Whatever could be wrong with an accent that
makes 'hello' intowhat sounds like:
"HELLAY
that's the Ü sound
She is of German stock, you know?
there's also
FLAT A becoming an 'e'
Where else could 'HAT' & 'HEAD' rhyme?
[hang the bankers blog]
Seriously though, with all the changes in the language , with
SMS and e-mail and emoticons this is a greatly creative period
for English and other languages.
So , the Rule-book Thumpers have gone away.
for English and other languages.
So , the Rule-book Thumpers have gone away.
The Queen's English Society is no-more,
or is that 'no more'?
anyway, she dead!
IshitUnot: 2 texts
1 ENGLISH
AT SFX
The Queen
is Dead
Just
as the British monarchy celebrates another milestone, with Her Maj reaching 60
years not out, the society that claims to defend her English - the Queen's
English Society - pops its clogs. And of course, being her subjects, it's our
language too. A bit like Buckingham
Palace...which we're not
allowed into and all those Crown Estates...hmm.... The professional contrarians
over at Spiked Online, led by Brendan O'Neill argue that standards are good,
because they allow you to communicate with more people in order to overturn the
system: "There is revolutionary
potential in having everyone adhere to the same linguistic rules; there is
only the dead end of division and parish-pump platitudes in the promotion of a
linguistic free-for-all in which eevn spleling doens’t matetr". [IT’S
WORKING SO FAR. HOW’S YOUR BANK?]
English
ain't what it was, but we should celebrate its cultural diversity
The
demise of the Queen's English Society signals the end of a nostalgic fantasy
Margaret
Reynolds
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 5 June 2012 19.00 BST Comments (229)
‘I do
like your shallots!' Linguistic mistakes, and variety in speech and dialect,
are among life's great pleasures. Photograph: Fox Photos/Getty Images
Who speaks the Queen's English?
Certainly not the Queen.
She has used many different kinds of English over the years and her way of
speaking is now pretty much unique, the crossbred product of an old-fashioned
upbringing and modern adaptation.
And
what is the Queen's English anyway? Does it lie in pronunciation, in grammar,
in correct use of terms, or in punctuation? Is it the same as Oxford English?
Or received pronunciation, or BBC English? And who will help us to tell the
difference?
Until
this week, the Queen's English Society ("Good English Matters") did
that job. But when only 22 members pitched up for a meeting, the chairman, Rhea
Williams, declared the society closed. Finished, kaput, an ex-society.
"People today", she said, "just don't care". Starbucks
won't call her back when she tries to point out their incorrect use of less and fewer. Advertisers shrug their
shoulders over misplaced apostrophes. So, felt pen in hand, she carries on her lonely
crusade, adjusting notices all over the land.
Standards in English have always been
going to the dogs.
Once, it was too many American expressions ("I'm taking the elevator to
put out the trash, dude"). Then, it was the mimicking of the Australian style of lifting the voice at the end of a
sentence? As if a statement were a question? Now, it's text abbreviations,
street slang, glottal stops and "it's gonna rain tomorrow" that are
the problems.
Like
many teachers, I sigh over essays that don't distinguish between effect and
affect. I shout at the radio over improper use of "the public
interest". Along with the Radio 4 announcer Harriet Cass, I don't really
feel that it is polite to say toilet in a public broadcast.
But
variety in speech and dialect is one of the delights of English. For more than a century now, we
have been able to hear the voices of the dead, and they speak a language
already strange. So Robert Browning (recorded in 1888) says, "'Pon
my word, I've forgotten me own verses". And the Anglo-Irish writer
Elizabeth Bowen, in a broadcast from the 1950s, recommends the need for
"plorrt and kerekter".
Where
I live in Gloucestershire the pronoun
"it" is often replaced with "he" – "I'm offended
with him", says my neighbour when his lettuce bolts. In Lancashire,
people speak with a portentous emphasis
– "You're a fool to yourself, Connie". In Bristol, classical music fans love the operal.
The
linguistic mistakes immortalised by Shakespeare's Dogberry and Sheridan's Mrs Malaprop are among life's
happy pleasures. There was the essay on Dracula in which he ends "with a steak through his heart". Or the
acquaintance who commented on my divided skirt – "I do like your
shallots". I didn't say anything. I expect Rhea Williams is rather more
brave. Or should that be braver?
Yes,
words are important, and correct usage does make for better understanding.
Along with all English teachers, I correct trivial errors and general
carelessness. But I care more that my
students think for themselves, that they develop a critical understanding,
so they can set up their own argument.
The
other thing that I value is a respect for the interests and feelings of others.
Mispronounced or miss-spelt words worry me a bit. But stumbling over names, or
failing to remember them, bothers me more. Equally, I don't mind American
phrases – provided we know that that is what they are. And let's add in words
from other cultures too – key European monetary terms might be useful at the
moment, along with the proper names for different dress codes and social
expectations.
But cultural policing (even of this kind)
is always dangerous, because it says that I am right and you are wrong. The
magazine published by the Queen's English Society is called Quest. And that's about right.
It strives to recover a nostalgic fantasy world that never did exist and
never can.
2
Spiked
online
Brendan O’Neill
The
revolutionary potential of the Queen’s English
It
isn’t only old farts who should stand up for standard English. So should those
of us who want to understand the world, and change it.
... Reynolds’ outlook echoes the
arguments put forward by an academic in the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2008, where it was argued that university teachers should stop losing sleep
over students’ misspelling of words and instead embrace their ‘variant
spellings’. So ‘truely’ wouldn’t be wrong, just a variant of ‘truly’. FIND
As a
young person might say (probably with the blessing of his university lecturer):
OMFG. That even higher-education practitioners no longer feel comfortable
correcting bad spelling and spasticated
grammar speaks volumes about today’s cult of relativism. Apparently there
is no proper way to write or spell, just endless variations of word-use that
are all equally valid. Or perhaps vapid (that’s my variant spelling of valid,
so don’t judge). Today’s discomfort with standard language is summed up in the
slurs that have been invented to attack those who defend it: they are always
‘spelling fascists’ or ‘grammar police’ who, in the words of The Times (!), are
leading a ‘pedants’ revolt’ against txtspeak.
Of
course, defending standard English doesn’t mean defending a narrowly
prescriptive idea of how one should sound or demanding that everyone be
linguistically formal at all times, even when gassing with a mate on the blower
(see what I did there?). No one is saying you must pronounce off as orf (piss orf!) or never again say the phrase ‘me
bollox’. But in order to engage with society, with its public life and
politics, you need to fully understand
its language[AND ITS VARIETY AND DIALECTS]. You need to know that the
sentence you just read contained a split infinitive, and that some people frown
upon those while others think they are okay. You need to know how words are spelt and how they should
be arranged in order to achieve both clarity and clout; you need to know what
punctuation is for; you need to know what is the best way to write things down
in order for them to be understood by the maximum number (not amount) of
people. When it comes to language, the rule is that the more you know the rules, the more you can play around with them and
twist them for effect, if you like. But you need to know the rules. And it
is this knowing of the rules that is called into question these days, by people
who think we should stop telling 19-year-old muppets at university that they
have spelt things wrong and who even think it’s problematic to say: ‘I am right
and you are wrong.’
... The refusal to uphold a
standard language is really a refusal to be universal. It is the promotion of
parochialism at the expense of public engagement, and introversion over
expanding one’s horizons. I want to
speak the Queen’s English not because I want to be like the Queen, but because
I want to get rid of her, and to make numerous other changes to the society
we live in,
