Nah, that's a Poe story, it's originally in English. I meant thing like Sir Gaiwan, Beowulf, Faerie Queene (not technically medieval), and all the different medieval King Arthur stories. Reading those makes Poe seem as easy as reading Lovecraft.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Bad Grammar?
- Thread starter Mark Wilson
- Start date
Nah, that's a Poe story, it's originally in English. I meant thing like Sir Gaiwan, Beowulf, Faerie Queene (not technically medieval), and all the different medieval King Arthur stories. Reading those makes Poe seem as easy as reading Lovecraft.
I happen to be fond of early Robin Hood stories, many of which have been transcribed. The spelling and word usage in those is very different from anything we use today - there's real effort required to make sense of it.
Indeed. Rigid rules for spelling and grammar are pretty modern, though you'll find Roman and medieval grammarians writing books on correct usage (for Latin). But there's always a fluid relationship between spoken and written language, and a lot of scribes wrote words the way they sounded to them without worrying about it too much. And that continues to be true up into the 18th century or so.
I wrote my dissertation on 8th century Bavaria. There's a duke from the era whose name is spelled, depending on which text you're reading:
Odilo
Otilo
Ottilo
Uatilo
Uadalo
and probably a couple of others I'm forgetting.
In English, I blame all our troubles on the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th century. Before that, English was a phonetic language - you pronounced every letter and every letter made pretty much the same sound all the time. Monty Python was right, the guys riding horses in armor were K-nig-gts. You would speak the -e at the end of a word and a "long" vowel just meant you held it longer. A word like "extreme" would be pronounced "ex-treh-meh" and it all made sense. Then they had to mess it all up and change how they spoke, but keep writing the same, so that all of a sudden you have all these silent letters and all these letters that made different sounds, and though, through, cough, and bough didn't rhyme any more.
Honestly what I find hardest to read are modern authors who are trying to recreate premodern usages, like pretentious 19th century poets trying to SOUND like medieval English or Shakespeare or the King James Bible. Those all had a certain elegance to them, as long as you read them out loud and develop an ear for complex compound sentences. But imitators wind up generating the most pretentious convoluted muck.
I also blame Dr. Samuel Johnson. His Dictionary (the first one, IIRC, to see popular usage) pretty much took all the creativity and fun out of writing (and speaking) English...
I don't know about that. It's pretty fun thinking up creative new ways to use the f word.
Drives me effing nuts!
Discuss.
Not everyone is good at "the language arts" just as not everyone is good at math and not everyone is good at playing bass. The only difference is not being good at math or bass gets a pass but for some reason being a bad speller or having bad grammar or even a poor vocabulary is treated harshly.
I used to get angry at grammar mistakes, but I barely notice them anymore. They happen too frequently for me to devote that much time to being angry. When the national news makes spelling mistakes on the screen (which I've seen happen more than once), we've lost all hope.
With you 1,000 percent. (I know - incomplete sentence.)Drives me effing nuts!
Discuss.
Bad grammar is not only bad, it's rong. R-O-N-G... RONG!Drives me effing nuts!
Discuss.
Yeah, that's crazy. "What it is and what it shall be" would be a much better response.What gets to me is when a conversation goes,
"Hey, How's it going?"
"It's going good"
UGH
sorry. I had a run-in with someone today who has been saying that for ages.
I prefers, "What it am?"
Responded to with "It am."
You can also have fun conjugating "I be.."
I be, you be, she be, they be...
I goan be, you goan be, they goan be....
I been, you been, they been....
Alternatively:
I be's, you be's....etc.
Responded to with "It am."
You can also have fun conjugating "I be.."
I be, you be, she be, they be...
I goan be, you goan be, they goan be....
I been, you been, they been....
Alternatively:
I be's, you be's....etc.
Some common grammar faux pas things I hear often are:
Where are you at?
Get it over with.
I want it bad. instead "badly"
That's a whole nother story. instead of That's a whole other story.
I want to innerduce you to ..... instead of I want to introduce you to .....
Where are you at?
Get it over with.
I want it bad. instead "badly"
That's a whole nother story. instead of That's a whole other story.
I want to innerduce you to ..... instead of I want to introduce you to .....
Last edited:
"I have the mentality that..."
Used multiple times a day in athletic news. Grates on my ears. You may have an attitude, but you don't have a mentality about something.
Used multiple times a day in athletic news. Grates on my ears. You may have an attitude, but you don't have a mentality about something.
There are just a couple of things that have crept into the English language that really get on my nerves.
Why do people say "I am liking it"? They probably think they sound hip and trendy rather than stupid. Also, I have heard several radio interviews where, when asked for their opinion for example, the interviewee starts their response with something like "Well, I personally myself...."
I'm not a grammar expert by any means, but I find the grammar and spelling on TB is usually bearable if not completely correct; Facebook threads, on the other hand, often have me shaking my head in disbelief that grown adults have no better literacy skills than some 8 year olds.
Why do people say "I am liking it"? They probably think they sound hip and trendy rather than stupid. Also, I have heard several radio interviews where, when asked for their opinion for example, the interviewee starts their response with something like "Well, I personally myself...."
I'm not a grammar expert by any means, but I find the grammar and spelling on TB is usually bearable if not completely correct; Facebook threads, on the other hand, often have me shaking my head in disbelief that grown adults have no better literacy skills than some 8 year olds.
Last edited:
