Linguists Lament Slang Ban In London School (theguardian.com) 113
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A London secondary school is trying to stop its pupils from using "basically" at the beginning of sentences and deploying phrases such as "oh my days" in a crackdown on "fillers" and "slang" in the classroom. Ark All Saints academy has produced lists of "banned" language which includes "he cut his eyes at me", which the Collins dictionary says originates in the Caribbean and means to look rudely at a person and then turn away sharply while closing one's eyes dismissively. Neither should they use "that's long," which can mean something that is boring or tedious, or "that's a neck" which indicates a comment or action is stupid. "Bare," "wow," "cuss" and "oh my God" are also out. The list -- which is intended to steer the language used in formal learning situations and exams rather than in the playground -- has drawn criticism from linguists who described it as "crude and shortsighted ... a disservice and discredit to young people."
Teachers say it guides pupils to use language that fits more formal situations and helps them succeed. The school said the specific words and phrases on the list were selected because they were "showing up a lot in pupils' work" and it stressed the importance of pupils expressing themselves "clearly and accurately." Expressions that must not be used at the beginning of sentences include: "ermmm," "because," "no," "like," "say," "you see," "you know," and "basically." "The development of reading and speaking skills is a central part of what drives our school to help our students learn effectively and fulfil their potential in academic and non-academic ways," said Lucy Frame, the principal at the school in Camberwell, south-east London. "None of the words or phrases listed are banned from general use in our school or when our students are interacting socially. But this list is used in some formal learning settings to help students understand the importance of expressing themselves clearly and accurately, not least through written language in examinations."
The intervention may reflect a widening gap between language that is accepted by examiners and that used day-to-day by pupils in some areas of the UK. External examiners have noted pupils nationwide using "unnecessarily rude and strident vocabulary" in weaker answers. Bridging the gap between what is normal language for pupils and what is acceptable for exams is a challenge for teachers. A 2019 survey of 2,100 tutors found that "slanglish" was the most common reason for English GCSE failures. Yet, as a subject of study, "code-switching/style-shifting, youth slang ... and use of accent and dialect" is increasingly of interest to English language A-level students, according to the AQA exam board. [...] Some fear such moves could alienate some pupils. Dr Marcello Giovanelli, a senior lecturer in English language and literature at Aston University, said: "Slang has always been at the forefront of linguistic innovation." He described "he cut his eyes at me" as a "wonderfully creative example" and said "dismissing students' home or own use of language may have negative effects on identity and confidence."
Tony Thorne, a language consultant at King's College London and the director of the Slang and New Language Archive, said: "It shouldn't be about good or bad language, it should be about appropriate language for the context."
"You don't want to make them feel they have to reject the cultural aspects of their own language," said Dr Natalie Sharpling, who teaches applied linguistics at Warwick University. "We should celebrate the different ways language is being used and concentrate on the content of what is being said." Sharpling said she had observed an increasing trend in schools to police language and said "it would be a shame if it becomes a case of if you want to be successful, this is the way you have to speak."
Teachers say it guides pupils to use language that fits more formal situations and helps them succeed. The school said the specific words and phrases on the list were selected because they were "showing up a lot in pupils' work" and it stressed the importance of pupils expressing themselves "clearly and accurately." Expressions that must not be used at the beginning of sentences include: "ermmm," "because," "no," "like," "say," "you see," "you know," and "basically." "The development of reading and speaking skills is a central part of what drives our school to help our students learn effectively and fulfil their potential in academic and non-academic ways," said Lucy Frame, the principal at the school in Camberwell, south-east London. "None of the words or phrases listed are banned from general use in our school or when our students are interacting socially. But this list is used in some formal learning settings to help students understand the importance of expressing themselves clearly and accurately, not least through written language in examinations."
