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An Irishman's Diary
by Irish Times
Thanks to William Quill for the link.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0711/1215677267244.html
An Irishman's Diary
I NEARLY choked on my cornflakes the other day when reading a letter in the London Times from Prof Richard Dawkins. It was not, as you might think, about his favourite subject, Darwinism, even though last week marked the 150th anniversary of the theory of evolution. No. It was a complaint about the misuse of a verb, writes Frank McNally.
His gripe was with someone who had spoken of "addressing issues". Addressing was "for envelopes, golf balls, haggises, crowds and computer memory," he wrote. "Not issues." This is the sort of thing one is tempted to call a delicious irony, even though it doesn't quite fit any of the definitions of irony listed in my dictionary. It's merely quirky, I suppose. The point is that here we have one of Darwin's greatest disciples arguing for the linguistic equivalent of the fixity of species. Even if it's not irony, it's still delicious.
Not that I don't sympathise with him. I'm as fond of complaining about other people's language crimes as the next man. But we sticklers for correct usage are a bit like creationists. We like to think that 6,000 years ago God made all the nouns and verbs and adverbs - yea, even the prepositions, after their kind - and every verbal thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth, and that none of these have changed since.
Whereas of course the truth is that language as we know it is the product of a vast evolutionary process. It has advanced blindly down the countless generations, through trial and error and genetic mutation; and it continues to do so even as we speak. One might say that modern English, to borrow Stephen J. Gould's memorable remark about humanity, is "but an insignificant twig on a vast arborescent tree". (I don't mean to pick on Darwinians, but Gould must know that "arborescent" means "growing, formed, or branched like a tree". His metaphorical twig is therefore located on "a vast, tree-like tree". Lovely as the adjective is, it is also as redundant as the dodo.)
Of course we need rules about language, if only so that we can make informed decisions about when to break them. But the really annoying thing is that, in the long term, mistakes are often rewarded. If enough people make one, deliberately or otherwise, the mistake becomes the new rule.
So it is, I suspect, with "addressing issues". That phrase sounds like something from the lexicon of management consultants - a species that now creepeth everywhere on the face of the earth, not waiting for mutations of language to arise, but proactively mutating it.
And yet "addressing issues" already sounds vaguely legitimate to my ears. Whereas Professor Dawkins's (don't get me started on the decadent modern fad for dropping the "s" after a word ending with "s" and a possessive apostrophe, by the way) objection looks as old-fashioned as Adam's fig-leaf.
But we all have our pet hates. One of mine is the modern use of "decimate", a wonderfully precise word that, according to dictionaries, still primarily means to "reduce by one tenth". It comes down to us from the old military practice - used by the Romans - of executing every tenth member of a mutinous corps.And while, to be sure, the tradition of shooting 10 per cent of your soldiers is not as popular as it once was, there are still many occasions when the term's figurative usage would come in handy.
When a soccer player is sent off, for example, his team could be said to be "decimated" (or near enough). Even the 15-strong Kerry Gaelic football team was arguably decimated by the recent suspension of Paul Galvin, since many commentators believe he was worth a man-and-a-half. And supermarkets could use the word regularly, claiming to have decimated their prices every time they knocked 10 per cent off.
But the word is never used to mean that any more, having instead become merely an upmarket version of "devastate". The injustice is aggravated by the fact that, used this way, it makes the speaker sound sophisticated. And it is a with a feeling of outrage that I notice such charlatans are now supported by dictionaries, which have taken to including a secondary meaning for "decimate", viz: "to reduce very heavily".
But there's no use complaining about it. The word has mutated, and the mutation is thriving. Soon the original meaning will be as strange to our eyes as the Galapagos tortoise.
Just like animal species, indeed, words have developed differently on different continents. Take the simple verb "ride". Americans ride in cars, and so do some Irish people. But it is hard to imagine that the term as used on either side of the Atlantic has the same ancestors.
Which reminds me of a controversy on this letters page not long ago, concerning the past participle "gotten". You might recall that a reader dubbed it "an irritating little word" imported from "North American English", and complained that it was now "creeping into your newspaper with increasing frequency".
