“i don’t judge people based on race, creed, color, or gender. i judge people based on spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.”
i hate to burst your pretentious little bubble, but linguistic prejudice is inextricably tied to racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and ableism.
ETA: don’t send me angry messages about this…at all, preferably, but at least check the tag for this post before firing off an irate screed.
no one seems to be following the directive above, so here’s the version of this post i would like all you indignant folk to read.
no, i am not saying that people of color, women, poor people, disabled people, etc, “can’t learn proper english.” what i’m saying is that how we define “proper english” is itself rooted in bigotry. aave is not bad english, it’s a marginalized dialect which is just as useful, complex, and efficient as the english you’re taught in school. “like” as a filler word, valley girl speech, and uptalk don’t indicate vapidity, they’re common verbal patterns that serve a purpose. etc.
because the point of language is to communicate, and there are many ways to go about that. different communities have different needs; different people have different habits. so if you think of certain usages as fundamentally “wrong” or “bad,” if you think there’s a “pure” form of english to which everyone should aspire, then i challenge you to justify that view. i challenge you to explain why “like” makes people sound “stupid,” while “um” doesn’t raise the same alarms. explain the problem with the habitual be. don’t appeal to popular opinion, don’t insist that it just sounds wrong. give a detailed explanation.
point being that the concept of “proper english” is culturally constructed, and carries cultural biases with it. those usages you consider wrong? they aren’t. they’re just different, and common to certain marginalized groups.
not to mention that many people who speak marginalized dialects are adept at code-switching, i.e. flipping between non-standard dialects and “standard english,” which makes them more literate than most of the people complaining about this post.
not to mention that most of the people complaining about this post do not speak/write english nearly as “perfectly” as they’d like to believe and would therefore benefit by taking my side.
not to mention that the claim i’m making in the OP is flat-out not that interesting. this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. the only reason it sounds so outlandish is that we’ve been inundated with the idea that how people speak and write is a reflection of their worth. and that’s a joyless, elitist idea you need to abandon if you care about social justice or, frankly, the beauty of language.
and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real ramifications–in employment (tossing resumes with “black-sounding names”), in the legal system (prejudice against rachel jeantel’s language in the trayvon martin trial), in education (marginalizing students due to prejudice against dialectical differences, language-related disabilities, etc), and…well, a lot.
no, this doesn’t mean that there’s never a reason to follow the conventions of “standard english.” different genres, situations, etc, have different conventions and that’s fine. what it does mean, however, is that this standard english you claim to love so much has limited usefulness, and that, while it may be better in certain situations, it is not inherently better overall. it also means that non-standard dialects can communicate complex ideas just as effectively as the english you were taught in school. and it means that, while it’s fine to have personal preferences regarding language (i have plenty myself), 1) it’s worth interrogating the source of your preferences, and 2) it’s never okay to judge people on the basis of their language use.
so spare me your self-righteous tirades, thanks.
Oh my gosh YES, this post got so much better.
this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook.
and
and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the
basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real
ramifications(Also, most of what people loudly defend as “proper English” is nothing more than an adherence to one particular style guide over another–it was what they were taught, therefore it is the only way. Heh, nope. Learn some more. Linguistic descriptivism for all.)
most of what is taught isn’t even based on English but the rules for teaching latin
yes, you can split the infinitive because in English it’s two words, but in latin it’s one
so it is based on a structure designed by a very small educated elite to remind others of their place, and that place was as subhuman, the educated gentlemen who made these rules generally considered anyone who lacked in some way – no matter what it was – as subhuman and that they should be kept down by any means necessary and so created a labyrinth of traps to reveal them- including language
Lingustic prescriptivism is outdated and can be used far too easily as a tool for perpetuating classism, racism, and misogyny.
This post cleared my fucking skin up and completely hydrated me.
This whole thread. Listen, I have seen people assume that someone for whom English is a 7th language is ignorant because their accent or phrasing. Meanwhile they are scrolling through their mental rolodex & trying to remember whatever petty bitch rules apply in English instead of the grammar from Italian or German.
I judge people on language too. How they talk, what they say…Not saying it’s a good thing. I’m probably an elitist. But I’m fine with that.
i will pay people not to leave comments like this. go work on your insufferable self and leave my post alone.
Tag: language
Longest words
These are some of the supposed longest words in different European languages:
Irish – “rianghrafadóireachta” – photography
French – “Anticonstitutionnellement” – unconstitutionally
Croatian – “Prijestolonasljednikovica” – wife of an heir to the throne
Greek – “ηλεκτροεγκεφαλογραφήματος” – of an electroencephalogram
Latvian – “Pretpulksteņrādītājvirziens” – counter-clockwise
English – “Antidisestablishmentarianism” – against the disestablishment of the Church of England
Swedish – “Realisationsvinstbeskattning” – capital gains tax
Czech – “Nejneobhospodařovávatelnějšímu” – to the least cultivable ones
Polish – “Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka” the daughter of a man from Constantinople
Norwegian – “Menneskerettighetsorganisasjonene” – the human rights organisations
Lithuanian – “Nebeprisikiškiakopūsteliaujantiesiems” – people who no longer are able to pick up wood sorrels.
