I just read through a recently published article about the psychology and reasoning behind why people get so infuriated with poor grammar. It referred to a small study made by a linguist (a Finn, I believe), and basically arrived to the conclusion that it's a way for people to establish social status over others. No different from judging people by their wealth, looks, clothes, or grasp of some specific etiquette.
I could not possibly disagree more. So I thought I'd like to hear Veeky Forums's views on this.
>(cont.) Personally, I've always been a grammar nazi. Now yes, I do make my own mistakes as well. After all, English is my third language. Despite that, regardless of the language used and how familiar you are with it, I don't see a problem in making the occasional mistake. I see a problem when someone makes constant, basic mistakes, all the time... and then gets all offended when someone points it out to them, or suggests they should improve themselves.
This is not about social status, or satisfying some urge for a feeling of superiority over others. It's purely logical: Any communication, verbal or otherwise, has two participants: The one who's sharing the information, and the one who is receiving it. They both have a responsibility to themselves to try and communicate - and listen - as clearly as they can. Similarly, a huge primary problem with the internet for instance is that there is just too much information, and we can't possibly validate, study, test and absorb all of it. So source criticism is one of the most important skill one can have.
So when someone clearly displays no ability OR interest in taking the time to write a text that is properly structured, logical and easy to read and understand - making it a pain to go through in the first place -... then can you really place any faith in their sources, their views, and the validity of the information they're trying to share?
Clearly, they are not in the habit of spending much time going over their work during the very important phase of communicating their thoughts to other people, so is it not reasonable to assume that any information they're sharing is likely to be biased, opinionated and wrong as hell too?
Camden Carter
>why people get so infuriated with poor grammar >arrived to the conclusion that it's a way for people to establish social status over others I agree with this, it's also quite obvious, if you think about it.
Im a massive grammar nazi, even though rationally I disagree with it. In german, for example, if in a university context you use the wrong grammatical gender for something people will look at you funny. but honestly, grammatical genders are literally 100% memorization and completely arbitrary. it's imho a completely useless skill to be good at something so void of common sense.
But then I also think that Esperanto (or some other planned language) should be adopted worldwide as a second language for everyone, since natural languages (and English in particular) are just too complicated and full of historical clutter and retardation.
many people will laugh at Esperanto, but at the same time laud the (south) korean writing system hangul, even though both are "artificially" constructed by humans (which is why they are so vastly superior to the "natural languages" and "natural writing systems". worst example is chinese writing system, it's literally just a picture for every word. fucking horrendous. but even alphabetic systems arent without quirks, see for example pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation.html )
Dominic Hill
I think english actually works very well. There's no telling that any planned language we adopt won't morph over time as every other language does, which would somewhat defeat the purpose as we'd likely end up with a similar language to the present one.
We naturally adapt languages for efficient communication based on our experiences using the language is basically what I'm saying, and these adaptations do not necessarily need to follow well thought-out or structured rules.
Austin Rodriguez
>Clearly, they are not in the habit of spending much time going over their work during the very important phase of communicating their thoughts to other people, so is it not reasonable to assume that any information they're sharing is likely to be biased, opinionated and wrong as hell too? Also this, while plausible, is not really very reasonable. People of all levels of grammatical skill, I've found, are fond of biased, opinionated and wrong views.
Luke Campbell
>I think english actually works very well let me guess: english is your first language?
>There's no telling that any planned language we adopt won't morph over time as every other language does that's wrong and betrays your lack of knowledge about planned languages in general and Esperanto in particular.
Esperanto grammar and pronunciation / spelling is fixed (and grammar is 100% regular, writing system 100% phonetic), the only thing that can "flow" is vocabulary, and esperanto is actually fairly flexible as to which vocabulary you use. you could just standardize the vocabulary (which is done to some extent)
and even IF the vocabulary would constantly flow, it would still be MUCH better than the trainwreck that is English
Aiden Peterson
>so is it not reasonable to assume that any information they're sharing is likely to be biased, opinionated and wrong as hell too?
No, it's not reasonable at all to assume that the information is bad when you can simply evaluate the information itself in just slightly more time than it takes you to pass judgment on their grammar. In fact it is incredibly lazy, intellectually.
Elijah Flores
>So I thought I'd like to hear Veeky Forums's views on this. Frankly most of the time I've found grammar nazis to show themselves as such when an argument is already underfoot, as a kind of ad hominem, to discredit the opponent by saying, in essence, look at this man he cannot even command language how can you expect him to command reason; his position is the faulty one.
While it is not a mark against you to merely suggest another brush up on their language skills, to use this comment to discredit them surely indicates less-than-benevolent intent.
>let me guess: english is your first language? But of course.
>Esperanto grammar and pronunciation / spelling is fixed Yes but this language is only learned by people who acknowledge and accept that it is such a language. Why would you learn such a language, knowing that, and then seek to change it? This state of affairs will not be maintained if it becomes natural language, I assure you.
Cameron Johnson
>We naturally adapt languages for efficient communication based on our experiences using the language that is demonstrably wrong. What about grammatical genders? German has it, spanish has it, i think slav languages have, certainly russian has it.
tell me, what is efficient about assigning each word an arbitrary gender?
did you know that "girl" in germany has neutral gender? while "apple" is male and "fork" is female? whats efficient about this retardation?
Sebastian Miller
>But of course. I see, and you dont think it makes you biased towards your views on how easy English is to learn / speak? (protip: it's a rhetorical question. people are immensely biased to think their mother tongues are somehow the most "natural", "best" and "easiest" languages to express thoughts in.)
>This state of affairs will not be maintained if it becomes natural language, I assure you. yeah you simply have no clue what you're talking about. Esperanto grammar and spelling can be summarized on a single sheet of paper. Why is it that you know absolutely nothing about Esperanto but talk down to it as if you had studied it for years? Would you be similarly confident to make sweeping (and completely wrong) generalizations and Mandarin? (A language you probably know MORE about than you do about Esperanto)
Grayson James
>and Mandarin *about Mandarin
Noah Taylor
>I see, and you dont think it makes you biased towards your views on how easy English is to learn / speak? I've heard that english is very hard to learn, but also read that it permits highly efficient information transfer. Aside from that, the vast majority of scientific papers are published in english :)
The main question I have is that, if people are able to learn and effectively use such inferior languages, what need have we to replace them?
Ethan Jones
I won't argue that, obviously. But I'm of the opinion that this a similar issue to why companies place such high value on education and degrees. It by no means guarantees that the employee is good. But it at least tries to guarantee some bare minimum level of standards. Basically, they believe that an educated employee has a higher chance to be intelligent, motivated and have the necessary skills and drive to thrive in the company.
So by a similar vein of thought, I believe that on average I'm better off considering the views of someone who can actually proofread what they write, as opposed to someone who can't or just doesn't want to. It's not a guarantee of course, but I absolutely believe it increases my odds of getting what I want.
There's no shortage of articles online after all. So not only is it faster to read through properly written texts that are easy to read and understand (as opposed to some illiterate BS you need to read through 10 times to finally get what the writer even meant) - meaning you can absorb MORE information within the allotted time -, it also enhances the odds of the information being reliable. This, is why I choose to remain a grammar nazi.
I mean, I don't typically go writing posts about it or calling people names over social media or whatever. There's no point being a dick about it and wasting even more time doing so, after all. But I will generally just choose to ignore such poorly written texts completely.
Jordan Cook
>did you know that "girl" in germany has neutral gender? while "apple" is male and "fork" is female? whats efficient about this retardation? More efficient than: >Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words.
Xavier Jenkins
>the vast majority of scientific papers are published in english yes, english is the de facto lingua franca in this day and age, thanks to anglo-imperialism. it's not the first, and wont be the last.
>The main question I have is that, if people are able to learn and effectively use such inferior languages, what need have we to replace them? see this youtube.com/watch?v=Jb1txDSvmZ8 Esperanto was designed to be an easy-to-learn second language for everyone. English OTOH randomly coalesced into the Frankenstein language it is today. Which would you say makes more sense to adopt as an international second language for all?
Jonathan Price
I do not understand what you are trying to say.
Alexander James
>thanks to anglo-imperialism. I see I'm not the only one who's biased lol. I suppose I have no problem with it being an easy to use second language, but as an everyday one it seems gimped compared to nonconstructed languages.
Not using tone to carry meaning hampers efficient communication. It neuters the expressive power of a language.
Luke Cruz
>i disagree with science so here's my opinion
is this way
Camden Cooper
>After all, English is my third language what are the other two?
Luis Sanders
OP here, thanks for this! I've been searching for new and interesting things to learn recently, this definitely caught my attention.
The significance of tone depends completely on the language. Finnish, for instance, has an extremely low emphasis on tone. You can say almost anything at all with almost any tone at all, and it will mean the exact same thing: The words you used when you said it.
On the other hand, you have something like Mandarin Chinese where tone can change the meaning of a word from one to something that isn't even remotely related to the word you intended to use.
So the lack of tone is by no means objectively a bad thing. The significance of tone, most likely, is in the observer. Someone who was raised with a language with a heavy emphasis on tone, would logically place more value in it than someone who wasn't.
Ryan Perry
> ... can you really place any faith in their sources, their views, and the validity of the information they're trying to share?
That's exactly why grammar nazism is a way to establish social status. It's just not economical social status, but intellectual.
Every writing system is "artificially created". So are natural languages, to some extent. Just over a long period of time, evolving and adapting, instead of just being arbitrarily defined by some guy. If Esperanto or any other conlang gained enough speakers it would inevitably undergo grammaticalization and become full of "arbitrary" and "useless" constructions. tl;dr using constructed languages is futile, it'll change anyway
Aiden Cook
So if you approach information with any form of criticism, you're being an egotistic snob? Yeah, I don't think so.
Cameron Phillips
>Every writing system is "artificially created". So are natural languages, to some extent. Just over a long period of time, evolving and adapting, instead of just being arbitrarily defined by some guy >arbitrarily defined thats where you go wrong. Esperanto (and other conlangs) were designed with specific goals in mind. With esperanto in particular it was designed to be as easy to learn as possible. Nothing arbitrary about it.
>If Esperanto or any other conlang gained enough speakers it would inevitably undergo grammaticalization and become full of "arbitrary" and "useless" constructions. No, simply no. the grammar is 100% regular. There is a simple and powerful system of building vocabulary. it's easy, it's 100% regular, it will never change. ever.
and these factors alone (less memorization because of smart vocabulary system, 100% regular grammar, 100% regular phonetic writing system) make esperanto more sensible a language than any that has naturally evolved and brings with it all the idiosyncrasies, historical baggage and clutter that all naturally evolved things are riddled with.
thats in fact the argument against intelligent design: if the human eye was designed, the designer could not have been very intelligent. all naturally evolved systems are full of these seems-to-work compromises and outright hacks.