The biblical resonance of the term "creeping" was apt - because, as a follow-up letter pointed out, "gotten" was used in the King James Bible as long ago as 1611, before crossing the Atlantic and then coming back. It is a rare example of a word that has successfully resisted mutation for centuries. But in its own perverse way, it reminds all of us, including Prof Dawkins, why language is constantly changing: because it was begotten, not made.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie
© 2008 The Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0711/1215677267244.html
An Irishman's Diary
I NEARLY choked on my cornflakes the other day when reading a letter in the London Times from Prof Richard Dawkins. It was not, as you might think, about his favourite subject, Darwinism, even though last week marked the 150th anniversary of the theory of evolution. No. It was a complaint about the misuse of a verb, writes Frank McNally.
His gripe was with someone who had spoken of "addressing issues". Addressing was "for envelopes, golf balls, haggises, crowds and computer memory," he wrote. "Not issues." This is the sort of thing one is tempted to call a delicious irony, even though it doesn't quite fit any of the definitions of irony listed in my dictionary. It's merely quirky, I suppose. The point is that here we have one of Darwin's greatest disciples arguing for the linguistic equivalent of the fixity of species. Even if it's not irony, it's still delicious.
Not that I don't sympathise with him. I'm as fond of complaining about other people's language crimes as the next man. But we sticklers for correct usage are a bit like creationists. We like to think that 6,000 years ago God made all the nouns and verbs and adverbs - yea, even the prepositions, after their kind - and every verbal thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth, and that none of these have changed since.
Whereas of course the truth is that language as we know it is the product of a vast evolutionary process. It has advanced blindly down the countless generations, through trial and error and genetic mutation; and it continues to do so even as we speak. One might say that modern English, to borrow Stephen J. Gould's memorable remark about humanity, is "but an insignificant twig on a vast arborescent tree". (I don't mean to pick on Darwinians, but Gould must know that "arborescent" means "growing, formed, or branched like a tree". His metaphorical twig is therefore located on "a vast, tree-like tree". Lovely as the adjective is, it is also as redundant as the dodo.)
Of course we need rules about language, if only so that we can make informed decisions about when to break them. But the really annoying thing is that, in the long term, mistakes are often rewarded. If enough people make one, deliberately or otherwise, the mistake becomes the new rule.
So it is, I suspect, with "addressing issues". That phrase sounds like something from the lexicon of management consultants - a species that now creepeth everywhere on the face of the earth, not waiting for mutations of language to arise, but proactively mutating it.
And yet "addressing issues" already sounds vaguely legitimate to my ears. Whereas Professor Dawkins's (don't get me started on the decadent modern fad for dropping the "s" after a word ending with "s" and a possessive apostrophe, by the way) objection looks as old-fashioned as Adam's fig-leaf.
But we all have our pet hates. One of mine is the modern use of "decimate", a wonderfully precise word that, according to dictionaries, still primarily means to "reduce by one tenth". It comes down to us from the old military practice - used by the Romans - of executing every tenth member of a mutinous corps.And while, to be sure, the tradition of shooting 10 per cent of your soldiers is not as popular as it once was, there are still many occasions when the term's figurative usage would come in handy.
When a soccer player is sent off, for example, his team could be said to be "decimated" (or near enough). Even the 15-strong Kerry Gaelic football team was arguably decimated by the recent suspension of Paul Galvin, since many commentators believe he was worth a man-and-a-half. And supermarkets could use the word regularly, claiming to have decimated their prices every time they knocked 10 per cent off.
But the word is never used to mean that any more, having instead become merely an upmarket version of "devastate". The injustice is aggravated by the fact that, used this way, it makes the speaker sound sophisticated. And it is a with a feeling of outrage that I notice such charlatans are now supported by dictionaries, which have taken to including a secondary meaning for "decimate", viz: "to reduce very heavily".
But there's no use complaining about it. The word has mutated, and the mutation is thriving. Soon the original meaning will be as strange to our eyes as the Galapagos tortoise.
Just like animal species, indeed, words have developed differently on different continents. Take the simple verb "ride". Americans ride in cars, and so do some Irish people. But it is hard to imagine that the term as used on either side of the Atlantic has the same ancestors.
