NationStates Jolt Archive

Do you think the internet (especially forums, guestbooks and chatrooms) and similar phenomena (SMS etc.) are promoting bad spelling and grammar?

Not pointing a finger, just curious.

I think that it is influential in the deterioration of proper English, but not responsible. It is really splitting off the English language into two orthographies. Though I myself am a purist, I do not criticise others for more contemporary spelling and grammar, though I do point it out if I'm reading something they wrote.

Lanuage is evolving constantly. Todays bad spelling and grammer is tomorrows correct usage. Todays correct spelling and grammer is tommorrow's dead language.

Yes which is why I may fail english next year.

Yes and I don't mind.

Lanuage is evolving constantly. Todays bad spelling and grammer is tomorrows correct usage. Todays correct spelling and grammer is tommorrow's dead language.
Granted, language is a living entity, until they die, like Latin and Quenya. But I would not phrase it as "evolving constantly", since the evolution is fairly slow. Much faster than biotic evolution, but still relatively slow when compared to human generations. Especially in our modern era, where we have orthography, a very recent concept in language.

I prefer so-called 'purer' language to the 31337 5pk. But that's just me :-D

Granted, language is a living entity, until they die, like Latin and Quenya. But I would not phrase it as "evolving constantly", since the evolution is fairly slow. Much faster than biotic evolution, but still relatively slow when compared to human generations. Especially in our modern era, where we have orthography, a very recent concept in language.

I have only one reply to that statement: Ebonics.

Lanuage is evolving constantly. Todays bad spelling and grammer is tomorrows correct usage. Todays correct spelling and grammer is tommorrow's dead language.

I hope not. Yes, technology is, in part, to blame. Lower standards of education and the breakdown of the family unit are also major contributors. The media, and TV in general, is very effectve at spreading poor usage. The number of times I've heard someone on the news etc. say "There's some/many..." is ridiculous for one example - it's spreading like wild fire. ("There are" please)

The education systems (throughout North America) focus on teaching "whole langauage" is what is killing spelling and grammar.

I have only one reply to that statement: Ebonics.
I have only one reply to that statement: Orthoepy, not orthography.

Yo, don't be hating, my homey. Or I'll pop a cap in you. If you don't shut your D.S.L.s right now, I'm gonna bust outta here. Straight?

I apologize to any brothers out there I have offended

Yo, don't be hating, my homey. Or I'll pop a cap in you. If you don't shut your D.S.L.s right now, I'm gonna bust outta here. Straight?

I apologize to any brothers out there I have offended
~REPRESENT
http://www.power99i.com/articles/images/Twista.jpg

I have only one reply to that statement: Orthoepy, not orthography.

http://www.panikon.com/phurba/morph.html

http://www.panikon.com/phurba/morph.html
Colloquialisms, not the actual language, in my opinion.

The autocorrect function in Microsoft Word has definitely made my spelling worse: I don't notice when it corrects me, so it just reinforces bad habits until they become ingrained.

Not killing, just revising. Language is a dynamic medium of communication.

Pronounciation and spelling are two different things entirely.

Take the word: thought.

Consider - many years ago, when dictionaries were first being compiled, someone decided that based on the pronounciation of the word at the time, that this was the way to spell it.

Today, we don't pronounce the "gh" in thought.

Is technology killing spelling and grammar?

No, it's giving you more access to resources about it and ways to improve yours.

It's individual people who are destroying the language along with the mindless sensationalist pop culture that has insisted on intrgating meaning and totally useless colloqualisms into our language.

Because they are new words, they don't always fit into the scheme of the standards for our language.

There isn't just technology, but a whole new culture of ignorance emerging. So, which is to blame? I say it's the ignorance of the current pop culture that is the trend of the season. It's senseless buzz words are destroying our language.

However, if we are to assume that language is merely evolving, then how can it ever be dead? This is particularly so for Latin, the romance languages can specifically be evolutionary strains of that language.

So, Latin is not dead if you consider evolution.

On another point, English is becoming a universal language. This is meant in the context that we borrow so much from other languages, and as other cultures learn English, they DO incorporate their words with ours.

Esperanto, and other attempts at a rigid 'international' language will fail because they are fake--no one actually learns language well under that structure. An evolution must occur in the language so that new citizens make new changes based on their geographic and socio-economic statuses. At first it will be awkware, but people do learn new words that they don't know...sooner or later.

As for the Internet, I could certainly see in the DISTANT future that as the Net absorbs more time with more affluent people, average people are going to be inclined to use shorter phrasing to express common ideas, such as laughing out loud.

I think it's either laziness, sloppiness, ignorance, herd mentality or just plain poor typing skills that's resulted in some of the plainly poorly written posts we've all seen. That's a lot of reasons - but no one reason trumps all others. It's a little bit from all of the above and more still.

I generally prefer to be precise in my statements. If I can't say exactly what I mean, than how can I mean exactly as I say?

Just sayin'.


DT.

I'm with the poster who gives the "evolving" argument. Hell, "bling" is in the OED. I think you've always had people who have followed the rules of grammar and people who ain't too up on their Strunk and White. It's just that before to the internet, you never really saw how the sub-par crowd wrote (what, you're going to see the letter they sent The Atlantic?), whereas now, they're all over the chats and forums.

We're not seeing a decline in grammar, we're seeing a truer cross-section of skills.

The education systems (throughout North America) focus on teaching "whole langauage" is what is killing spelling and grammar.
exactly!
while whole language is a fabulous theory in many ways, it is the death knell of spelling and grammar. there is NO systematic teaching of spelling in whole language classrooms and it is very obvious on this forum who has been taught under this system and who hasnt.

Do you think the internet (especially forums, guestbooks and chatrooms) and similar phenomena (SMS etc.) are promoting bad spelling and grammar?

Not pointing a finger, just curious.

Unless I'm mistaken, I was never once taught anything about grammar, and I went to a good school.

Also, the reason people dont use proper spelling in sms text messaging is because it takes too long to type.

I should add that incorrect English has been around for a long time and are subject to continuous change, but the standards expected in formal English only change slowly.

Also, Leet is more of an internet dialect than an example of bad spelling - leet probably has its own accepted spellings, but when people spell badly, they could write anything.