Your choice of language

in reality, all of this has been a total load of old bollocks

What sort of language do you prefer

I will happily use foreign language phrases to pepper my everyday language.
8
29%
Flowery
5
18%
Efficient
10
36%
Don't really care
1
4%
I very rarely write anything of consequence to bother
3
11%
TXT SPK
1
4%
 
Total votes: 28

User avatar
Poppypoobah
Resident Hotty
Posts: 17501
Joined: 18 Jul 2003, 23:03
Location: Paradise
Contact:

Re: Your choice of language

Postby Poppypoobah » 14 Aug 2012, 00:45

sloopjohnc wrote:Between Efficient and Don't Really Care.

It shouldn't, but it absolutely drives me nuts when my American brethren and sistren start dropping "daft" and other English expressions.

It's like when white guys try talking black to be cool.

WE. AREN'T. ENGLISH!
To be fair, most of us chat here every day and the brits use our terms we use theirs, what used to get me was when people did bad accents to my exhusband and I. It was painful and yet we both felt we had to smile thru the ordeal, It's just as bad hearing a brit do a bad US accent. I still say shopping cart rather than trolley and if I am speaking to an english person they have no clue what I am talking about. There are other ones, trunk rather than boot, ass rather than arse, but I do swap back and forth since in the years I've been here I've only run into maybe 5 Americans and hundreds of people from the UK.

I picked peppered with another language, because I live in a country that doesn't speak english. I was told yesterday that I spoke spanish very well by 3 guys who were trying to pick me up while my car was being worked on, I would hope so after this many years but it's still not as good as it should be by a long shot. I can curse like a native sailor though. That's one of the things that Duncan who teaches usually teaches first. Last year he was giving classes to a guardia civil student (our national police) and I was rolling with laughter as he told me how his class on what common curses this guy would hear in a routine traffic stop might be.

User avatar
John Mc
Posts: 14493
Joined: 22 Oct 2003, 17:25
Location: Wilde animal

Re: Your choice of language

Postby John Mc » 14 Aug 2012, 00:49

I will happily use foreign language phrases to pepper my everyday language.


But of course! Even though I only have a fairly modest grasp of French and Latin (and a very little German and Italian).

The basic functional/brutish attitude to language dumbfounds me. We might just as well resort to a system of physical blows and grunts. Language is expressive - we should use it as such. Therein also lies a very particular jouissance, as well as a proper enabling and communication of nuance and meaning.

I don't really want to talk to someone who doesn't even recognise the distinction between 'less' and 'fewer' - I mention that because I have (astonishingly) seen 'less' openly misused in print perhaps three or four times in the last couple of days - and really, I view it with the same distaste as I would someone spitting on the ground when they're talking to you because they think it's 'macho'. No, not at all, sir - it simply means that you're an illiterate (in many senses) cunt. You see, language should be about saying things, painting an artful picture, and that may be figurative, or it may not. Anyone who is unprepared to grasp that, well, I'm not prepared to cast myself in the role of some Mickey Spillane protagonist just to share. I may dumb down just to be friendly or under chemical influence, but I won't tolerate either wilful stoopidity, or deliberate linguistic deception. And just don't get me started on that....

As far as language goes, the French have the right idea. A lot of life may be shit, but the sublime can (and will) be truly sublime. We can invoke and live in beauty by talking about life in a beautiful and significant way. It is part of an invocation that elevates us.

Soi-disant flâneur, c'est moi.
quix wrote:If you want to really live then you have to open yourself up to love... some you'll win, some you'll lose... but what is the point if being human if you don't dare?

User avatar
John Mc
Posts: 14493
Joined: 22 Oct 2003, 17:25
Location: Wilde animal

Re: Your choice of language

Postby John Mc » 14 Aug 2012, 00:59

Copehead wrote:Never use a single word when you have an apposite apercu ready to beguile your readership


A reader writes:

What, sir, no cedilla? :shock:

I am, frankly, sir, consequently somewhat less than 'beguiled'.

Furthermore, that you should consider such cavalier presentation acceptable is a cause of frank perplexity to me.

Yours most sincerely.

A Reader
quix wrote:If you want to really live then you have to open yourself up to love... some you'll win, some you'll lose... but what is the point if being human if you don't dare?

User avatar
John Mc
Posts: 14493
Joined: 22 Oct 2003, 17:25
Location: Wilde animal

Re: Your choice of language

Postby John Mc » 14 Aug 2012, 01:12

Pretentious, mind, is only that if you're 'pretending'. I think that if any sort of communication is genuine, and heartfelt, and does what it's meant to do in the tin, i.e., get across what you mean to say, then it's fine.

