Completely unimportant language misuses that bug you

[tantric]

I didn't correct, just made sure to point out that I did not introduce mistakes in what you wrote.

Also, behold exhibit A of what I was referring to here. Especially how it assumes everyone is a "native speaker".

No, tantric, I do not easily understand the meaning of what is being said, because I cannot easily tell where your sentence start without the capital letters.

GW

the no caps thing started from a bad keyboard, but now it's just my typed handwriting. i like that my writing has a distinctive look. and you know, just for you, i'll add the full stop over my normal period. that would also be my style. and, calling your ****, if something is in quote tags, it is implicit that you didn't type it, and the person who did is clearly named with the quotes. you did that to be snarky.

there are two ways to use language. the first is snarky, this is when discussion is competitive. you try to score points off your 'opponent' in the believe that it will elevate you in the ears of your fellows. doesn't work - snarky people are unpleasant due to the snark itself.

the other way is communion. with this, you are trying to exchange information with full depth. you are reaching for understanding, and holding forth your meaning as truly as you can.

i have a t-shirt "half-man half-bonobo". we don't have snark on my planet.

[2D8HP]

...we don't have snark on my planet.

That's too bad.

Snark is good eatin'

Mmmmm, I'm hankerin' for some grilled snark right now!

[Trekkin]

That's too bad.

Snark is good eatin'

Mmmmm, I'm hankerin' for some grilled snark right now!

I never did like snark; the risk of boojum-related incidents is too great.

[2D8HP]

I never did like snark; the risk of boojum-related incidents is too great.

Well played

[Dr.Samurai]

Warning!

Spoiler: a full bore "get off my lawn" middle-aged rant coming on!

Show

Why have some young adults decided to use an acronym with "Justice" in it as a slur?

................................

Please find another way than "SJW" to convey whatever it is you're trying to communicate.

I'll go further, and say that I'm extremely disappointed as well as angry that a generation has decided to make up a slur of "Justice".
What's next insulting people by calling them medics and lifesavers?

"SJWs" now...
...just listen for a few minutes about how colleges should have days where.

Okay, based on the activities of some overzealous adolescents in sheltered isolated enclaves, I will now (barely) forgive how "SJW" is often used if the word "some" and "collegiate" are used first and quotation marks are put all around!
Otherwise it still ticks me off.

Spoiler: 2D8HP

Show

Hey 2D8HP, you've got part of my quote there, so let me just clarify a bit. I was explaining to you why it's used as a pejorative now by some people, not trying to get you to forgive its usage (you're free to feel about it how you want!) . I do use it that way myself though, because labels do have some use. To be a social justice warrior has been considered a good thing for most of the time the term has been in use. But these days, not so much, as you've noticed.

I think both parts of the term are relevant. "Social justice", because I think people have a different opinion about what "social justice" means or looks like in practice, especially when it's not as simple as "everyone should be able to vote" or something like that. If you can be put into an "oppressor" group, you can hope, at best, to be silenced, if not outright demonized. There is an idea that because marginalized groups have suffered, they are justified in discriminating against people in the groups considered to be the oppressor. It's a sort of "now we turn the tables on you" type of thing. Again, look to students trying to segregate campuses against white people, or people justifying sucker punching a guy in the face while he's simply being interviewed, because he's a white nationalist. Bad ideas and bad behavior are justified because the people thinking and doing them are in a marginalized group or fighting on behalf of those in a marginalized group. This is a mockery of "social justice". They erode the moral high ground they were standing on.