The intervention may reflect a widening gap between language that is accepted by examiners and that used day-to-day by pupils in some areas of the UK. External examiners have noted pupils nationwide using "unnecessarily rude and strident vocabulary" in weaker answers. Bridging the gap between what is normal language for pupils and what is acceptable for exams is a challenge for teachers. A 2019 survey of 2,100 tutors found that "slanglish" was the most common reason for English GCSE failures. Yet, as a subject of study, "code-switching/style-shifting, youth slang ... and use of accent and dialect" is increasingly of interest to English language A-level students, according to the AQA exam board. [...] Some fear such moves could alienate some pupils. Dr Marcello Giovanelli, a senior lecturer in English language and literature at Aston University, said: "Slang has always been at the forefront of linguistic innovation." He described "he cut his eyes at me" as a "wonderfully creative example" and said "dismissing students' home or own use of language may have negative effects on identity and confidence."
Tony Thorne, a language consultant at King's College London and the director of the Slang and New Language Archive, said: "It shouldn't be about good or bad language, it should be about appropriate language for the context."
"You don't want to make them feel they have to reject the cultural aspects of their own language," said Dr Natalie Sharpling, who teaches applied linguistics at Warwick University. "We should celebrate the different ways language is being used and concentrate on the content of what is being said." Sharpling said she had observed an increasing trend in schools to police language and said "it would be a shame if it becomes a case of if you want to be successful, this is the way you have to speak."
From Dr. James Nicholl (Score:5, Informative)
“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.”
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There is one thing that's almost absolute though. (Nothing is absolute, not even temperature actually, but you know what I mean.)
And that is the emergence of a language. In other words: How much can you express with how little.
It's always better to be able to say more with less work. Doesn't mean you have to. But to be able to. And by "more" I especially mean finer details.
One thing that comes natural in English speech but is cumbersome in writing, is expressing *stress*. The (in both cases relative) freque
Re:From Dr. James Nicholl (Score:5, Insightful)
The school is not trying to purify the English language. They are trying to teach the kids that the slang they use on the playground may not be appropriate during a job interview or when giving a presentation.
This is happening at a selective private school. Parents are paying high fees because they expect the school to prepare their children for successful lives. Speaking properly and precisely is one part of that.
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For Christ sake, just say it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Low class talk. Be clear, don't be a pussy and beat around the bush, just say it.
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Low class talk.
Not at all. "Low class" slang consists of local idioms that should be avoided when speaking to a wider audience.
Many of the proscribed words mentioned in TFS are Caribbean slang that most English speakers would not recognize.
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I'm German and had to look up some of the slang words that are banned by the schools.
Those people protesting wouldn't allow their children to use that words as well, for sure.
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However, if you never plan to be understood by more than a select few, use whatever idiom and slang you like.
For example... The DVD for the movie Snatch [wikipedia.org] has a "Pikey" subtitle track which only shows subtitles for the character Mickey (Brad Pitt) and sometimes they simply display "???" .
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I just wish somebody would teach Chinese English speakers to say "uhm" instead of "yolo." ("ya' know")
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Well, it *will* be appropriate when they themselves are the bosses of said companies.
Just like you can wear Mohawks and piercings and tattoos at pretty much every job now. (At least in most of Europe, unless it's the Vatican or something.)
Re: From Dr. James Nicholl (Score:4, Interesting)
I dont know what hipster company you work for pal, but a punk with piercings wouldn't get through the door at my office. There are certain appearance standards and looking like a kidult still going through his rebelling against The Man stage doesnt comply. Also laayke speeeking jafaican laayk yoov ad a lahbo ammy init will also see you CV head for the bin. Assuming you even have one. You want to behave like a child then still to childish jobs.
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I dont know what hipster company you work for pal, but a punk with piercings wouldn't get through the door at my office.
ok but you're the anomaly among employers these days.
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In the UK no they are not. When it comes to the more well paid jobs even more so.
For example imagine you have a broad accent or speak in slang, now imagine trying to argue a case in court as a high paid barrister talking like that. Just how many people do you think are going to hire you?
Imagine going in front of some VC's looking for funding and talking like that. Do you honestly think you are going to find it easy to get funding?
