Grammar Lesson.

Like Blackwatch I shudder at the mutilation of the English language on this forum, but this is a global disease exacerbated by the introduction of texting.
As a moderator I have to de-cypher the statements when investigating complaints. As the King of Siam said in the movie 'Tis a puzzlement'.

What is English? Billions of people speak a variant and sometimes that is not easily understood.

Two articles from Wikipedia may be of interest to you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_English_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation


My grandfather came from Inverness in Scotland.
He spoke beautiful English that would put the old BBC accent to shame.
I no doubt benefitted from living with him.
As a child I lived in a number of locations in England during and after WWII - Berkshire, Essex, North London, South London, Bournemouth, and the Isle of Wight.
When I first emigrated to Australia I was teased for my Pommie accent so quickly adapted to Strine (Australian).
When I moved to New Zealand I once again adapted to both Kiwi and Maori.
As a serviceman I travelled the world, including returning to England and being located in Preston, Lancashire when the RNZAF purchased Canberra bombers.
Later in my Airforce career when the RNZAF purchased P3 maritime aircraft I was stationed at a Naval Base in California USA for 6 months.

During my appointment as Commanding Officer of our Electronics Training School I often hosted defence personnel from Asian countries and Pacific Islands.

I seem to have understood most of the English variants, both written and spoken.

Trainz forums are international. No particular accent or variant of English is right or wrong, unless you are conversing with Trainz then you had better be compliant or the Content Manager will complain.

There are just two golden rules on the Trainz Forum:

1. If you want to be understood, know who you are writing for.

2. Abide by the Code of Conduct in relation to language and treating others with respect.

I find most youngsters from around the world these days, both, in writing, and, speaking, are perfunctory......:hehe:
Having personally studied the English Language for many decades, it's derivatives are many, but, by and large, I can get through reading many posts on this forum, you can gain an insight into the post writers education, or, severe lack of it, in some cases, being an old fuddy duddy I've got used to text speak, especially, as I have a niece and nephew in their teens, you quickly grow into their world, and if you don't conform you readily get beaten with a wet fish by today's urban youngsters.
Now that I've procrastinated I'm away to play with my Trainz 12, whilst you all scurry away to Google all these long words, education is a wonderful thing, and in the words of Blackadder, I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation........

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

@ ex-railwayman

I understood every word. However, one of your sentences could have been broken down in order to have made it an easier read.

I shall now go and place another beer bottle in Surveyor and, of course, remain crapulent.

Cheers
Casper

There is no such thing as a traffic accident - they are always refereed to as an RTC - Road Traffic Collision - this is due to saying an accident it suggests that it is all just a misfortune or lack of fault, when in reality in any traffic collision there is a clear series of events that has taken place leading up to the incident event.

ex-railwayman said:

and in the words of Blackadder, I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation........

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

Click to expand...

Sausage! Sausage! Blast your eyes!

domsarto said:

With a bit of help from your own post which I was ignoring up until now:-

Click to expand...

I ass an outlander red also the lesson vieuwer.

I think part of the problem is that English is primarily a spoken language and the written part came later together with the rules of grammar etc. I think it was the Frnech scribes who came over with William the conquer in 1066 that first tried to write down the words which is fun because a lot of the spellings such as ough that the French complain about entered the written language by the French scribes writing down what they heard.
It's function was to communicate and if two people can communicate without using a defined set of grammar that's fine. The US variant of English and also French are different, L'Académie française for example actually has legal status and defines exactly what should be in the language and what shouldn't be. The US passed a strange law about spelling in English but elsewhere even correct spelling varies and the Oxford English dictionary has alternate spellings. Microsoft Word spelling and grammar checker have probably done more to standardise or should that be standardize English than anything else.

So English English is the written version of what is spoken, in which case it is the common people who define the language not the academics. The US maybe different, Canada is fun the Oxford English dictionary is defined in law as the correct spelling but many government departments issue information in US spelling.

I agree that the rules of grammar as used in Yorkshire have some merit in assisting communication otherwise us poor folks who were born on the other side of the Pennines would have to resort to more traditional non-verbal methods which were used in the past to communicate that those were our sheep.

Cheerio John

Love that last paragraph John but I have to add, they may have been your sheep, but they were eating our grass.

Grammar is almost as divisive a subject as livery (at least among rail enthusiasts). While spelling and grammar on this and many other fora is often deplorable, I tend not to mind as long as the all important meaning is clear. That doesn't mean to say I'm not screwing up my metaphorical grammar face when I see such crimes against language but it's not for me to police.

How to comfort a disgruntled linguist.

Their, they're, there.

pfx said:

[snip]How to comfort a disgruntled linguist.

Their, they're, there.

Click to expand...

Ha, Hah, haar.