Which reminds me of a controversy on this letters page not long ago, concerning the past participle "gotten". You might recall that a reader dubbed it "an irritating little word" imported from "North American English", and complained that it was now "creeping into your newspaper with increasing frequency".
The biblical resonance of the term "creeping" was apt - because, as a follow-up letter pointed out, "gotten" was used in the King James Bible as long ago as 1611, before crossing the Atlantic and then coming back. It is a rare example of a word that has successfully resisted mutation for centuries. But in its own perverse way, it reminds all of us, including Prof Dawkins, why language is constantly changing: because it was begotten, not made.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie
© 2008 The Irish Times
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Posted: Friday, July 11, 2008 | PermalinkComments 1 - 50 of 96 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #208859 by Tom Coward on July 11, 2008 at 10:19 am
If we are being pedantic, I would point out that the dodo is not "redundant", it is extinct. (Unless, of course, fmcnally means that the word "dodo" is itself redundant, and that the bird should actually be called the "do".) The trajedy of the dodo is precisly in that it was NOT redundant. Rather, it was unique, and was killed off for sport by humans.Other Comments by Tom Coward
3. Comment #208864 by Vinelectric on July 11, 2008 at 10:24 am
What should we say instead, "address ourselves to the issue"? (as in direct our attention to the issue).I'm confident that that meaning of the word "address" will make its way to the dictionaries sooner than expressions such as "return back" and "ain't nothing" will.
Other Comments by Vinelectric
4. Comment #208866 by alexmzk on July 11, 2008 at 10:25 am
i often verb nouns.Other Comments by alexmzk
5. Comment #208869 by Vinelectric on July 11, 2008 at 10:28 am
snoovWhat noble meaning?
Other Comments by Vinelectric
6. Comment #208870 by hungarianelephant on July 11, 2008 at 10:31 am
alexmzk - Fine by me, as long as you don't use a preposition to end a sentence with. Other Comments by hungarianelephant
7. Comment #208871 by Roger Stanyard on July 11, 2008 at 10:32 am
Oh Dear,I don't know where to begin on this. Unfortunately creationists do believe that human language is only 6,000 and it proves evolution can't happen because it displays irreducible complexity. I've also seen them argue that it proves that information in genes muct fall over time because language itself gets less complex - thus (sigh) proving that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics supports creationism.
Still the creationists also believe that we have many languages as God enforced the multipliocity because of Adam's sin. (I'm not making this up).
Other Comments by Roger Stanyard
8. Comment #208872 by Kentrel on July 11, 2008 at 10:34 am
gd artcle. lngwich is always chnging. we shud respekt datOther Comments by Kentrel
9. Comment #208873 by riemann on July 11, 2008 at 10:34 am
I was quite confident that Richard's remarks were taken out of context when i read this, so i decided to track down the offending article to be sure. And here it is:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article4295700.ece
Not much of a context, to be honest. Wonder what prompted him to write this..
Other Comments by riemann
10. Comment #208874 by hungarianelephant on July 11, 2008 at 10:37 am
riemann - He has to fill four columns a week suitable for his readership.Under this pressure, even Oscar Wilde would have turned out a load of crap once in a while.
Other Comments by hungarianelephant
11. Comment #208876 by gkatheist on July 11, 2008 at 10:46 am
I find myself in a rare disagreement with Professor Dawkins. I recently finished a degree in linguistics, and one thing that they pound into our brains is the fact that language change = language use. If people use "address" with "issue," then that is a proper use. As they say, the slang of the past is the standard usage of the present. Judging language use by a predetermined set of rules is called proscriptivism, an absolutely verboten -ism in linguistics.I would think that Professor Dawkins would actually find this an interesting topic. There are many linguists who equate biological evolution to linguistic evolution. Slangs and nonstandard useages are developed, those that have a higher communicative ability survive, while those with equal to standard or less than standard disappear. Sounds like natural selection to me.
Other Comments by gkatheist
12. Comment #208880 by Peacebeuponme on July 11, 2008 at 10:48 am
Good article. I gett quite upset with all these conservative types moaning about "text-speak" and the like.I ask anyone who complain to me about the erosion of the english language why they don't speak like Chaucer.