Ukranian – “Нікотинамідаденіндинуклеотидфосфат” – nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate
Serbian – “Семпаравиливичинаверсаламилитипиковски” – (this is actually the last name of a family from Yugoslavia)
Portuguese – “Pneumoultramicroscopicossilicovulcanoconiotico” – a disease caused by breathing in the dust from a volcano
Welsh – “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch” – St Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave
Agglutinative languages. Things get even weirder here:
Estonian – “Sünnipäevanädalalõpupeopärastlõunaväsimus” – the tiredness one feels on the afternoon of the weekend birthday party
Dutch – “Hottentottententententoonstellingsterrein” – exhibition ground for Hottentot huts
Hungarian – “Eltöredezettségmentesítőtleníttethetetlenségtelenítőtlenkedhetnétek” – (apparently untranslatable)
Finnish – “Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas” – (something to do with the Finnish Air Force. Hard to translate but impressively long)
Icelandic – “Vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúraútidyralyklakippuhringur” – key ring of the key chain of the outer door to the storage tool shed of the road workers on the Vaðlaheiði plateau (Icelandic isn’t even really an agglutinative language which makes this even more impressive)
Turkish – “Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine” – as though you are from those we may not be able to easily make a number of unsuccessful ones
And then the longest word is, of course, German. It’s 79 letters long and almost impossible to use in context:
German – “Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerk-bauunterbeamtengesellschaft” – Association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services.
If you know any more impressively long words that I missed, please let me know so I can add them!
Actually the English one is the exact same definition as the Portuguese one, except in English it is:
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis
British English:
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
zombiekittensandmadscientists:
One of my favorite linguistic phenomena is rebracketing, which is when a word or words is/are redivided differently, either two words becoming one, one word heard as two, or part of one word interpreted as part of the other. This frequently happens with articles, for example:
- apron was originally napron, but “a napron” was interpreted as “an apron”
- newt comes from ewt by the same process
- In the opposite direction, nickname comes from Middle English nekename which in turn came from ekename (an ekename -> a nekename) where “eke” was an old word meaning “also” or “additional” (so basically “an additional name”)
- ammunition comes from an obsolete dialectal French amunition, which came from munition, the phrase la munition being heard as l’amunition.
- the nickname Ned comes from Ed, via “mine Ed” being heard as “my Ned” (in archaic English, “my” and “mine” had the same relationship as “a” and “an”), same with several other nicknames like Nell
- The word “orange” ulimately derives from the Arabic nāranj, via French “orange”, the n being lost via a similar process involving the indefinite article, e.g., something like French “une norange” becoming “une orange” (it’s unclear which specific Romance language it first happened in)
- in the Southern US at least (not sure about elsewhere), “another” is often analyzed as “a nother”, hence the phrase “a whole nother”
- omelet has a whole series of interesting changes; it comes from French omelette, earlier alemette (swapping around the /l/ and /m/), from alemelle from an earlier lemelle (la lemelle -> l’alemelle)
Related to this, sometimes two words, especially when borrowed into another language, will be taken as one. Numerous words were borrowed from Arabic with the definite article al- attached to them. Spanish el lagarto became English alligator. An interesting twist is admiral, earlier amiral (the d probably got in there from the influence of words like “administer”) from Arabic amir al- (lord of the ___), particularly the phrase amir al-bahr, literally “lord of the sea”.
Sometimes the opposite happens. A foreign word will look like two words, or like a word with an affix. For example, the Arabic kitaab (book) was borrowed into Swahili as kitabu. ki- happens to be the singular form of one of the Swahili genders, and so it was interpreted as ki-tabu. To form the plural of that gender, you replace ki- with vi-, thus, “books” in Swahili is vitabu. The Greek name Alexander became, in Arabic, Iskander, with the initial al- heard as the article al-.
Similarly, the English word Cherry came from Old Norman French cherise, with the s on the end interpreted as the plural -s. Interestingly enough, that word came from Vulgar Latin ceresia, a feminine singular noun, but originally the plural of the neuter noun ceresium! So a Latin plural was reinterpreted as a singular in Vulgar Latin, which in turn was interpreted as a plural when borrowed into English!
The English suffix -burger used with various foods (e.g., cheeseburger, or more informally chickenburger, etc.) was misanlyzed from Hamburger as Ham-burger, itself from the city of Hamburg
This can happen even with native words. Modern French once is used for the snow leopard, but originally meant “lynx”. In Old French, it was lonce (ultimately from the same source as lynx), which was reinterpreted as l’once! In English, the word “pea” was originally “pease”, but that looked like it had the plural -s on it, and so the word “pea” was created from it. Likewise, the adjective lone came from alone, heard as “a lone”, but alone itself came originally from all one.
One of my favorite personal examples is the old Southern man who would come into work and ask me if I was “being have” (as opposed to the more usual “behaving”).
the word editor predated the word edit – editor was reinterpreted as edit-er, so clearly someone who edits!
when your open borders advocacy extends to morpheme boundaries
Don’t forget the Swahili kipilefti (”roundabout”), from English keep left, with a plural vipilefti – and in reverse, singular kideo (”video”) with plural video.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 