Regarding "warrior", this is twofold, I think. First, obviously it paints the discussion as a battle. Which... I think is fine, mostly. It's a battle of ideas and culture, to be sure. But, going back to the demonizing, if you go into a conversation thinking you're going to fight evil racists and misogynists and homophobes, before anything is even said, it probably won't be productive. The discussions are framed as monster hunters going in to do battle with the most wicked and depraved people on the planet. That's... not helpful. People that don't agree with you or simply don't understand are turned into foes. It's ironic, because the "SJWs" do a good job of othering people and marginalizing those that don't agree with them. The second part of the "warrior" pejorative, in this context, is that often they are anything BUT warriors. They go into a conversation ready to "fight" with all this gusto, but they have few "weapons" beyond their feelings, and those get damaged very easily and very quickly. These "warriors" demand "safe spaces", and "trigger warnings". They are offended easily and believe offense-taking justifies swift and severe action against the offender. Mere words are their Achilles' Heel, which is why they vigorously try to police speech. When you can't even have a conversation with some people because they're feelings get hurt, it is hard to take them seriously, let alone as "warriors".

SJW doesn't apply to everyone, just like racist/homophobe/bigot/misogynist don't apply to everyone. But hopefully I've helped explain why *some people* in the movement are called SJWs as a pejorative. It shouldn't be used to dismiss someone or their arguments, because that's not how you have a discussion or prove a point. But I use it as an easy way to convey an idea like "he was saying typical bigot stuff, you know like gays aren't people, etc." or "you know, typical SJW rhetoric, like all white people are racist, etc.".

Both sides of this discussion have a caricature; the violent hateful bigot oppressor, and the victim-complex authoritarian moral busy-body, and these both have a basis in reality.

I consider myself a progressive, and I want equality for everyone, and don't want discrimination against anyone. But I don't consider myself an SJW because of the associations with it that I just mentioned.

[Lissou]

Nope.

"Ye" (actually pronounced with the "y" in "you") is a singular second person pronoun. There was a time when "you" was only plural, and singular was either "ye" or "thou".

There's still some dialects in middle to northern England that uses one or even both of "ye" and "thou", although it's becoming vanishingly rare lately.

Ye was to you as me is to I or thee is to thou. Although looking it up, it seems to have been used as both the nominative and objective form, so there is more going on. Nevertheless, historically it was a plural, not singular, pronoun.

Thanks for the rectification!

[2D8HP]

[Hey 2D8HP,....

Spoiler: Dr.Samurai

Show

Thanks for the feedback.

I just don't like how adolescent collegiate antics and labelling have infected the wider worlds vocabulary, and twisted words around.

For the record, I work at "The Hall of Justice", and take justice seriously.

Just grinds this old man's gears.

[georgie_leech]

Spoiler: Dr.Samurai

Show

Thanks for the feedback.

I just don't like how adolescent collegiate antics and labelling have infected the wider worlds vocabulary, and twisted words around.

For the record, I work at "The Hall of Justice", and take justice seriously.

Just grinds this old man's gears.

Spoiler

Show

If jt helps, people using SJW that way are generally using it the same way that people refer to certain terrorist organizations as 'freedom fighters.' That is, it's meant as an ironic twist rather than disparaging the concept of fighting for justice.

[Jay R]

No, that's just "the". The old letter for "th" looks kind of like a Y and so people have been using a Y instead when they want to sound old-fashioned.

Actually, both exist.

"Oh, ye of little faith..."
"Oh, come all ye faithful"

"Thou"/"thee" was singular informal.
"Ye"
/"you" was plural or formal.

The "ye" that was "the" is a different word.

[Vinyadan]

Oh come ye faithful is "come you faithful" or "come the faithful?"


One quirk of mine is that I'd be happier if people talked about just society, rather than social justice. It just sounds clearer and more grounded in reality to me. Not a misuse, though.

[Aedilred]

Oh come ye faithful is "come you faithful" or "come the faithful?"


One quirk of mine is that I'd be happier if people talked about just society, rather than social justice. It just sounds clearer and more grounded in reality to me. Not a misuse, though.

That's "Oh Come All 'You' Faithful". Exhortative, not descriptive.

"Ye" as "the" is most common in things like pub signs and "ye olde" etc. A pub called "Ye Olde Cocke" is just pronounced "The Old Cock". When printing got started, it was still common to write "the" (and one or two other words) with a thorn for the "th", but they didn't have a type letterform for it so they used a "y" in its place, since they looked very similar even written by hand.