The reality is that if you talk in slang or with a broad accent you will sever
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There was a time you nutters were more international, like during the Empire.
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Just like you can wear Mohawks and piercings and tattoos at pretty much every job now.
You may not be summarily rejected. But wearing a Mohawk to a job interview is not going to improve your odds. It will hurt you even more as you try to advance in most professions. I haven't seen any surgeons with Mohawks, and few tattoos and piercings in boardrooms.
Re: From Dr. James Nicholl (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree this doesn't sound nearly as bad as the title would imply. I'm married to a high school teacher who regularly receives homework with responses that contain "idk", "gonna", "lol", "like", "dunno", and others. She doesn't mind (or correct) when they speak socially to each other using slang, but it shouldn't be appearing in writing (barring for artistic effect).
Maybe I'm just getting old (get off my lawn!), but I don't see a problem with asserting that the language you use to talk to you best mate should be different than the language you use to talk to your boss. You add fillers when you're stalling, to figure out what you want to say next. Removing those fillers tells the listener that you respect them enough to have thought through your statement before making them listen to you.
I agree with the linguist's take that a listener should really be focusing on content, but filler words need to be parsed out by the listener (or at least me) in order to absorb the content. That requires mental effort. If you litter the sentence with ", like," between clauses, I have to pull out the "like"s and stitch the clauses together to get content. I don't mind that when talking to a friend, but as a boss I do mind it.
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From the summary, it seems like a mixed bag, and some of the expressions should not be proscribed. But the use of filler words has always driven me batty, it is extremely rare for me to ever use them (I won't say I never do, I am occasionally momentarily at a loss for words and will used a filler bridge in casual speech).
My pet bugaboo is people inserting the interrogative "Right?" constantly in their speech. I have a coworker who cannot make a simple statement about anything without ending with "Right?". I
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So. I'm tired of people starting their talk (conversation, presentation at a conference, etc.) with "So". I have tried to eradicate it as a sentence introducer in my own speech, although I do find that difficult. (The use of "so" in phrases like "not so good" or "that's so difficult" is of course a different thing, and just fine to my ears.)
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Yep, it's just a reflection of the shitty classism that is pervasive in England, especially in the south.
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Not entirely, no.
It's not necessarily about class (or precision: there's nothing imprecise about slang, claims otherwise are almost always classist).
Heavy use of slang would be pretty inappropriate where I work (which is a very informal workplace) because of the number of non native speakers, and frankly people from other regions. I'd have to keep explaining myself, which would be kind of a dick move to be unintelligible to my co workers if I know how not to be.
NOT a private school (Score:3)
In the UK 'academies' are rebranded state funded schools - not to be confused with 'public schools', which ARE fee paying!
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State funded, but not state run. They are run as businesses, with a board of directors and private ownership. The government has little involvement in the day-to-day administration of academies. The closest US equivalent would be a charter school.
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Noting that there is a tiny handful of "public" schools and lots of private schools. The former being set out in the Public Schools Act 1868 there where just seven of them, though a Court case added an eighth.
Further noting that oldest schools are not in the list so for example The King's School, Canterbury founded 597 or, St Peter's School, York founded 627. That's right both those schools are well over 1000 years old, being the oldest and third oldest schools in the world with continuous teaching to this
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both those schools are well over 1000 years old
Did they ban Anglo-Saxon slang during the switch to Middle English in the 11th Century?
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The Normans probably did.
It's what the people mean, mate... (Score:2)
Thank you for introducing me to the 1868 Act, whose existence was news to me. However note that it itself uses the term: 'An Act to make further Provision for the good Government and Extension of certain Public Schools in England.' The word 'certain' clearly implies there are other public schools.
However in general usage the term 'public school' is taken to include a lot more schools than those regulated by the Act. Thus the Oxford English Dictionary offers:
'Originally, in Britain and Ireland: any of a clas
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I agree that students need to learn to express themselves in "proper" English, but not because "proper" English is in any *linguistic* sense more expressive or precise. They need to be able to do this because because they need to be able to express themselves in situations where using non-standard English has negative consequences.
