2007: Year of the Tch?

[two_heads_talking]

my favorite past perfect offense is.. what I had did was..... or what he had did was.... I really have to make a concious effort not to laugh in their face.

[kitamichibi]

, Glad to be of service..

[Yudan Taiteki]

JaySee wrote:

AJBryant wrote:
but I *have* noticed the increasing lack of a grasp of past perfect and general basic grammar.

You have to realise though that change/adaptation (or deterioration as some would call it) is actually something natural to language in general which has been going on since humans first started talking, so I really don't see why people need to get all wound up about it. If people living 100 years ago would listen to you speaking, they would probably make a comment similar to the one you made here about the way you say things.

Actually with many of these nonstandard past participle (and past) forms, it's the opposite -- they're older forms which have dropped out of the language except for their survival in certain dialects. This is true of "had drank", past "drunk", past "clamb", pp "had clumb", etc.

[AJBryant]

Yudan Taiteki wrote:
What do you mean by "lack of a grasp of past perfect"? Do you mean people using nonstandard past perfect forms like "He had drank a lot that night" or "it had froze to the car"?

Pretty much. I often hear things like "the song he had sang," or "whenever I had went" (which is TWO mistakes) when what they *intend* is "when I went." (What we often encounter is less educated people mistakingly using past perfect on talk shows because there is a sense that it sounds more educated to use it, but they are using it both improperly and incorrectly. This phenomenon is something I read about once in a journal -- I think it was called "language inflation" or something like that.)


Tony

[two_heads_talking]

it's called ignorant.. that's what it is. cause what I had wanted to said was the we was all going to get crunked and what had happened was we got some dranks with the boyz at the bar. and what had happened was we got drunked. :@

[Chris Hart]

Definately ignorance. I remember some commercials on the radio when I was a kid for a car dealer in Maumee, OH. (the city is pronounced "MAW-mee") The person recording it was saying "MAO-mee". Really annoyed me. Every once in a while, that person does other commercials.

[Yudan Taiteki]

There are multiple possible explanations for why a speaker uses a certain form.

Sometimes it's not ignorance or a lack of education, but just lack of desire or motivation to eradicate a certain speech feature from one's own speech -- something that is much easier said than done.

For instance, I frequently use "less" in speech where the educated dialect normally demands "fewer" (e.g. "there were less students in class today"). I'm certainly not ignorant of the fact that "fewer" is preferred by some people (nor am I ignorant of how to apply the less vs. fewer "rule"), and I'm certainly not uneducated.

[Hatori]

Mike, now YOU'RE the one asking silly questions for once. Oo-fu-fu.
Okay- Just messing with you. Anyway, I hear a lot TCH noises. I don't know where these people on the radio are from, but in Chicago it feels like there's more TCHs than there is needed. Listen to Michael Savage (didn't spell it right) and you'll see.
But it also may be the radio signals. I dunno. I listen to the radio ALL of the time (it never turns off) and the DJs sometimes make the noises.
Herodotus... We were talking about some guy like that in my ancient civilizations class last week...
I used to make the noise a lot before, but ever since I joined the speech team, I talk more clearly.

[Tspoonami]

Mike, I believe the 'tch' sound is something I only hear in teenage-girl-speak, often combined with 'like,' 'whatever,' and 'oh my gosh that guy was so cute.'

Yudan Taiteki wrote:
Sometimes it's not ignorance or a lack of education, but just lack of desire or motivation to eradicate a certain speech feature from one's own speech -- something that is much easier said than done.

Clever.

[TrashTreasurer]

two_heads_talking wrote:
it's called ignorant.. that's what it is. cause what I had wanted to said was the we was all going to get crunked and what had happened was we got some dranks with the boyz at the bar. and what had happened was we got drunked. :@

I laughed out loud, and for a while. Thanks for that one

[AJBryant]

Yudan Taiteki wrote:
There are multiple possible explanations for why a speaker uses a certain form.

Sometimes it's not ignorance or a lack of education, but just lack of desire or motivation to eradicate a certain speech feature from one's own speech -- something that is much easier said than done.

For instance, I frequently use "less" in speech where the educated dialect normally demands "fewer" (e.g. "there were less students in class today"). I'm certainly not ignorant of the fact that "fewer" is preferred by some people (nor am I ignorant of how to apply the less vs. fewer "rule"), and I'm certainly not uneducated.

Ummm... if you KNOW that "less" is for quantity, and "fewer" is for number, there is no excuse but laziness for NOT using them correctly.

It has nothing to do with "educated dialect" -- it has to do with correct usage.


Tony

[AJBryant]

JaySee wrote:

AJBryant wrote:
but I *have* noticed the increasing lack of a grasp of past perfect and general basic grammar.

You have to realise though that change/adaptation (or deterioration as some would call it) is actually something natural to language in general which has been going on since humans first started talking, so I really don't see why people need to get all wound up about it. If people living 100 years ago would listen to you speaking, they would probably make a comment similar to the one you made here about the way you say things.

Have you ever read Dickens or Austen?

I rather think you are wrong about this.


Tony

[Tspoonami]

AJBryant wrote:
there is no excuse but laziness

Is 'lack of desire or motivation' not one of laziness' definitions?

[Gundaetiapo]

I have to say, I'm still at a loss. Are we talking about the sound effect normally transliterated as "tsk"? As in

Dude 1: Check this out dude.
Dude 2: Tsk, that's nothing.

I couldn't hear that in the video but it seems to be what posters are describing.

[JaySee]

AJBryant wrote:
Have you ever read Dickens or Austen?

I rather think you are wrong about this.

Which is why I said spoken, not written. It usually takes quite a while before change in spoken language is reflected in the written language; this is especially true for spelling, but to an extent also for grammar and vocabulary. So yes, literary language has not changed much over the past 100 years, but a very important reason for that is that it's comparatively static and certainly does not reflect any recent changes in pronunciation.