Of course they also used "y" for "y", hence the confusion between "ye" and "the", two different words with different pronunciations and technically different spellings that nevertheless looked identical.

They didn't (for a while, anyway) have "j" or "v" either, and used "i" and "u" in their place. But they had two different characters for "s" (the long s, resembling a f with no crosspiece, which was used, broadly speaking, at the beginning or in the middle of words, and the short s, familiar to us now, which went at the end of words or as the second s in a compound).

Most of these oddities fell out of use by the end of the 18th century as people started to design more sophisticated, localised and bespoke typefaces, and persists/ed only where people were trying to appear deliberately archaic or traditional (hence the pub signs).

[BWR]

The problem lies in using 'y' for two letters that don't exist any more. ȝ. (yogh) and þ (thorn). Yogh is basically the initial sound in words like 'yes' where the letter 'y' was a rounded-lip 'eee' sound (which still exists in languages like the Scandinavian ones). So 'ye' =/= 'ye'.
The pronoun was written with a 'g' in Old English which was palatalized. The Christmas carol is pretty obviously an imperative to people, so it's a second person plural. "Come, all the faithful" doesn't work well in English.

[The Extinguisher]

Am I the only one why doesn't see how 'y' and 'þ' look similar enough that it would get used. If I was going to pick a letter to replace for 'þ' I most likely would have gone for 'p'

[Aedilred]

Am I the only one why doesn't see how 'y' and 'þ' look similar enough that it would get used. If I was going to pick a letter to replace for 'þ' I most likely would have gone for 'p'

Letters have changed their shape throughout history, and the standardised word-processed forms we're familiar with now are just one, modern, expression of them. Uncial Latin - which is the same alphabet we still use - is almost completely illegible. Carolingian minuscule is not much better. Even 16th-century handwriting can be pretty impenetrable to a modern eye.

At the time printing appeared, thorn looked quite a lot like a contemporary y. It probably also looked a lot like a contemporary p, q and g, and that it ended up being represented by a y was in part probably just luck of the draw.

[Jormengand]

Just to make the "Ye" thing difficult, it also used to mean "Eye" (as in "And smale foweles maken melodye, that slepen al the nyght with open ye"). So you can use it without people knowing whether you mean you, the or eye!

(Though it's ususally fairly easy to tell by context, partially of the sentence and partly of when the sentence was said and the current state of the English language.)

[Vinyadan]

Am I the only one why doesn't see how 'y' and 'þ' look similar enough that it would get used. If I was going to pick a letter to replace for 'þ' I most likely would have gone for 'p'

A form like this could depict both, in theory.

[2D8HP]

...One quirk of mine is that I'd be happier if people talked about just...

That does flow and look better.

A form like this could depict both, in theory.

One quirk of mine is that I really find this discussion of ye/the, you/thou, comforting.

[137beth]

"Man, why didn't any of you become social justice rogues or social justice magi?"

Just be happy it isn't social justice monk or social justice bard...

Or SOCIAL JUSTICE TRUENAMER!

Spoiler

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Smooth Jazz Waluigi!

If you make an RPG character who is also a law-enforcement official, than you can literally be a PC Police officer. Like, literally. People mentioned like, like and literally in this thread already, right?


EDIT: Ah, right, I almost forgot about another annoyance of mine (and I use this one too, sometimes, but it still sort of bugs me):
"You guys" is gender neutral, and can even refer to a group of "guys" consisting only of females.
"You, guy" is gender-specific and always refers to a male.

[The Extinguisher]

A form like this could depict both, in theory.

I still don't see it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[georgie_leech]

I still don't see it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Take þ, break the top bit of where it connects, tilt the part above the part that sticks out and tilt it to the side, and make the rest swooshy. Conversely, take y, make it all wiggly, and bend the right fork so it points back at the left side.

[Jay R]

I still don't see it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And we can't explain it fully in a few lines of typed text. You're assuming typefaces and precise shapes, neither of which existed when this was occurring. There are historical reasons why it made sense, but they are not preserved in 21st century typefaces.

Similarly, one of the shapes for "s" looks like a "f" to our eyes. And that makes no sense based on the modern shapes of the letters, either. But it made sense then.

You can learn the history of calligraphy, and follow the sometimes bizarre representations of letters, or you can just believe people when they tell you that the thorn was eventually represented by a "y".

But you can't see why that makes sense without digging a little deeper into the evolution of letters.

[Bohandas]

And we can't explain it fully in a few lines of typed text. You're assuming typefaces and precise shapes, neither of which existed when this was occurring. There are historical reasons why it made sense, but they are not preserved in 21st century typefaces.

Similarly, one of the shapes for "s" looks like a "f" to our eyes. And that makes no sense based on the modern shapes of the letters, either. But it made sense then.

It was basically a stretched out 's' with a cross stroke. The parts that make no sense are why they often neglected to draw the bottom hook of the 's' (which I know is supposed to be there; that glyph is still used in mathematics), and why the letter 's' had three cases whereas everything else just had majuscule and miniscule

[Jay R]

It was basically a stretched out 's' with a cross stroke. The parts that make no sense are why they often neglected to draw the bottom hook of the 's' (which I know is supposed to be there; that glyph is still used in mathematics), and why the letter 's' had three cases whereas everything else just had majuscule and miniscule

1.Whether they drew it or not depended on the script, the century, and the place. Like serifs, some alphabets had it and some did not.

2. Majuscule and Minuscule were separate scripts originally, and paleographers don't use them as synonyms for "upper case" and "lower case".

2. The letter "s" had two cases - upper case and lower case. As with "i", the lower case could be represented two different ways. "S" had two versions because "sigma" did in classical Greek. "I" had two versions to indicate the end of a number in Roman numerals. 8, for instance, was represented as viij. "J" became a separate letter sometime later.

This is not a simple question, and I've just spent fifteen minutes asking a paleographer (my wife) to get this information. She emphasizes that I've over-simplified. There are entire books on this subject, and she's been pulling them off the shelf in this discussion.

As I said earlier, we can't explain it fully in a few lines of typed text.

Oh, and the integral sign is patterned on one of many ways the long "s" was written.

[Mouse@GBN]

To OP:

Caveat. Anyone in the army will recognize this and probably uses it wrong.

[Vinyadan]

About the Shire discussion: I just noticed that Denethor calls it 'the Shire of the Halflings' when instructing Pippin on how to swear fealty to him. So I guess that that was its ancient name when the Shire was still part of a larger Kingdom.

Since the Halflings later were the only inhabitants, they stopped using the redundant part; it probably also was the only shire left together, since there are no other known political structures of that kind in the region (there were some towns, dwarven settlements, a couple of elf places, and that's it, I think.)
So even outsiders had no reason left not to simply call it the Shire.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

About the Shire discussion: I just noticed that Denethor calls it 'the Shire of the Halflings' when instructing Pippin on how to swear fealty to him. So I guess that that was its ancient name when the Shire was still part of a larger Kingdom.

IIRC, it was the westmost part of the northern kingdom of Arnor, which Aragorn was technically rightful heir to, but that fell to Sauron in the past. Given Tolkien's liking for etymology, it wouldn't surprise me if indeed your proposition is what he had had in mind.

GW

[2D8HP]

...Given Tolkien's liking for etymology,...

Somehow, in most long threads, someone mentions Hitler, Star Wars, and/or Tolkein.

If ever someone posts a video of Gandalf battling Nazi's on the Death Star the internet will be complete.

---

Is there ever a use for "too" besides "too much", "too little", etc.?

[Dr.Samurai]

"Too" is also used to mean "also".

[2D8HP]

"Too" is also used to mean "also".

Thanks!!!!

[Vinyadan]

"Too" is also used to mean "also".

"Also" is used to mean "too", too.