"Proper" English is full of semantic fluff, dead metaphor, and archaic solecisms that have gained respectability through long use. We just have fancier names for "filler", like
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This isn't a selective private school. This is an academy which is roughly equivalent to a charter school in America.
Some academies are also selective -- in this case it isn't a selective school, either. (But there is still competition to attract the most students, due to school choice.) As an academy, it has freedom to change its policies but students (parents) have freedom to choose their school (subject to availability of places).
It also isn't likely thinking about job interviews or presentations, but ra
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This is a non-selective state school not a selective private school.
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The problem with defending the purity of the English language ...
Indeed. I'm not going to defend the purity or make points about scholasticness or formality, the latter of which has been responsible for so much butchering of the language. There's nothing wrong, bad or uneducated in slang. And some anti slang tirades have been used to be low key and not so low key racist. Some slang is marvellously evocative and some eventually becomes widely adopted and so not slang.
However it is useful to be able to commun
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> There's nothing wrong, bad or uneducated in slang.
A great deal of idiom in languages evolves to exclude those who are not part of the specific community. It's the core of Cockney rhyming slang, for example. And it has its roots in the oldest history of many civilizations. It especially includes the ability to correctly pronounce the word "shibboleth" as described in the Book of Judges in the Bible or the matching passages in the Torah or the Quran.
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“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.”
Yep. In only 80 generations we've gone from Latin/Gaelic to what's being used here.
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English derived from old-german, not from latin/gaelic. The closest living relative to English is Dutch, although Norwegian is fairly close. English borrowed words from Latin, but didn't derive from it.
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I suspect he's referring to the languages of the Britons, Welsh, and other Gaelic inhabitants of what is now England, plus their Roman conquerors.
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I'd make no assumptions on what a school's or school district's bureaucracy comes up with as policy. Like insisting that students learn and use English in the classroom, I'd expect accusations of racism and other intolerance for failing to support whatever language they children already use to express themselves.
I think both sides are valid, but anti- is moreso (Score:5, Insightful)
If the slang is confusing to people then it's going to impede learning.
If the slang displaces learning the "correct" way to speak then it's going to harm scholastic achievement, and indeed this is a real problem which the article indicates.
Plenty of workplaces will want you to use simple English for the simple reason that many people are simple :D
School is supposed to prepare you for life, so learning to use slang and learning not to use slang are both valid things... but you can learn to use slang outside the classroom, where it won't interfere with what you're supposed to be learning inside the classroom.
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"proper English": There is no such thing. There is however the varieties of English as spoken by certain "upper class" people in various countries (the UK, the US, Australia and so forth).
That said, there are times when it's advantageous to conform to one of those varieties, for reasons that are discussed elsewhere in these posts.
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What does that even mean in this context?
That argument sounds a lot like circular reasoning.
After all, it can just as well be said, that defining something as "correct", that isn't anymore, and punishing people for not obeying the wrong "correct" way, is harmful. The real problem is still snobbery.
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That is so fucked-up and harmful, it's not even funny.
This is literally WHY there are so many stupid people. They are actively bred that way. And then that is used as an excuse, to again focus on the dumbest of those dumb, and breed them even dumber.
People are only "simple" if you treat them that way all their lives. If you expect them to be intelligent, and never let stupid behavior slide, they will
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It's more to do with people not being very effective communicators. You can use jargon or uncommon words and still be understood if you put them in proper context so that the meaning becomes apparent, for example. Because many people are bad at that the ones who speak plainly tend to be best understood.
It wasn't taught back when I was at school or university and probably isn't now.
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People are only "simple" if you treat them that way all their lives.