I like the wordy and the sometimes oblique. Which is also, perhaps, taste or aesthetic or intellectual (?) preference. I guess it's how I like to think/talk, but it's not meant to impress - who really, would be taken in by that? It's really a sort of language game, I guess, and it is also partly for fun.

Fun, of course, is also a very serious thing.
quix wrote:If you want to really live then you have to open yourself up to love... some you'll win, some you'll lose... but what is the point if being human if you don't dare?

sloopjohnc
Posts: 63924
Joined: 03 Jun 2004, 20:12

Re: Your choice of language

Postby sloopjohnc » 14 Aug 2012, 01:13

Poppypoobah wrote:
sloopjohnc wrote:Between Efficient and Don't Really Care.

It shouldn't, but it absolutely drives me nuts when my American brethren and sistren start dropping "daft" and other English expressions.

It's like when white guys try talking black to be cool.

WE. AREN'T. ENGLISH!
To be fair, most of us chat here every day and the brits use our terms we use theirs, what used to get me was when people did bad accents to my exhusband and I. It was painful and yet we both felt we had to smile thru the ordeal, It's just as bad hearing a brit do a bad US accent. I still say shopping cart rather than trolley and if I am speaking to an english person they have no clue what I am talking about. There are other ones, trunk rather than boot, ass rather than arse, but I do swap back and forth since in the years I've been here I've only run into maybe 5 Americans and hundreds of people from the UK.

I picked peppered with another language, because I live in a country that doesn't speak english. I was told yesterday that I spoke spanish very well by 3 guys who were trying to pick me up while my car was being worked on, I would hope so after this many years but it's still not as good as it should be by a long shot. I can curse like a native sailor though. That's one of the things that Duncan who teaches usually teaches first. Last year he was giving classes to a guardia civil student (our national police) and I was rolling with laughter as he told me how his class on what common curses this guy would hear in a routine traffic stop might be.


When I was staying with Django last summer, he would occasionally say, "Hey, buddy."

Buddy?

I told him he could call me "buddy" when I started using "mate," which would be never.
Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk!

User avatar
Poppypoobah
Resident Hotty
Posts: 17501
Joined: 18 Jul 2003, 23:03
Location: Paradise
Contact:

Re: Your choice of language

Postby Poppypoobah » 14 Aug 2012, 01:19

sloopjohnc wrote:
When I was staying with Django last summer, he would occasionally say, "Hey, buddy."

Buddy?

I told him he could call me "buddy" when I started using "mate," which would be never.
Party pooper! I think it's cute that he called you buddy.

User avatar
copehead
BCB Cup Stalinist
Posts: 24767
Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 18:51
Location: at sea

Re: Your choice of language

Postby copehead » 14 Aug 2012, 01:43

John Mc wrote:
Copehead wrote:Never use a single word when you have an apposite apercu ready to beguile your readership


A reader writes:

What, sir, no cedilla? :shock:

I am, frankly, sir, consequently somewhat less than 'beguiled'.

Furthermore, that you should consider such cavalier presentation acceptable is a cause of frank perplexity to me.

Yours most sincerely.

A Reader


And yet you understood what I meant, undermining your own argument, and I didn't have to piss around looking for funny foreign letters in windows.

I win

chapeau to me!
Dancing in the streets of Hyannis

Image

Bear baiting & dog fights a speciality.

Jimbo
Dribbling idiot airhead
Posts: 19645
Joined: 26 Dec 2009, 21:22

Re: Your choice of language

Postby Jimbo » 14 Aug 2012, 02:01

Where is the Kath option?

Even though I'm bad at it I think the best writing sounds as much as how he or she talks, even in expository prose. Take Kurt Vonnegut, Dave Barry, Mark Twain ... Those are writers whose conversational style I admire.
Question authority.

User avatar
John Mc
Posts: 14493
Joined: 22 Oct 2003, 17:25
Location: Wilde animal

Re: Your choice of language

Postby John Mc » 14 Aug 2012, 02:32

Copehead wrote:And yet you understood what I meant, undermining your own argument, and I didn't have to piss around looking for funny foreign letters in windows.

I win

chapeau to me!


Mais naturellement! It's not actually an 'argument', tho', mon cher vieux chapeaux ( ooh, err, missus!) I'm just messing with ya. So that's a big Zoot Horn Rollo and a bedraggled armadillo schnozz.

