Stack Exchange for English Language and Usage | Hacker News Reader

Stack Exchange for English Language and Usage

english.stackexchange.com

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Judging from the top questions that I read, this is not a site for linguists, at least not ones interested in descriptive rules of language. Nearly all questions asked about standards of written English, which are arbitrary and uninteresting to a linguist, except in that the bickering over what is “proper” might bring to our attention divergent forms among varieties of English.

For people interested in the debate over whether a “correct” English (or any language for that matter) exists, here is an interesting article by Geoffrey Pullum:

http://people.ucsc.edu/~pullum/MLA2004.pdf

Re: written English vs. spoken English Spoken English is a primary linguistic form while written English is secondary or parasitic on spoken forms, so actually from a linguistic perspective, calling written English a language is wrong. English exists in speakers’ minds and written English is a filtered encoding of that language with certain non-linguistic constraints put upon it (e.g. in my dialect of English, dropping an auxiliary at the beginning of a yes/no question is completely okay, but in writing, I hardly ever do this, unless in a very informal context. This is because written standards tell me not to.)

A lot of the signal in spoken English is carried by tone of voice and emphasis. Which confuses people from cultures where emphasis is not part of the signal, much as English speakers are often confused by tonal languages.

Written English is more formal presumably because it has to get by without that part of the signal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves

My favorite word source: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

Why couldn't people use this more often?

Because 99% of the time English will not respond with a compile or runtime error when your input to it is slightly malformed.

Because english isn't as standardized as we would like to think. The written and spoken forms are not a one to one translation. Written english could almost be classify as a seperate language that happens to share words and similar syntax. At least the written version has a modest level of standardization. The spoken language is very fragmented.

From a linguistics standpoint, all paired written and spoken versions of languages are considered separate languages.

"at least the written version has a modest level of standardization"

O rly?

srsly, tho, there are lotz of ways English is writ, la?

thks cellphones! lol

I wasn't referring to spoken language. I meant when people try to literally "write like they speak" and end up sounding ridiculous because, as you said, written English could almost be another language.

Several, don't forget dialects.

Because there is no such thing as correct English.

OK, so what is the politically correct term for the use of, say, a double negative in English?

The preferred euphemism used to be "non-standard", which still leaves the problem of defining "standard" English.

Right, I like to think that there are milieus of English with which knowledge and conformance can be useful. Formal writing for example. But to say that the rules of formal writing should be extended to all domains is akin to saying that all food should be stir-fried. Just like there is no such thing as standard cooking, there is no such thing as standard English.

We need to keep adding levels of euphemism, until it's euphemisms all the way down. Only then will the egos of half-wits be completely safe.

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