I didn't have any kids on purpose, it's not my job to raise people. If I'm dealing with someone in a professional context I typically don't have time to educate them. I am doing business with them as rapidly and professionally as possible, and then moving on to the next. That means I'm going to communicate with them as efficiently as I can, and that means making intelligent word choices. For example I'm not going to describe something as "pretty big" or "crazy tiny" to a non-native English speaker at all, e
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No, it only exists to prepare you for WORK. To serve some leech.
Why do you think it never teaches you how to cook, grow your food, find a partner, get along with people, have a healthy relationship, have good sex, raise a kid, fix your clothes and car and home, or even how to notice, identify and fix your own mental damage, like triggers or traumata?
Here in Germany, schools for the general public literally grew out of having the equivalent of barracks to train obe
Re: I think both sides are valid, but anti- is mor (Score:1)
You dint need to serve any "leech". Just dont bitch about not having any money when you're unemployed. Or maybe start your own company or would that go against your socialist principles? As for school - its an academic enviroment designed to equip you for modern society, not the medieval period. How much fucking use is learning how to grow food if you live 10 floors up? Moron. As for sex, if you need lessons for that then dont bother, become a monk.
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Here in Germany, schools for the general public literally grew out of having the equivalent of barracks to train obedient soldiers, but for children, so they sit still and obey. Historically, it is very likely that the US copied our system.
Yep, that's correct.
Time and again I've complained of the lack of logic skills taught by schools in general. I got a bit of it in elementary school but nothing I can recall thereafter.
Re: I think both sides are valid, but anti- is mor (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s a fairly jaded and perhaps local perspective. My wife is a primary school teacher responsible for coordinating PSHE across a trust of 29 schools. I can assure you that her goal is provide that missing link you speak of. Teaching these days, at least here, is trying to teach skills and strategies for life and also for jobs that donâ(TM)t even exist yet.
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If the slang is confusing to people then it's going to impede learning.
If the slang displaces learning the "correct" way to speak then it's going to harm scholastic achievement, and indeed this is a real problem which the article indicates.
Plenty of workplaces will want you to use simple English for the simple reason that many people are simple :D
School is supposed to prepare you for life, so learning to use slang and learning not to use slang are both valid things... but you can learn to use slang outside the classroom, where it won't interfere with what you're supposed to be learning inside the classroom.
Exactly. To put in the terms of the 8th Commandment of C Programming (Henry Spencer): "Thou shalt make thy program's purpose and structure clear to thy fellow man by using the One True Brace Style, even if thou likest it not, for thy creativity is better used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to understanding."
In other words, if you're trying to communicate clearly, use the agreed-upon style guide of your intended audience. If your intended audience is your school-yard buddies
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Maybe because it's more efficient?
"gonna" just sounds like a natural progression from contractions all the way to adding on details as word endings, like in many other languages.
Additional banned words and phrases (Score:2)
spew
sadly
misinformation
that is not who we are
fly-over country
net zero
Where does it all end? (Score:4, Funny)
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Or the much older "My Fair Lady" scene, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
British accents are a very sensitive matter of class distinction.
Accents are in the USA as well (Score:2)
But it's more subtle. Both Black and Southern Americans will be disdained as a result of their accent at least to some degree; a 'hillbilly' accent will not be taken seriously. Though you lack the obviously authoritative accent that can impose its will at times; mine has be useful!
Their ancestors would laugh at them. (Score:2)
Somebody should tell them what their ancestors would say, if they heard them talk.
Language changes. Deal with it.
If you wanna improve something, maybe start fixing the writing. Like the spelling. And the ambiguities due to a lack of compound words. Cause over here, we're just laughing at English for that. And we're basically speaking a relative to the ancestor of English.
So how about actually improving the language? Removing ambiguities, but adding the ability to express finer details. English is frankly qu
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FIY, calling connectors (electric or otherwise) "Male" and "Female" is no longer acceptable. You're supposed to use the new "Penetrating" and "Penetrated" variants.
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No.
Such nonsensical confusion can lead to lethal errors, especially when constructing anything that will bear a load or holds fluid under pressure.