I rarely bother with the funny foreign letters, to be honest, although I will Google and copy and paste if I'm feeling particularly pedantic or if the whim takes me.

Although, down in the meadow where the wind blows free, there's a whisper of green in the lightning tree, and these days the old mort aux vaches is rather more important! ;)
quix wrote:If you want to really live then you have to open yourself up to love... some you'll win, some you'll lose... but what is the point if being human if you don't dare?

User avatar
John Mc
Posts: 14493
Joined: 22 Oct 2003, 17:25
Location: Wilde animal

Re: Your choice of language

Postby John Mc » 14 Aug 2012, 02:36

Jimbo2 wrote:Where is the Kath option?


Along any time now, hopefully! ;)

BTW, and yeah, I can imagine you being a Vonnegut sort of guy, Jimbo, and I mean that in a strictly complimentary sense. :)
quix wrote:If you want to really live then you have to open yourself up to love... some you'll win, some you'll lose... but what is the point if being human if you don't dare?

Jimbo
Dribbling idiot airhead
Posts: 19645
Joined: 26 Dec 2009, 21:22

Re: Your choice of language

Postby Jimbo » 14 Aug 2012, 02:46

John Mc wrote:
Jimbo2 wrote:Where is the Kath option?


Along any time now, hopefully! ;)

BTW, and yeah, I can imagine you being a Vonnegut sort of guy, Jimbo, and I mean that in a strictly complimentary sense. :)


Thank you. I know you are not saying I write like him. I wish. If a BCBer is a Vonnegut it is Harvey K-Tel. Kath is our Twain.
Question authority.

User avatar
kath
Groovy Queen of the Cosmos
Posts: 49132
Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 15:20
Location: new orleans via bama via new orleans

Re: Your choice of language

Postby kath » 14 Aug 2012, 03:51

why is my left asscheek burnin? is someone talkin about me?

sloopjohnc wrote:
martha wrote:It's only pretense if it implies more of something than is actually possessed and the intent is to impress.
My intent is NEVER to impress. Just to inform and discuss and engage. I'm possibly the least snooty or pretense laden person I know. You have never met me, so perhaps you're reading my intent and tone incorrectly.


No, Martha I've never met you, and it's not just you.

There's lot of other Americans on here who use English or British expressions to color their language on here. Some of them my friends. People I have met and whose wrath I'll surely suffer.

But please don't get into etymology with me. As George Bernard Shaw said about Brits and Americans, and I paraphrase, we are "two people separated by a common language." At least, I think it was Shaw.

I am definitely being anti-elitist, which can be just as pretentious, but I think Americans using words like "bollocks" and such is just too cute (and between you and me, those Brits are insufferably superior as it is without you and me sucking up to 'em).


yeahyeah, i know you have this thang against americans using britishisms~~and when i say thang, i mean big, massive, nigh-neurotic thang~~but i think you only have that bias becuz yer a daft cow. oi.

i, of course, fall on the faulknerian side of things. faulkner once said that hemingway couldn't write a word more than five letters long. coan et alia can keep their economy-car type of language and heed orwell's *alleged* advice their own damn selves. me? i want one of those 70s muscle cars that gobble up wayyyy too much gas and that look absolutely kickass, even if they always run too damn hot and they wanna break down every other day, kinda like my ole 77 firebird. the highway style's the thing if you really love to drive for the driving's sake, instead of the schmuck who just wants to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. that schmuck is gonna end up blockin ya in the passing lane, you just know it. ptooey. cuz when my car *does* work, i can eat up 6oo miles of highway with gusto while deiseldorf somewhere else in his prius is trying his damnedest to overpass the piggly wiggly semi doin 45.

let's mix to puree, why don't we? words are not a chore, not a necessary evil on the way to meaning, not shells on sunflower kernels, the easier to crack, the better. they're not lil shoe patterns you hafta fit yer feet in if ya wanna dance correctly. they're not a set a braces or a corset, constructed and aligned by those betters who know what's betterer for you, patpat. language is not a paint-by-numbers kit, judged by the jerkpickle who came up with the kit in the first place or the even stoopitter jerkpickle who's been addicted to those kits ever since his first art teacher shoved one down his throat, at the expense of anyone and everyone hangin in the local museum. how a person uses words isn't an eye test, an IQ test, or a drug test for navy boot camp. and word use sure as hell aint part of one's obligation to saving the planet and preserving what's left of our verbal fossil fuels. words are toys, and language is a joy, meant to be relished and savored and beyummied.

i realize this view is not a popular one. it wouldn't be, even if it made sense. that's just the way i motor. regardless, i think every american on this board should call sloop one of those really twee british terms of endearment, like, oh, i dunno, maybe cuntstain. just cuz he's sloop.

