Monday, June 22, 2009
Nerd Grammar Is Not Fun
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 3:26 PM
The British government is reportedly calling on teachers to stop teaching students the "i before e" rhyme because there are too many exceptions to the rule. I am especially fond of the end of Yahoo's news story on the matter:
But supporters say the ditty has value because it is one of the few language rules that most people remember.
That is possibly the truest sentence that Yahoo News will publish this month.
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1
It *is* a stupid ditty that helps no one spell better. And most people don't even know the "except when like 'ay' in neighbor and weigh" in the second line.
2
"The rule doesn't apply to the large number of plurals of words ending in "cy" ("fallacies", "frequencies", "vacancies", ... ) because in the UK – in traditional RP – "cies" is pronounced with the "i" of "pin", even though it is pronounced with the "ee" of "feed" by most World-English speakers and by younger UK speakers."
Does that mean that 'fallacies' is pronounced 'phalluses' in the UK? How unfortunate...
Does that mean that 'fallacies' is pronounced 'phalluses' in the UK? How unfortunate...
5
That sentence jumped out at me from the article when I first read it too.
But you can't seriously mean that it "has value because it is one of the few language rules that most people remember." Can you???
But you can't seriously mean that it "has value because it is one of the few language rules that most people remember." Can you???
8
Sure there are exceptions. There are exceptions to all rules. The rule still holds true more often than not.
But as we move towards a world where 99.9% of all written interaction occurs via computers, most all of the rules will probably become worthless anyway. I still haven't figured out how the hell people are actually going to communicate with each other once that happens, but it sure looks like it's happening at a pretty high rate of speed.
But as we move towards a world where 99.9% of all written interaction occurs via computers, most all of the rules will probably become worthless anyway. I still haven't figured out how the hell people are actually going to communicate with each other once that happens, but it sure looks like it's happening at a pretty high rate of speed.
10
Ah, but @4 - Rottweiler is a German word, and the rule doesn't apply to German words. You pronounce the second vowel rather than the first. I spend half my life teaching people in South Louisiana that because no one here can pronounce my last name.
In fairness, though, I can't pronounce a lot of the French/Cajun/Creole names I encounter, either.
And the rule is not so much a rule as a guideline. I think if it is taught that way, and exceptions are pointed out, it can be useful. I still say it to remind myself how to spell words like receive.
In fairness, though, I can't pronounce a lot of the French/Cajun/Creole names I encounter, either.
And the rule is not so much a rule as a guideline. I think if it is taught that way, and exceptions are pointed out, it can be useful. I still say it to remind myself how to spell words like receive.
14
Come on, @8 and @10, it's a worthless "rule", though, isn't it? My dad, as a former school teacher, has been saying for years that it didn't have enough value to be worth teaching.
And, Fifty-Two-Eighty, I studied linguistics with courses in computer-related linguistics, but I can't get my head what this really means:
But as we move towards a world where 99.9% of all written interaction occurs via computers, most all of the rules will probably become worthless anyway. I still haven't figured out how the hell people are actually going to communicate with each other once that happens, but it sure looks like it's happening at a pretty high rate of speed.
Sure, languages change over time -- that happens everywhere, with or without computers. Why would we end up with no rules at all from people using computers to convey their words?
And, Fifty-Two-Eighty, I studied linguistics with courses in computer-related linguistics, but I can't get my head what this really means:
But as we move towards a world where 99.9% of all written interaction occurs via computers, most all of the rules will probably become worthless anyway. I still haven't figured out how the hell people are actually going to communicate with each other once that happens, but it sure looks like it's happening at a pretty high rate of speed.
Sure, languages change over time -- that happens everywhere, with or without computers. Why would we end up with no rules at all from people using computers to convey their words?
16
@7:
Sigh. I wish this myth would die. All languages have rules (i.e. grammar). Otherwise they wouldn't be languages. Just sequences of symbols.
Also, while English spelling has many idiosyncrasies, it's actually not that bad: "[In english] there's a rather clever and fairly regular mechanism at work, and one which still gets the vast majority of words pretty much correct. It's not to modern tastes, but by no means as broken as people think." (Mark Rosenfelder)
@6:
There is no way that "95 percent of people who use 'English' are not native speakers of it". Use some common sense: Americans alone make up 5% of the world's population. If your statement were true, then the rest of the world would (1) speak English and (2) not be native speakers of it.
Sigh. I wish this myth would die. All languages have rules (i.e. grammar). Otherwise they wouldn't be languages. Just sequences of symbols.