Re: Their ancestors would laugh at them. (Score:2)
I was thinking about this the other day and wondering why this hadn't been changed yet. Is this rule change official among professional societies or just colloquially changing? The engineers I work with still use male/female at the moment.
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A ~year ago, my company made the decision to change the primary git branch from "master" to "main." Everyone was happy with the decision, and then ignored the fact that it never got changed. The reason it didn't get changed is because no one wanted to do the (not considerable, but not fun) refactoring work to change it. In the end, everyone got what they wanted: they felt good, and didn't have to do any work.
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Except for RP-SMA, which is the connector equivalent of a particularly ostentatious drag outfit.
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It's not wrong that language changes, it's also not wrong that speaking a certain way gives you societal advantages. Speaking slang gives you societal advantages, too.
These linguists are not being scientific. They are making judgements about what is good, they are not observing.
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A guy on Youtube named blissom tried that.
The problem is words like strengths which has a zillion consonants and about zero vowels.
I want to see a book written only in English words derived from Germanic languages.
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I want to see a book written only in English words derived from Germanic languages.
That's called Anglish. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That YouTube video refers part way through to Poul Anderson's Uncleftish Beholding--not a book, to be sure, but a very short essay. There's an article about it in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately, the link from there to the full text is broken, but this seems to work: https://proedit.com/uncleftish... [proedit.com].
FTW (Score:2)
Mixed message (Score:2)
They're not just acting against slang, they're acting against sloppy use of the language. For example:
Expressions that must not be used at the beginning of sentences include: "ermmm," "because," "no," "like," "say," "you see," "you know," and "basically.
This is basic public speaking skills: these filler words detract from whatever message you're trying to convey.
Slang has a similar, but different problem: it tends to be exclusionary, because it's highly localized, both geographically and socially. So if you want to be understood by people outside your own little circle, don't use it. It's good to train this early on, before you scupper your first job inter
Title should then have read, (Score:2)
Coz it aint !
Dat chirps need be banging.
So uncool (Score:2)
So, like that's totally amazing.!
(humph; my original version with lots of as and !s got "Filter error: Your comment looks too much like ascii art." Can't these morons spell?)
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I hate that stupid ascii art BS. I've had stuff that isn't ascii art and it nails it saying it is.
Then some people manage to add an ascii art comment anyway.
As for the topic at hand, I think France already did this. I was told France is strict on what is in the French language. No slang.
They have some crust.
Expressions that must not be used (Score:2)
So basically, no, you see, like, because, you know, ermmm, this is bad.
Oh my God, like, super traumatizing (Score:2)
Re: Oh my God, like, super traumatizing (Score:2)
Modern language itself was the result of people breaking the mold, and yes, a huge part of existence was from slang and other "improper" use of contemporary language.
Had this not happened, we would be communicating with grunts and howls today.
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Re: Oh my God, like, super traumatizing (Score:2)
Language has changed/evolved over the centuries.
Everybody is speaking improper English now because I don't hear many "thees" and "thous" outside of a church setting these days. :-}
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Many slang terms and uses of words are fads. There are plenty of terms, commonplace when I was a kid, that have largely vanished. Non-standard variations like 'dat' and 'yous' will look piss-poor in formal settings even if they're perfectly acceptable in the child's immediate social circles.
Most importantly, these are children, most of them being between the ages of 12 and 16. This is not the place for social experiments in evolving language. At secondary level, even up through most of undergraduate degree
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Mayhaps thou art in the right, but methinks that Shakespeare was criticized for not talking like Chaucer (see: Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog), who was doubtless in turn criticized for not talking like unto those who writ Beowulf.
What the UK (and US) needs to crack down on (Score:1)
Is ultra narcassist people trying to micromanage people to death.
Slang is not the problem here; it's tin pot dictators with a captive population (students) embarking on a gigantic power and ego trip, and people like that are far more damaging to society than slang .
The reality is: (Score:2)
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"Our language is what is spoken and written, not what some wish it to be."