Consider for a moment that what you are seeing may just be the 'evolution' of the language. This is bound to happen as more people over a wider scope are connected in a community (such as this or the world wide web in general). As long as you are able to communicate a specific message, there really is no wrong or right way. BUT, if that message cannot be conveyed because you have successfully butchered the language, then you are merely babbling nonsense. I am not by any means declaring that I agree with careless misuse of words, but I find it somewhat pretentious to try and correct it here on a forum.

norfolksouthern37 said:

Consider for a moment that what you are seeing may just be the 'evolution' of the language. This is bound to happen as more people over a wider scope are connected in a community (such as this or the world wide web in general). As long as you are able to communicate a specific message, there really is no wrong or right way. BUT, if that message cannot be conveyed because you have successfully butchered the language, then you are merely babbling nonsense. I am not by any means declaring that I agree with careless misuse of words, but I find it somewhat pretentious to try and correct it here on a forum.

Click to expand...

Well said (hmmmm...written?) Justin. I also find that, as I enter my golden years, my memory isn't quite as sharp as it once was. I've heard somewhere recently that this is not due to the onset of senility, but is analogous to running out of RAM. The first thing to go is spelling.


Hmmmmm...are there two or three n's in railfanning?


Cheers,
Fred

norfolksouthern37 said:

but I find it somewhat pretentious to try and correct it here on a forum.

Click to expand...

If you say that someone or something is pretentious, you mean that they try to seem important or significant, but you do not think that they are.
I made no such claim, all I did was give those who didn't know something (and a lot of people do get confused on the issue), a chance to make it
clearer to themselves.

But I was obviously wasting my time.

Oh I do remember what you had written up there. My point is that you appear to be giving the impression that they need this education and you are rightly qualified to give it to them with your obvious superior culture and knowledge. See what I mean? It is best to just leave those kind of things alone.

So not only had we better get all the information in our posts correct, Screen Shots, Etc, but now we have to display perfect use of the English language?
When did this become a full time job where no pay check is issued at the the end of the day? Also who elected a secret few as the GODS of all things trainz? I thought we were here to have fun and share ideas. Well that's what I get for thought when I should have thinking. It's threads like that are the prime reason I really don't post here anymore. This place is quickly being over taken by snobs and people who are nothing more than total jerks whom it would seem did not get enough attention as a child. I have to throw this in just to utterly piss some one off.
I is verwy will edumatcated und I graducated frum HY-SKEWL.
Simply put. Who do I need to apply with to start having fun with a program that I paid for? Further what forms are required for said application?
DAMN SOME PEOPLE.

As we say down south, "you can tell a Yorkshireman but you can't tell him much". We know that youngsters' English is deteriorating because of the texting culture and the non-teaching of grammar nowadays. Language changes over time and it is an irreversible process. We also need to remember that language is primarily a means of communication not an art form, so the fundamental question is do you understand what the person is saying or writing. Fortunately English is a very flexible language and one can break many rules and still be understood, unlike some languages I can think of.

As an aside when I trained to be a Physics and Maths teacher fifty-four years ago, we were told that every teacher is a teacher of English and throughout my teaching career I endeavoured to carry that out, correcting spelling and grammar as well as marking the Physics. However times change and there is no point in clinging to the past in a pedantic way and hoping to stop the tide. Canute failed and so will you for better or worse.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

English as a language has been constantly evolving ever since the Norman French found that they might have conquered the Anglo-Saxons but they couldn't force them to learn a new language. Eventually - oh, how British - a compromise was reached. By Chaucer's time three centuries later the two distinct tongues had hybridised, to form something which is certainly English, but also certainly not as we know it now.

It had changed markedly by Shakespeare's time - although spelling had yet to be standardised, most of the words are recognisable. Since then, the language has continued to evolve, particularly by becoming more streamlined: unlike most European languages, for example, we have jettisoned the second person singular, with all the social and familial niceties it conveys elsewhere - thou, thee and thy have disappeared from everyday use except in some country dialects (mainly in Yorkshire). Only a century ago, the use of the contracted forms such as can't, haven't, won't would have been considered sloppy in speech, let alone in writing.

Those who taught my (post-war) generation despaired at our use of language, in much the same way as some here do of the present one. But no doubt the time will come when this generation will squirm and moan in their turn at what they see as a terrible afront being done to the tongue by another generation.

Language needs to change to survive: we may not like it, but it's the way it's always been.

What I do not like is the fact that large companies and instances like municipalities etc. ( in my country any way) that should be professional send out letters and correspondence lately with spelling and grammar mistakes that are shocking .

You've all got the wrong end of the stick, you've not grasped the reason I posted the article I found, you've all made
up your minds, so there is no point me trying to explain my thinking when I opened this thread any further.

Have it your way, it's no loss to me.

*Shrugs shoulders & walks away.*

So please tell what was the point you were trying to make if we all got it wrong

BLACKWATCH said:

You've all got the wrong end of the stick, you've not grasped the reason I posted the article I found, you've all made
up your minds, so there is no point me trying to explain my thinking when I opened this thread any further.

Have it your way, it's no loss to me.

*Shrugs shoulders & walks away.*

Click to expand...