User avatar
kath
Groovy Queen of the Cosmos
Posts: 49132
Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 15:20
Location: new orleans via bama via new orleans

Re: Your choice of language

Postby kath » 14 Aug 2012, 04:22

p.s. jimbo, yers is the kinda compliment that'll ever make me smile, even when i'm at my worst and even though *i* only wish it were true. ::smack::

Jimbo
Dribbling idiot airhead
Posts: 19645
Joined: 26 Dec 2009, 21:22

Re: Your choice of language

Postby Jimbo » 14 Aug 2012, 04:40

kath wrote: if you really love to drive for the driving's sake, instead of the schmuck who just wants to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. that schmuck is gonna end up blockin ya in the passing lane, you just know it.


With some Yiddish yet! How fast can you convert?
Question authority.

sloopjohnc
Posts: 63924
Joined: 03 Jun 2004, 20:12

Re: Your choice of language

Postby sloopjohnc » 14 Aug 2012, 04:56

You can call bollocks to my bullshit, I'm just bangin' it real yo.

It's just my opinion and it's more a barroom discussion where I'm calling people on their affectations they don't use in real life.

I'm being provocative to engage discussion.

If it does, great. I wanna hear ya.
Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk!

sloopjohnc
Posts: 63924
Joined: 03 Jun 2004, 20:12

Re: Your choice of language

Postby sloopjohnc » 14 Aug 2012, 05:17

kath wrote:why is my left asscheek burnin? is someone talkin about me?

sloopjohnc wrote:
martha wrote:It's only pretense if it implies more of something than is actually possessed and the intent is to impress.
My intent is NEVER to impress. Just to inform and discuss and engage. I'm possibly the least snooty or pretense laden person I know. You have never met me, so perhaps you're reading my intent and tone incorrectly.


No, Martha I've never met you, and it's not just you.

There's lot of other Americans on here who use English or British expressions to color their language on here. Some of them my friends. People I have met and whose wrath I'll surely suffer.

But please don't get into etymology with me. As George Bernard Shaw said about Brits and Americans, and I paraphrase, we are "two people separated by a common language." At least, I think it was Shaw.

I am definitely being anti-elitist, which can be just as pretentious, but I think Americans using words like "bollocks" and such is just too cute (and between you and me, those Brits are insufferably superior as it is without you and me sucking up to 'em).


yeahyeah, i know you have this thang against americans using britishisms~~and when i say thang, i mean big, massive, nigh-neurotic thang~~but i think you only have that bias becuz yer a daft cow. oi.

i, of course, fall on the faulknerian side of things. faulkner once said that hemingway couldn't write a word more than five letters long. coan et alia can keep their economy-car type of language and heed orwell's *alleged* advice their own damn selves. me? i want one of those 70s muscle cars that gobble up wayyyy too much gas and that look absolutely kickass, even if they always run too damn hot and they wanna break down every other day, kinda like my ole 77 firebird. the highway style's the thing if you really love to drive for the driving's sake, instead of the schmuck who just wants to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. that schmuck is gonna end up blockin ya in the passing lane, you just know it. ptooey. cuz when my car *does* work, i can eat up 6oo miles of highway with gusto while deiseldorf somewhere else in his prius is trying his damnedest to overpass the piggly wiggly semi doin 45.

let's mix to puree, why don't we? words are not a chore, not a necessary evil on the way to meaning, not shells on sunflower kernels, the easier to crack, the better. they're not lil shoe patterns you hafta fit yer feet in if ya wanna dance correctly. they're not a set a braces or a corset, constructed and aligned by those betters who know what's betterer for you, patpat. language is not a paint-by-numbers kit, judged by the jerkpickle who came up with the kit in the first place or the even stoopitter jerkpickle who's been addicted to those kits ever since his first art teacher shoved one down his throat, at the expense of anyone and everyone hangin in the local museum. how a person uses words isn't an eye test, an IQ test, or a drug test for navy boot camp. and word use sure as hell aint part of one's obligation to saving the planet and preserving what's left of our verbal fossil fuels. words are toys, and language is a joy, meant to be relished and savored and beyummied.

i realize this view is not a popular one. it wouldn't be, even if it made sense. that's just the way i motor. regardless, i think every american on this board should call sloop one of those really twee british terms of endearment, like, oh, i dunno, maybe cuntstain. just cuz he's sloop.


