Why is English such a Calvinball language?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:02 pm

Seriously, this language is all jacked up. And not just the vocabulary and pronunciation and conjugation or even syntactical structure -- but there's a bunch of tiny little rules and exceptions that make no goddamn sense yet completely change the context.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:13 pm

Well, t'be straight with you it's because English is a mutt of a language. The Germanic Angles invaded Britain, killed a bunch of people and impregnated the rest, borrowed off bits of their language and that basically set the tone for the next thousand years or so. If you think it's bad now, there used to be dozens of variations for common spellings and grammar was highly irregular because it was a vernacular language, not one of the standard or classical languages like Greek or Latin, and of course the studies of those languages helped shaped English (which accounts for a part of the weirdness).

The standardization of English itself was weird and very much a political/economic thing, not any sort of scholarly pursuit. Then of course the British Empire went and colonized everything, and English imported (and exported) massive amounts of vocabulary.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:17 pm

I've been told by multilingual people I know that because of its nature. English is great for science and mathematics, but not so good for poetry and expressive literature.

In contrast, the French weren't allowed to call a CD-rom drive anything for decades after it was invented because the old french guys that are in charge of the french language refused to name it, and refused to let anyone use the english name for it. I am not making any of that up.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:40 pm

Count: Nobody listens to L'Académie française. These are the guys who create fusses along the lines of that when referring to a member of government, you can only refer to them by the gender-neutral (read: gender-man) term. Le ministre for both guys and girls rather than the more obvious and logical (keeping with french grammar logic that is) la ministre for women and le ministre for men.

I mean people use e-mail all the time in france and not the suggested message électronique.
--

Lago: I think the popular quote from the days of usenet is "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary"

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:40 pm

Basically, English bashed together germanic and romance languages, and those just don't mix. Also, when English started getting standardized, the people setting the rules decided to import a bunch from Latin that make no goddamn sense in English. For instance, you can't split infinitives because Latin infinitives are present stem+-re instead of being two words.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:54 pm

My mission is to boldly splint infinitives that no man has split before.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:57 pm

You totally can split infinitives. That's not an actual rule of English. The idea that it was a rule was promoted in the 19th century by some scholars that were only listened to by the people whose papers they graded.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 3:46 pm

Similar, you can too end sentences in prepositions. That 'rule' came from Latin grammar as well.

Just like how Latin didn't split infinitives (because infinitives were one word), Latin also didn't end sentences with prepositions, because Latin, due to a lack of punctuation marks, had to indicate the end of a sentence somehow and thus ended sentences with verbs.

This is why I start speaking in Yoda when someone brings up the prepositions thing. If they want Latin grammar, I will give them Latin grammar.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Apr 04, 2013 6:16 pm

The quick brown fox over the fence jumped.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 3:56 am

One of the reasons english is so stupid (as I explain to my students regularly) is that when grammar was being codified, there were competing codifiers who actually one upped each other to create the most complex rules possible. As it was only the upper classes that would study the codified grammar how complex the grammar you learned became a status thing. And why if you complain about people's grammatical failings you're being a classist douche.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 1:50 pm

http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/4983 ... -opposites

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 9:10 pm

I love the fact that English is a Calvinball language (speaking of Calvin - my mom cleaned out her library and gave me all her Calvin and Hobbes books!!). It's so much fun to abuse and make stuff up in. And yeah... It's inconsistent, but that's just because it filches from every other language out there.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:42 pm

One of my major peeves in the very early years of learning English as a primary language while also learning Tamil (totally different and unconnected family tree) as another primary language wasn't really the inconsistencies of grammar but the immense amount of heteronyms. It gets even more compounded because my family has this tendency to speak in four to five different languages with each having either a separate language family or separate tree within the family. Being a polyglot at the age of 6 is fucking confusing.

Image spoilered for size.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:30 pm

So I was looking at the spoilered image and thinking that it was pretty simple. Only one of the sentences uses the same word more than twice. So I tried coming up with something slightly better, but I think it needs some editing. The first sentence especially is long-winded and forced.

"It's a big deal to try to deal with the results of trying to broke a deal based on the deal of the cards. My heart fell as the deal to fell the tree fell through when he fell through the hole in the floor. I was almost broke so I tried to broke a new deal, but they broke my arm instead."

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 1:38 am

Nah, if you want to go hardcore, you do something like these:

"Police police police police." (The "police (n) police (n)" police (v) the police (n), kind of like the "fashion (n) police (n)" police (v) fashion (n))
"Fast fast a fast fast." (First is a verb meaning "to abstain from or eat very little food", second is an adverb that means approximately "without faltering", third is an adjective meaning the same thing, fourth is a noun meaning "The period of time during which one abstains from or eats very little food")

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 1:47 am

Punctuate the following sentence:

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 2:17 am

@Parthenon - you keep trying to broke a deal, but the word is actually broker.

@Whatever - Oh, god. The hads. I've heard so many of those I want to cry.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 2:57 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Nah, if you want to go hardcore, you do something like these:

"Police police police police." (The "police (n) police (n)" police (v) the police (n), kind of like the "fashion (n) police (n)" police (v) fashion (n))

"Fast fast a fast fast." (First is a verb meaning "to abstain from or eat very little food", second is an adverb that means approximately "without faltering", third is an adjective meaning the same thing, fourth is a noun meaning "The period of time during which one abstains from or eats very little food")

I prefer:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:26 am

Whatever wrote:Punctuate the following sentence:

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher

James: "...while John had... had... had... had... had... had... had... had... had ... had... had a better effect on the teacher,..."

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Apr 20, 2013 2:47 am

The had one's cute. A rearrangement of

James'd had "had had", while John'd had "had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.

I quite like "had had" as a construction myself. Talking about the past of the past. "I'd had enough of their crap, so I said 'I've had enough of your crap', and went home."

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Sat Apr 20, 2013 3:36 am

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I've been told by multilingual people I know that because of its nature. English is great for science and mathematics, but not so good for poetry and expressive literature.

i know people who worked for oiling companies for decades and hated that the word "cut" had roughly a thousand different meanings in technical language.