Other Comments by Peacebeuponme
13. Comment #208886 by Layla Nasreddin on July 11, 2008 at 10:50 am
As an addition to riemann's remark, here's the entire letter:
Sir, "Addressing" is for envelopes, golf balls, haggises, crowds and computer memory. Not "issues".
Richard Dawkins
New College, Oxford
That's it. (Obligatory English-slaughtering comment, just because I'm difficult: And I ain't got nuttin' to say, 'cause I don't know nothin' 'bout it.)
Other Comments by Layla Nasreddin
14. Comment #208891 by Raiko on July 11, 2008 at 10:55 am
I suggest everyone should do the quiz:Commonly confused words - before they get to write an article (unfortunately, addressing is not addressed in there...).
Though as a non-native speaker, I am confused. What is this all about? It sounds quite fine to me, but of course that's because the German translation from the dicitionary makes it seem just fine for this purpose.
Other Comments by Raiko
15. Comment #208895 by mordacious1 on July 11, 2008 at 11:00 am
Erm, I don't remember reading about the Romans "shooting" every tenth mutinous soldier. They indeed were advanced.Other Comments by mordacious1
16. Comment #208897 by Cartomancer on July 11, 2008 at 11:02 am
The thing about language change is that, just as with evolution, the direction it takes is influenced by the sum total of all the pressures which affect it at any given time.
So far, so uncontroversial. But what a lot of people fail to realise is that conservative individuals with a fondness for formal stylistic prescriptivism are themselves a powerful selection pressure. Generally, and in Richard's case I am sure this is true, the linguistic pedants are so concerned because they work in a high-status tradition of formal writing - academic, bureaucratic or diplomatic. Use of formal academic written style communicates not only the ideas one has to communicate, but also a significant package of establishmentarian respect. If you want to be taken seriously by the parts of society that include Richard Dawkins, you have to use a formally correct written style - and if anywhere is going to be a bastion of high-status linguistic formality it is the letters page of the Times. Prestige forms of a language such as this are a sociolinguistic phenomenon just as much as language change through changing usage.
What we are in fact seeing are the beginnings of a speciation event - the divergent populations concerned being individual dialects and eventually perhaps whole languages. Spanish, French, Romanian and Italian all branched off from the formal written style of Latin over the period from about 300-700 AD in much the same way. It is possible, though with high literacy rates and rapidly changing communicative technology perhaps unlikely, that formal written English and idiomatic spoken English might go the same way.
I actually think that quite a few old grammar Nazis like the fact that the meaning of words like "decimate" has changed, because it provides one more mark of educated one-upmanship to hold over those who are unaware of it. This sort of psychological situation too is a valid selection pressure on the language - if it were not the case then we would almost certainly have forgotten the original meaning of "decimate" entirely and it would be a footnote in the most obscure of antiquarian tracts.
Other Comments by Cartomancer
17. Comment #208898 by Styrer- on July 11, 2008 at 11:05 am
Unfortunately, Richard is simply wrong here, if the article presents his position accurately.The notion that there is an incompatibility between the verb 'address' and 'issue' is not borne out by current usage.
We are constantly addressing such important issues as language, though it would seem that some are doing so with a little more knowledge of the huge topic of 'language change' than others.
There is no such thing as a 'grammatical rule'. There are grammatical 'guidelines', which seek to label how language is used in written and spoken form. The horror of such notions of 'grammar lessons' - resulting in discouraged language learners who could neither speak not write in anything like a comprehensible form of the crap they were taught; nor were able to bridge the gap to language as it was used outside the classroom - have happily gone the way of the wrongheaded notion of the 'split infinitive' (no such thing in English).
But it will always be current usage which wins out.
There are fascinating stories about language evolution in Pinker, which I suggest the Professor read, if he wishes to find even the tiniest justification for retaining in our linguistic discourse such a ridiculous notion that 'address' and 'issue' are on bad terms.
Most happily married, so they are. (It is an Irish fella, right?)
The rest is actually pretty good (except for the fucking disciple comment. Can't resist, can they?)
