Quality of English Degrading?

Aidan McLaren   Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:07 am GMT
"Perhaps you should take your own advice."

No, *you* should take it. What we don't need is self-righteous idiots like you in this world.

And the people pretending to be me because they're so cowardly should too.

Seriously, you idiots are so braindead retarded to assume I'm gay just because I said America is opposed to homosexuality.

Yes, I suck cocks. Anything else?

Anything else to hide the fact you're gay for saying that?
saulywauly   Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:44 pm GMT
Johnny: Well said(both posts)

There's a movement going on in the 'states to simplfy the language, in lots of different ways, for example removing silent letters like the 'c' in scissors and ambiguous words like less/fewer - I know I almost always use 'less' and nobody cares.

I don't correct people when they have managed to communicate what they want to say without ambiguity. We could probably get rid of articles - we certainly don't need as many as the Germans have(they get shortened to one syllable, and even the natives don't know them all)

What Skywise says, for example, may not be quite correct but it is obvious what he is trying to say. Does our use of the language suffer as a result? No, just because one person makes a bad cup of coffee doesn't mean we all do, and you can't change the character of a language without destroying all its books, literature, films and so on.

What a neat forum! (and why am I saying 'neat' when I'm from the UK?
Uriel   Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:07 am GMT
Whoa, I've never seen anyone try to take the C out of "scissors".
Rhoi (Sp3ctre18)   Sun Feb 22, 2009 7:35 am GMT
"<<Have people always been complaining about their language being degraded or is that a new phenomenon?>>

I think it's a common phenomenon for people who are over 60 or so."

I'm 21 and i've seen enough change over the 15 years throughout which I could have noticed. :D And I'm definitely not the only one of my age who is like me and also doesn't like what seems to be the decline in the quality of the use of English.

It's degradation and devolving when the change doesn't happen for improvement, uniqueness, whatever. A lot comes from laziness or indifference, not wanting to learn the right way to say things, or simply not caring. I've realized slang and profanity can be quite dangerous to one's eloquence, though most people don't seem to realize it. I have noticed, there are certain things I'll say when speaking casually, with friends, etc., that may be slang, or a simpler way to say things, that if I try to think of the proper or more formal way to say it... I'll get stuck, or I need to think about it briefly so I can remember or figure it out. It gives me a little wake up call.
Guest   Sun Feb 22, 2009 2:58 pm GMT
English is a weird language in my mind. You have the more common germanic one syllable words, a lot of phrasal verbs and also a lot of idioms, and then you have the formal latinate/greek words of three, four or five syllables, that don't gel too well with the more basic words, especially as the more formal terms are not compounds of them.
Almijaras   Sun Feb 22, 2009 6:33 pm GMT
English is evolving, not getting worse ... although when I hear people making simple grammatical errors in speech I think there's a tendency to jump on the band wagon of blaming falling standards etc. I might sound like an ignoramus but I was taught that the I/me debate was sometimes known as the 'toff's error' and people used 'I ' when 'me' was perfectly (and grammatically) acceptable because they thought it sounded better. I wasn't aware it was a form of simplification or languistic erosion.

Who knows ?!
doggiejunior   Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:06 am GMT
I think English has degraded. Nobody can pronounce vowels, they all come out as "uh."