Also, while English spelling has many idiosyncrasies, it's actually not that bad: "[In english] there's a rather clever and fairly regular mechanism at work, and one which still gets the vast majority of words pretty much correct. It's not to modern tastes, but by no means as broken as people think." (Mark Rosenfelder)
@6:
There is no way that "95 percent of people who use 'English' are not native speakers of it". Use some common sense: Americans alone make up 5% of the world's population. If your statement were true, then the rest of the world would (1) speak English and (2) not be native speakers of it.
17
Purdy poster. And I'm going to have to nitpick the last sentence of the little Yahoo article... 'i before e' is a spelling rule, not a language rule. It's orthography, not grammar.
18
English, like every language, is always changing. The King James/Shakespearean thee, thou and thine as well as the suffixes -est and -eth and so forth are gone from every place other than fundamentalist pulpits. I predict the distinction between who and whom will be forgotten, and the phrase "I shall..." as opposed to "I will..." will soon sound so stilted that it will fade from American English except when used by comedians playing pretentious characters. But these changes will happen relatively slowly. Spelling, on the other hand, will likely change rapidly due to more relaxed orthography in email and texting.
19
@16,
I very much agree with your point that all languages have rules (even newfangled forms written on computers, guys!!)
re: the quote,
"[In english] there's a rather clever and fairly regular mechanism at work, and one which still gets the vast majority of words pretty much correct. It's not to modern tastes, but by no means as broken as people think." (Mark Rosenfelder)
I should probably take the time to find out more about where this guy's coming from, but it sounds a little half-baked, doesn't it? I can't see where anyone could say English does anything with "the vast majority of words," and especially not with "a...fairly regular mechanism."
English spelling, not "grammar" as others thankfully pointed out, is based upon kind of a mishmash of mechanisms. My position - and please, anyone qualified, feel free to critique this - has been that most commonly languages with spelling conventions that are regular in their relation to pronunciation differ from languages like English in that the spellings of their words have been standardized to match the current pronunciation (and take into account borrowings from various sources) at some point not too far in the past.
If you think English spelling is far out, try Tibetan, where the word for moon is spelled zLa-ba and pronounced more or less (varying widely depending on dialect) something like ndawa... and that's not even an irregular spelling. It's just that the spelling conventions have never been updated, as far as I know, in the history of the language.
Similarly, English still has spellings like "knight," and most spellings have never even been updated to keep up with the Great Vowel Shift that happened centuries ago. That's how we ended up with the weird diphthong pronunciation that we call a "long i" while virtually every other European language pronounces i as something like what we call ee: words like ice, for example, used to be pronounced like eess. The pronunciation has changed while most spellings haven't, plus we have words from a variety of sources.
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I very much agree with your point that all languages have rules (even newfangled forms written on computers, guys!!)
re: the quote,
"[In english] there's a rather clever and fairly regular mechanism at work, and one which still gets the vast majority of words pretty much correct. It's not to modern tastes, but by no means as broken as people think." (Mark Rosenfelder)
I should probably take the time to find out more about where this guy's coming from, but it sounds a little half-baked, doesn't it? I can't see where anyone could say English does anything with "the vast majority of words," and especially not with "a...fairly regular mechanism."
English spelling, not "grammar" as others thankfully pointed out, is based upon kind of a mishmash of mechanisms. My position - and please, anyone qualified, feel free to critique this - has been that most commonly languages with spelling conventions that are regular in their relation to pronunciation differ from languages like English in that the spellings of their words have been standardized to match the current pronunciation (and take into account borrowings from various sources) at some point not too far in the past.
If you think English spelling is far out, try Tibetan, where the word for moon is spelled zLa-ba and pronounced more or less (varying widely depending on dialect) something like ndawa... and that's not even an irregular spelling. It's just that the spelling conventions have never been updated, as far as I know, in the history of the language.
Similarly, English still has spellings like "knight," and most spellings have never even been updated to keep up with the Great Vowel Shift that happened centuries ago. That's how we ended up with the weird diphthong pronunciation that we call a "long i" while virtually every other European language pronounces i as something like what we call ee: words like ice, for example, used to be pronounced like eess. The pronunciation has changed while most spellings haven't, plus we have words from a variety of sources.
20
The other one that really gets me is how much "____ and I" is taught as the only right way. I think I'd rather have somone incorrectly use "____ and me" than "____ and I," since at least the former doesn't connote a try - and fail - at proper speech.
Direct and indirect object pronouns 4 life.
Direct and indirect object pronouns 4 life.
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