileman wrote:
JTT I’m aware that the “newer” meanings eventually get into the word books but I nonetheless deplore the practice as a dumbing down
YES. Resist, as anti-mouth warfare!
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 06:43 am
@dlowan,
dlowan wrote:
Oh...you can't mean they actually all WERE feeling good, do du?

Could be. Lots of things are possible in Berlin, a hangout of many a weird person --- including Prussians, who aren't real Germans, and American tourists. Maybe you got one of those by accident. But yes, it's even possible to meet Germans who are actually doing well.
OmSigDAVID
 
  2  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 09:01 am
@Thomas,

dlowan wrote:
Oh...you can't mean they actually all WERE feeling good, do du?
Thomas wrote:

Could be. Lots of things are possible in Berlin, a hangout of many a weird person --- including Prussians, who aren't real Germans, and American tourists.
Will u tell us about the Prussians?
How thay r not real Germans?
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 09:12 am
@OmSigDAVID,
David, the state of Prussia used to be the 800-pound gorilla within the federalist nation of Germany. Imagine a Texas that covers all the US West of the Mississippi, and you get the right idea. The Allied Forces disbanded Prussia some 65 years ago, but we South Germans still it make a point not to like them.
dalehileman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 10:35 am
@OmSigDAVID,
Quote:
YES. Resist, as anti-mouth warfare!
Amen, absolutely, to be sure
0 Replies
 
Lustig Andrei
 
  3  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 10:43 am
@OmSigDAVID,
The Original Prussians who inhabited the region we now call Prussia were not even a Germanic tribe like the Saxons, for example. They spoke a Baltic language closely akin to Lithuanian and my own native Latvian. When the big "missonary" crusades into the East began in about the late 12th, early 13th centuries (the Holy Land had been fished out; landless knights needed new "heathen" territories to conquer), the Teutonic Order came in and took over in many parts of that Eastern territory. The Prussians assimilated and became Germanized. In fact, they became more German than the ordinary Germans. They lost the use of their unique language, their ethnic folkways, traditions, the whole ball of wax. Not so their close cousins the Liths and the Letts who continued to resist the Germanic invasion.

That is why today Prussia is part of Germany while Latvia and Lithuania are independent republics.
dalehileman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 11:03 am
@dlowan,
Quote:
I wie gehen Sie to'd didn't.
Should “I” be “Ich”, and here’s all I could find for “to’d”


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TO%27d
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 11:11 am
@dalehileman,
Quote:
JTT I’m aware that the “newer” meanings eventually get into the word books but I nonetheless deplore the practice as a dumbing down


The dumbing down comes not from those people adding nuance to language. The dumbing down of language is exactly what this thread is. These new words that people are whining about are done deals. A word or phrase doesn't have to get into a dictionary for it to be part of language. Dictionaries are not updated daily.

People invent new vocabulary daily, some sticks, some doesn't. Those who whine about these changes normally do so without understanding the nuance involved. Most are second, third and fourth hand stories that these language gurus have gleaned from another source, one that has been equally as bad at noticing the nuance involved.

These folks, like Setanta, [who gets a mention because he started this silly thread] who copy some other idiots ideas are actually dumbing themselves up. Check out that new use in a dictionary.
OmSigDAVID
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 11:35 am

When many people sit on juries,
thay will hold litigants to account for what thay have actually SAID,
not what thay suspect them possibly to have held in the privacy of their minds, JTT to the contrary notwithstanding
(tho I must admit that the results of litigation r never predictable).





David
0 Replies
 
OmSigDAVID
 
  2  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 11:39 am
@Lustig Andrei,
Lustig Andrei wrote:
The Original Prussians who inhabited the region we now call Prussia were not even a Germanic tribe like the Saxons, for example. They spoke a Baltic language closely akin to Lithuanian and my own native Latvian. When the big "missonary" crusades into the East began in about the late 12th, early 13th centuries (the Holy Land had been fished out; landless knights needed new "heathen" territories to conquer), the Teutonic Order came in and took over in many parts of that Eastern territory. The Prussians assimilated and became Germanized. In fact, they became more German than the ordinary Germans. They lost the use of their unique language, their ethnic folkways, traditions, the whole ball of wax. Not so their close cousins the Liths and the Letts who continued to resist the Germanic invasion.

That is why today Prussia is part of Germany while Latvia and Lithuania are independent republics.
Thank u, Andy.





David
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 12:03 pm
@Lustig Andrei,
The Hohenzollerns originally came from Franconia, Bavaria, Austria--and several of them joined the Teutonic Knights, and joined in the fun, hunting down the pagan Letts. Albert Hohenzollern was appointed Grand Master of the Order in about 1510, in the hope that he could settle the dispute between the Order and the Polish crown, because his mother was a Jageillon. Well, Albert settled the dispute alright--he became a Lutheran, seized all of Prussia, annexing it to the margravate of Brandenberg. He then successfully defied the Poles in arms. His descendant, Frederick Wilhelm (son of the "Great Elector" of the same name) bargained successfully with the Holy Roman Emperor to be recognized as a king, in return for providing troops for the War of the Spanish Succession. He insisted on being recognized as the King of Prussia, because the Hohenzollerns claimed Prussia by right of conquest, and only held Brandenberg of the Emperor. Once set up independently, there was no end of trouble for Austria and for the rest of Germany.

The Great Elector had made Brandenberg-Prussia a haven for Protestants fleeing Catholic countries, and he'd provide them the wherewithal to farm Prussia (a nightmare task, one wonders if they thanked after they saw their new land). This also attacted French Protestants. In the First World War, the commander of the First Corps, who was responsible for the battle of Tannenberg was von François (Max Hoffman just capitalized on his initiative). Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière was the most successful German submarine commander of the First World War. Prussians both . . .
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 12:09 pm
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
The Great Elector had made Brandenberg-Prussia a haven for Protestants fleeing Catholic countries, and he'd provide them the wherewithal to farm Prussia (a nightmare task, one wonders if they thanked after they saw their new land).


Is that where the term 'Prussian Blue' originates?
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 12:10 pm
@izzythepush,
Undoubtedly . . .
0 Replies
 
ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 12:19 pm
@Lustig Andrei,
Lustig Andrei wrote:

That is why today Prussia is part of Germany


not the Prussia that matters. it's still hanging out in a weird Russian otherness
Lustig Andrei
 
  1  
Reply Sat 26 May, 2012 12:24 pm
@ehBeth,
Yeah, I still refer to that port city as Koenigsberg, not Kaliningrad.
But, then, I also think of it as Danzig, not Gdansk, and I hold no brief against the Poles.
0 Replies
 
 

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