Best,
Styrer
Other Comments by Styrer-
18. Comment #208902 by al-rawandi on July 11, 2008 at 11:13 am
It isn't the 150th anniversary of "evolution" but rather of natural selection... am I wrong? Other Comments by al-rawandi
19. Comment #208906 by Peacebeuponme on July 11, 2008 at 11:18 am
alIt isn't the 150th anniversary of "evolution" but rather of natural selection... am I wrong?I think they've both been going a while longer...
But seriously, you are correct. Evolution is a thousands of year old concept.
Other Comments by Peacebeuponme
20. Comment #208908 by mordacious1 on July 11, 2008 at 11:18 am
"addressing issues" has been in dictionaries for some time now, so one can't fault the original writer for using it. Take it up with the publishers of the dictionaries.Other Comments by mordacious1
21. Comment #208909 by rod-the-farmer on July 11, 2008 at 11:19 am
I doubt very much the Romans used "decimate" regarding a "corps". That word did not come into common use until much later. Romans would have used maniple, cohort, or legion. (Amateur historian speaking). Other Comments by rod-the-farmer
22. Comment #208912 by MPhil on July 11, 2008 at 11:22 am
Nice test, Raiko... though the average results are a little depressing:# You scored 100% on Beginner, higher than 63% of your peers.
# 48/100 You scored 100% on Intermediate, higher than 48% of your peers.
# 38/100 You scored 93% on Advanced, higher than 38% of your peers.
# 80/100 You scored 93% on Expert, higher than 80% of your peers.
Someday I'll reach the 100%... but so far not bad for a non-native speaker I would say :)
Other Comments by MPhil
23. Comment #208919 by mordacious1 on July 11, 2008 at 11:40 am
RodAgreed, unless he was using the word loosely, as in "a group with a common purpose", like a corps of reporters, and not in the military sense. But methinks he was using it in the military sense, so he's a twat.
Other Comments by mordacious1
24. Comment #208920 by Gregg Townsend on July 11, 2008 at 11:40 am
Raiko,
You scored 93% on Beginner, higher than 32% of your peers. 17/100
You scored 93% on Intermediate, higher than 17% of your peers. 38/100
You scored 87% on Advanced, higher than 38% of your peers. 47/100
You scored 80% on Expert, higher than 47% of your peers.
Surprised myself.
Other Comments by Gregg Townsend
25. Comment #208923 by Peacebeuponme on July 11, 2008 at 11:44 am
You scored 93% on Beginner, higher than 32% of your peers.Very mixed!
You scored 100% on Intermediate, higher than 48% of your peers.
You scored 100% on Advanced, higher than 72% of your peers.
You scored 80% on Expert, higher than 47% of your peers.
Other Comments by Peacebeuponme
26. Comment #208927 by Tezcatlipoca on July 11, 2008 at 11:58 am
Ugh,
93%
93%
87%
87%
I thought I did better on the first two sections...
Other Comments by Tezcatlipoca
27. Comment #208929 by mordacious1 on July 11, 2008 at 11:59 am
Hey, I scored 100% on everything but expert which was 97%, but it did not rate me with my peers. I guess I have none.[edit] I meant to type:
Hay, eye scoured a 100 precinct un every thing butt esprit, witch was 97 precinct, butt it did'nt reight me with my piers. Eye gus eye have nun.
Other Comments by mordacious1
28. Comment #208930 by JAMCAM87 on July 11, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Are the Irish genetically pre-disposed to being religious as well as stupid? Other Comments by JAMCAM87
29. Comment #208931 by aquilacane on July 11, 2008 at 12:00 pm
People using language in the way they were taught. Incredible!
This is groundbreaking, if I may use the evolved meaning of the word.
Other Comments by aquilacane
30. Comment #208933 by Peacebeuponme on July 11, 2008 at 12:05 pm
mordacious - you just needed to scroll down.Other Comments by Peacebeuponme
31. Comment #208934 by Brian English on July 11, 2008 at 12:07 pm
You scored 93% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 73% Expert!
Begginer:
I thought the He ___ to the banquet with Naomi and ___ was He went to the banquet with Naomi and I. The response given as correct He went to the banquet with Naomi and me sounds wrong. The explanation given sounds fair however:
The words I and me can sometimes get confusing. There are two rules that make using these two words very simple.
1) Never put yourself first.