U R a Stylizt.
Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk!

User avatar
Belle Lettre
Éminence grise
Posts: 16143
Joined: 09 Oct 2008, 07:16
Location: Antiterra

Re: Your choice of language

Postby Belle Lettre » 14 Aug 2012, 06:41

John Mc wrote:
Copehead wrote:And yet you understood what I meant, undermining your own argument, and I didn't have to piss around looking for funny foreign letters in windows.

I win

chapeau to me!


Mais naturellement! It's not actually an 'argument', tho', mon cher vieux chapeaux ( ooh, err, missus!) I'm just messing with ya. So that's a big Zoot Horn Rollo and a bedraggled armadillo schnozz.

I rarely bother with the funny foreign letters, to be honest, although I will Google and copy and paste if I'm feeling particularly pedantic or if the whim takes me.

Although, down in the meadow where the wind blows free, there's a whisper of green in the lightning tree, and these days the old mort aux vaches is rather more important! ;)


The poor cows!

I like French,swearing and good grammar.
Nikki Gradual wrote:
Get a fucking grip you narcissistic cretins.

User avatar
kath
Groovy Queen of the Cosmos
Posts: 49132
Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 15:20
Location: new orleans via bama via new orleans

Re: Your choice of language

Postby kath » 14 Aug 2012, 07:04

sloopjohnc wrote:You can call bollocks to my bullshit, I'm just bangin' it real yo.

It's just my opinion and it's more a barroom discussion where I'm calling people on their affectations they don't use in real life.

I'm being provocative to engage discussion.

If it does, great. I wanna hear ya.


this is what i don't get, at all: the "affectations" part of it, the unnatural, never-in-real-life, puttin-on-airs thang you got goin on with it. i just don't get it. never mind the fact that i think of words, any words, from anywhere, as toys, ripe for the playin. igg that side of it completely, for the sake of engaging discussion. why are britishisms "affectations" exclusively? i mean, if i say c'est la fucquin vie, or je ne say-hey quoi, or laisse les bons temps rouler... am i flaunting my french "affectations"? do i have a secret desire to be french, to present myself as french, to rise up to some imagined airy heights of frenchification? if i call you amigo or i axe you que pasa, do i inwardly wanna be spanish? do i have dreams of bein katino? let's get even more narrowed in. after all, the principle should be the same, right? if i sponge up words from another regional dialect... if i soak up yute from brooklynese, just cuz i luvvvv the sound of it, and i insert it into my daily lingo (in much the same way as i've inserted nowt, for example), does that mean i have brooklyn envy?

i submit to you that *you* consider britishese some kinda higher, more gold-worthy language, whether it's from the shakespearean/dickensian/et ta bias we both went thru as lit majors, or whether it's from the broader notion of the quing's english.. whatever. there is SOME kinda diff level thing goin on in yer subconscious sloopgoop that makes you see britspeak as something someone would have affectations toward in the first place... britspeak as the 'air' in puttin-on-airs. what else would explain it? cuz lorddd knows you haven't come out against amigos. maybe you feel just as strongly about that and ya just haven't had the occasion to really come out against it. then again, maybe you don't see spanish as so exotic or airy, as some higher thing that poseurs and wannabes would shoot for imitating, seein as yer surrounded by it in caleef everyday and it sounds normal to you; i.e., non-affectatious. but how the principle behind it is any different... well, yer gonna hafta clear that up for me, senor manchadeconcha.

User avatar
inthenextlife
Posts: 928
Joined: 08 Jun 2012, 22:45
Location: The wrong side of the Pennines

Re: Your choice of language

Postby inthenextlife » 14 Aug 2012, 11:05

Sir John Coan wrote:Orwell was right and a lot of people here would be well served to heed his advice.

Agreed. The sports writer Hugh McIlvanney is hailed as 'the voice of sport' but I think he's a waffling sesquipedalian.
'A million men go marching on, they look at the moon but I look at the sun'.

User avatar
doctorlouie
AKA Number 16 Bus Shelter
Posts: 23160
Joined: 03 Oct 2004, 18:24
Location: In a library, probly.
Contact:

Re: Your choice of language

Postby doctorlouie » 14 Aug 2012, 11:09

sloopjohnc wrote:U R a Stylizt.


U iz a stylist, shurely?


Return to “Nextdoorland”