"What some wish it to be" would be French, where the Académie Française has great sway over the language. French is not the only language with an official body regulating it [wikipedia.org].
Learn the rules, and learn when you can break them (Score:1)
There are times to follow the rules, and times to break them.
If you don't know the rules, you are going to break them when you shouldn't.
This goes for language as well as a lot of other things.
Speak properly or don't get hired (Score:2)
'it would be a shame if it becomes a case of if you want to be successful, this is the way you have to speak.'
Thus it has always been and will be. Children need to be equipped to present themselves effectively for the workplace, and pretending otherwise, out of a liberal wet dream about a diversity that doesn't exist, won't make it not so. Effective communication requires the ability to conform to the dominant standards. But pretending otherwise keeps useless academics in meaningless jobs, so it's no surpri
Odd List (Score:2)
Some of those cover semantic gaps, some are just fillers.
Feel free to give them hell for abusing the word 'briliant' though.
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Such craven diotards shouldst hie them hence, lest I daub ye walls of an jakes with them.
Wait, no one speaks Shakespearean idiom anymore? The horror.
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some are just fillers.
Yeah they're trying to teach them to not use fillers.
Context is king, (Score:3)
If I need to do something quick and dirty on my own laptop, my first inclination would likely be to knock up a bash one-liner with pipes, redirects, and maybe even a tmp file instead of in-memory data structures. If I were doing the same task and the code needed to be shared with, or later maintained by, someone else or if it was ever going to goto production; that bash 1-liner would become a full page of correctly indented and styled python; and I'd definitely not slow things down by unnecessarily hitting the filesystem.
This is just the same thing, but in writing. In an iMessage with friends, I'd use informal colloquialisms and slang that I wouldn't use with colleagues in Slack. Slack might get emoji that I would not use in an email with a vendor or customer's tach team. If the audience for an email were a C-level or other executive, it'd get even more proper. And then come the biggies: resumes, academic research papers, and written business letters, all of which get the highest level of formality and scrutiny that I need to deal with. Lawyers use an even higher level of English when they write contracts. And don't forget the specific cases; for example: without expected result, actual result, and steps to reproduce, it's not a bug or issue but merely a "cool story bro."
All of those forms of English are fine, in their proper contexts. But (most) people don't need to be taught how to mash out that iMessage to their friend. Everything above that level, however, are skills that must be taught and practiced; even if the lesson is as simple as "keep religion and politics out of it" in the otherwise "social" channels your company sets up in Slack.
TFS even says straight-up that this polisy: "is intended to steer the language used in formal learning situations and exams rather than in the playground." So I read this as being a case of much ado about nothing. Formal English is not necessary all the time. But it is definitely necessary some of the time and especially in certain contexts like academia and business. So it is entirely necessary and proper to teach it. And steering "the language used in formal learning situations and exams rather than in the playground" sounds like a perfectly cromulent way to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
or if it was ever going to goto production; that bash 1-liner would become a full page of correctly indented and styled python
LOL... not on my watch you wouldn't.
Potato (Score:2)
I feel that one describing themselves as a potato is describing their similarity to a vegetable that sits growing in the dirt while accomplishing nothing, but if you stab it, cut it, shape it, it will be suited to a single unique task. But if you bury the dissected parts and let them sit idle in soil long enough, you will find yourself surrounded by a greater number of
Slashdot: (Score:2)
News for nerds, stuff that matters.
Never gets dull.
It All Makes Sense (Score:2)
The linguists are from Essex.
I must say (Score:2)
Perception is reality (Score:2)
The world operates not on reality but the perception of reality. The perception of someone who is well-spoken is far greater than that of someone who is not articulate. Well-spoken people can quite easily blow smoke up people's ass and get away with it whereas some one who isn't a great speaker will be dismissed out of hand. The two keys to success then are a) knowing what you are talking about and b) being able to speak well.
Fuck that school all to Hell (Score:2)