2) Remove the other person from the equation.
In this sentence, remove Naomi. Would you say "He went to the banquet with I", or "He went to the banquet with me"? Me is the correct choice in this sentence.
Expert:
They __________ her for murdering her children. Here hung sounds correct, but I come from a country that stopped the death penalty by hanging before I was born. ;)
and
Please stay __________
awhile, a while and for a while are apparently all correct, though awhile looks like like an orthographic error to me. :)
Ahh well, I suck at begginer English, am OK intermediate/advance and suck at expert. I shame my surname. :)
Other Comments by Brian English
32. Comment #208937 by Ian on July 11, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test ...
Advanced
You scored 93% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 67% Expert!
You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.
Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!
SMUG MODE: OFF
(Not really... :-)
Other Comments by Ian
33. Comment #208939 by mordacious1 on July 11, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Peace,etc.I am a language genius, not a computer genius.
Other Comments by mordacious1
34. Comment #208952 by GBile on July 11, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Is this to flatter me ? (being dutch):You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 73% Expert!
You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.
Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!
Must have learned something while drinking beer at IU in the sixties.
Other Comments by GBile
35. Comment #208958 by BigJohn on July 11, 2008 at 12:45 pm
You scored:100% Beginner
100% Intermediate
93% Advanced
80% Expert!
You scored 100% on Beginner, higher than 63% of your peers.
48/100 You scored 100% on Intermediate, higher than 48% of your peers.
38/100 You scored 93% on Advanced, higher than 38% of your peers.
47/100 You scored 80% on Expert, higher than 47% of your peers.
Oh, well...
Other Comments by BigJohn
36. Comment #208961 by Enlightenme.. on July 11, 2008 at 12:50 pm
We will all be equipped with a Babel Fish within a decade or so anyway, so this means we will all be able to converse in Standard American.
The Instruction manual, however, will come in an incomprehensible form of Sino-English, printed on an A6 sized piece of Bible-paper in size 6 font, and we'll have to learn how it operates from our children.
Other Comments by Enlightenme..
37. Comment #208962 by Cartomancer on July 11, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I was going to brag about getting 100% on all four levels, but that would be a tad lacking in humility, so instead I shall just say that the same site thinks my ideal job would be Leprechaun Hunter and I would be "the Assassin" were zombie apocalypse to strike in the near future...
Now where did I put my net...
Other Comments by Cartomancer
38. Comment #208968 by Brian English on July 11, 2008 at 1:03 pm
It's good to know that Carto will be able to catch wee folk and impress them with his perfect English....Other Comments by Brian English
39. Comment #208986 by Jiten on July 11, 2008 at 1:22 pm
gkatheist wrote:I find myself in a rare disagreement with Professor Dawkins. I recently finished a degree in linguistics, and one thing that they pound into our brains is the fact that language change = language use. If people use "address" with "issue," then that is a proper use.I agree with you as would, I suspect, Steven Pinker. I just don't get this bee-in-a-bonnet that Richard has about correct use of English. I bet when addresses were first used with computers there were letters to the Times saying addresses were for envelopes only!
Other Comments by Jiten
40. Comment #208988 by MBC Morgan on July 11, 2008 at 1:25 pm
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 100% Expert!Hrmm...Boo-yah?
Other Comments by MBC Morgan
41. Comment #208993 by LBraschi on July 11, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I scored 100% Beginner, 86% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 60% Expert!# You scored 100% on Beginner, higher than 63% of your peers.
# 5/100 You scored 86% on Intermediate, higher than 5% of your peers.
# 72/100 You scored 100% on Advanced, higher than 72% of your peers.
# 10/100 You scored 60% on Expert, higher than 10% of your peers.
Odd. I did better on the advanced levels than on the intermediate. Not bad for not being my mother language
Other Comments by LBraschi
42. Comment #209001 by Spinoza on July 11, 2008 at 1:44 pm
English Genius
You scored 93% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 100% Expert!
I think that means I got one wrong on each of the first three, and I think I know why...
The problem is, I subscribe to a Wittgensteinian sort of "language is use" doctrine that permits idiom to supersede tradition, so in cases where there is strong evidence that there is a shift occurring, I picked "both"... it's likely that the quiz decided to mark those cases wrong, in favour of tradition.
