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Sun 23 Mar, 2003 08:56 pm
I'd like to discuss lazy speakers who alter the English language.
I no longer see "skimmed" milk for sale. They do sell skim milk.
I sometime see can vegetables for sale. How about a toss salad? "Lieberry" for "library" is pretty standard. Lie-brear-ee is too tough on the tongue. There are literally hundreds of these words and combinations.
If you say these words out loud and clearly, you will discover that it takes less effort to say "mere" instead of "mere-er", "toss salad" instead of tossed salad,. Not all changes occur by shortening the words.
A common lenghtening is ath-uh-let-ics for ath-let-ics and Fill-um for film.
And then there is the inability of our presidents to say "new-klee-er", so it becomes nuke-yuh-ler. the CL sound takes more effort.
Audibilty is in the vowels - a,e.i, o, u. We sing the language.
Intelligibilty is in the consonants. We understand the consonants.
Perhaps the British can talk so fast and be understood because they enunciate the consonants. American speech tends to be sloppy.
An American conversation:
Jeet yet?
No, jew?
Squeet.
I'm gonna think about this one for awhile.
Jeet? No, jew?
I'm with you 100% on this one. They only exception being "fry bread", just because it's been called that since day one.
Language evolves. It grows in multiple meanings of words, new pronunciations and spellings. Im always amazed at how the American colonists spoke as they morphed the language away from British. vernacular.
I profess to being a language and pronunciation "sponge" I am fascinated by regionalisms and slang. I often incorporate such terms in my own speech. Ive picked up a lot of Canadianisms and Bay-de Chaleur speech patterns.
It may be lazy, it may be language evolution either way, so what.
What truly pisses me off, is the coopting of English by the computer industry.
I often do landscapes. I explained that I was working on a landscape to a friend in the IT section. He asked me
"what , are you having problems?"
farmerman. I'm with you all the way on being a language and pronunciation, let's see, not a sponge exactly, but a nut. I know English grows and changes. It is not frozen and fixed. We have no Academie. eh?
English is a rich language. I've forgotten the number of words in the English language, but I believe it's in the millions.
I can always spot a Canadian by one word, dollar. It seems no matter how long they have been out of Canada (Peter Jennings), they still say "doe-ler"(as in bowler) and not "dah-ler"(as in holler).
I hope you and others got my point about poor articulation also changing English.
In case anyone needs a translation;
Jeet, yet? Did you eat, yet?
No, jew? No, did you?
Squeet. Let's go eat.
My wife says tarpolian for tarpalin.
Oh, yeah. The computer language.
Disk is a word in computer. Disc is English.
I like the slang because I think it brings people down to a more personal level. As a Canadian, I also speak the slang French. In fact, since I spent most of my life in the states, I can't even understand people who speak the proper French.
Billy
I was born in Mass to 2 Canadian parents. When I was 4 we moved to Canada for 3 years and since the small town I was living in here was all French at the time, by the time we moved back to Mass when I was 7, I couldn't speak a word of English. I lived there for the next 30 years before moving back to Canada and the one word I always pronounced properly is dollar. There are more of course. I still find it funny though that most French speaking Canadians can't pronounce some words such as "three" as it comes out as "tree", and it like that with most words with "th". Since I spent most of my life in Mass, I don't have a problem with those words and I think it's so cute when Canadians speak English :-)
gezzy, interesting language bio. My favorite city in North America is Toronto. Although it's not the only one. Canadians are different from us in their use of language. They have a habit of talking in full sentences. Quite disconcerting.
Heard how Canada got its name? Seems they had a government before a name. Much discussion led to a proposal to have the prime minister draw letters out of a hat and then everybody would attempt to arrange them into a name. So he drew letters and announced them: "C" eh?, "N" eh? "D"eh?
For a good example of how our spoken language skills have eroded, listen to our president when he speaks off the cuff. It would be funny if it didn't impact our foreign policy. No subtlety, no nuances. Just the blunt language of someone who never learned how to speak in formal situations.
Maybe this is off topic, but it concerns me more than folks being informal with their friends. As long as they know the difference in more formal settings!
Billy
That's really interesting about how they came up with the name. I never knew that and I thank you for the history lesson ;-)
D'art
I couldn't agree more. Of course there are situations where proper speaking is important if you want to be taken seriously in business or political matters.
D'art. This is what I told my college students.
You have every right to talk anyway you like (faces brighten a little)
Use double negatives -I ain't got no more. Use non words like irregardless.
Pronounce any word any way you want to. (full smiles) Don't let anyone dictate how you talk. It's personal. Maybe you want to talk like your family Your family are not snobs. After all, we do understand each other and that is the purpose of speech. Just one thing, though. one thing --- don't expect a societal payoff.
Agreed, Billy. I feel the same about instant messaging slang and shortcuts. It's all well and good and lots of fun, I'm sure, but kids had better know when to resort to formal language. Assuming, of course, they even know what that is...
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