Expert:
They __________ her for murdering her children. Here hung sounds correct, but I come from a country that stopped the death penalty by hanging before I was born. ;)
I got this one right, but the apparent answer for why it is like that is interesting:
"The preferred past tense and past participle in English is hanged, if the question is of a judicial execution, otherwise hung."
Other Comments by Spinoza
43. Comment #209011 by David J on July 11, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Roger (#7), indeed, the Judeo-Christian theists believe that the languages of the earth were confounded as a curse because the people of Babel (no pun intended) were trying to build a ziggurat that would "reach to heaven." I suspect since the Christianized notion of "heaven" was not such clear-cut concept to the original author of Genesis as most believers would like to think, that most theists get the passage wrong, and that the Hebrew word employed in the verse for "heaven" probably just means "sky" and not the ultimate hyper-cosmic abode of god(s).
Regardless, the vindictive, jealous, bully-of-a-god Yahweh rears his ugly head once again when the people do what they want but instead of randomly killing them with his super powers, he gives them all different languages, stands back, folds his arms, laughs, and says "Deal with that, puny underlings!"
Other Comments by David J
44. Comment #209017 by Jiten on July 11, 2008 at 2:03 pm
My result? Mine's the same as BigJohn's. Notice the expert use of commas! Other Comments by Jiten
45. Comment #209026 by amalthea on July 11, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Don't usually comment much, but this seems like a huge 'pedant alert'. Dealing with issues, or perhaps, oh, I don't know, SOLVING issues would be better than addressing them.Can't beat the logic, so instead, I'll take the mick (or in the UK : piss) out of the language used.
Good Chaucer comment, language does evolve, as does everything. Shame to see some people watch it happen in front of their eyes (and ears) and still deny it happens.
So, that's the best that the opposition can do? Great, it means they're too stoopid (intentional) to realise that everything evolved, and sometime soon, they, and their line will be de-selected from the gene pool.
My 2p
A
Other Comments by amalthea
46. Comment #209036 by hopeful on July 11, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I accept that language changes over time. However I think it is important to moderate the rate of language change since we are so dependent on written knowledge and accurate communication, perhaps more so now than at any previous time in history.There are many social forces attempting to distort and change language, so I think it is important that there are also forces that attempt to slow and control the change.
I think the academic world has an important role to play in this regard, as does anyone who is fussy about the use of language.
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47. Comment #209042 by eoinc on July 11, 2008 at 2:25 pm
This article made my day. Frank McNally is such a witty writer that, whatever one's opinions on correct language use, you have to admire the kind of talent that can write an article about language using religious and evolutionary metaphors, and tie it all together so neatly. I doff my hat, Mr McNally.Other Comments by eoinc
48. Comment #209043 by David J on July 11, 2008 at 2:25 pm
hopeful, why should language change be moderated? If the change facilitates the needs of its users to their advantage, why impede it? Moreover, how would you propose such moderation? I'm curious is all. Other Comments by David J
49. Comment #209044 by Duff on July 11, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Cartomancer,I scored 100 percent on everything. Would my saying that count as "educated one-upmanship"? I love your term and agree that it perfectly describes the article!
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50. Comment #209049 by njwong on July 11, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Fun quiz. Thanks Raiko.
100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 73% Expert
I noticed there was another link on the results page to a "Which Philosophy Suits You Best":
http://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-which-philosophy-suits-your-personality-test-4
This quiz gave me the following rating:
Your result for The which philosophy suits your personality? Test ...
Cogito Ergo Sum, by Descartes
44% Nature, 63% Rationalism, 35% Religion, 57% Freedom, 62% Individuality, 42% Power and 36% Uncertainty!
You scored highest on the variable Rationalism.
Rationalism was an important part of Descartes' philosophy.
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Over 1.5 million copies sold
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The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
by Richard Dawkins
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker
by Richard Dawkins
The Ancestor's Tale
by Richard Dawkins
Unweaving the Rainbow
by Richard Dawkins
1. Comment #208854 by snoov on July 11, 2008 at 10:06 am
yuptakea word like 'suicide'which used to have a quite noble meaning
not now
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