Today I learned that Grognard is

[tdenmark]

Pronounced grō¦nyär

I knew it was a French word for an old soldier, specifically that it meant someone who groans or grumbles, but that a veteran who'd survived many battles earned the right to complain so it was a title of honor.

I never thought beyond that for the pronunciation. Being a French word of course the gn would be pronounced ny. Anyways, chalk this up to you learn something new every day. This has probably already been discussed here somewhere. Most terrible spelling in English comes from French words.


And I guess us old veteran gamers here have earned the right to complain.

[Punkrabbitt]

I am pretty sure it is pronounced "grog nard" in english. French pronunciations are all well and fine for french speakers, but let's be honest: the french for bird is "oiseau" and it is pronounced "wazoo." English-only speakers just can't compete with that kind of lingual finesse.

[rhialto]

I believe only Middle Guard and Young Guard pronounce it "grog-nard", and not "grō¦nyär". Only once you can pronounce it correctly will you be considered for the Old Guard (and still needing to satisfy the height, age, years of service, etc. requirements). 

[Finarvyn]

For me it will always be pronounced "grog nard" but I'm glad that others are more refined and cultured than I. I'm too old to change, which is another trait of a true "grog nard".

[jeffb]

When I was younger, I only used the French pronunciation as I'd heard it/read it so much with my interest in Military History (which predates my interest in D&D). Its the only way I'd ever heard it.

It was only in the last 20 years or so (?) that I can recall anyway) I've been hearing gamers using the English pronunciation so much, and to me it sounds pretty ridiculous. :shrug: I've gotten used to it, but I still roll my eyes or shake my head a little when I hear people say it that way.

[snorri]

Sept 11, 2023 22:08:57 GMT -6 Punkrabbitt said:

I am pretty sure it is pronounced "grog nard" in english. French pronunciations are all well and fine for french speakers, but let's be honest: the french for bird is "oiseau" and it is pronounced "wazoo." English-only speakers just can't compete with that kind of lingual finesse.

So easy... You can write the sound "o" like this : o, ô, au, aux, ault, eau, eaux, aut, ho, haut, oh, and many more - but some only appears in family names (like in mine, Dessaux). In parisian French, there are several oral variants of o, but they don't appears in every region - in mine nOrtheren lands, we have only one and it sounds very rude to parisians ears.

For "grognard", it sounds something like "groniar" in French. We love so much to add some letters you're expected to write, but will never hear.

Please note the WWI equivalent of Grognard is a "Poilu" : "hairy".

[tdenmark]

Sept 11, 2023 22:08:57 GMT -6 Punkrabbitt said:

I am pretty sure it is pronounced "grog nard" in english. French pronunciations are all well and fine for french speakers, but let's be honest: the french for bird is "oiseau" and it is pronounced "wazoo." English-only speakers just can't compete with that kind of lingual finesse.

The Merriam-Webster English dictionary states it is pronounced grō¦nyär

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grognard

Now, I am personally not a fan of French pronunciation of words of plain English. All languages translate pronunciation of foreign* words into the local dialect and accents. I think English spelling needs a complete overhaul, we just need to bite the bullet, get a team of linguistic experts to update the alphabet and spelling. It'll be painful for a generation, but future generations will thank us.



*see, that's got to be another French word with funky spelling. Let me check: Middle English forein, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin foranus on the outside, from Latin foris outside. Yep, pretty much.

[Parzival]

French is pronounced by speaking the first letter, then mushing together the letters in the middle, ignoring the last letter, and doing it all while making a sound like a puking goldfish. I concluded this from my experience taking French in college. My French dorm mate did not disagree.

French spelling makes absolutely no sense, which, coming from English, is quite a declaration.

I’ll probably keep saying “grognard.” But yeah, I get that it should be “gronyar”. Or whatever my Southern accent will produce— “grahn-yer” is what you’ll likely get.

[tdenmark]

Sept 12, 2023 17:24:25 GMT -6 Parzival said:

French is pronounced by speaking the first letter, then mushing together the letters in the middle, ignoring the last letter, and doing it all while making a sound like a puking goldfish. I concluded this from my experience taking French in college. My French dorm mate did not disagree.

French spelling makes absolutely no sense, which, coming from English, is quite a declaration.

I’ll probably keep saying “grognard.” But yeah, I get that it should be “gronyar”. Or whatever my Southern accent will produce— “grahn-yer” is what you’ll likely get.

Yeah, I'll probably always say grog nard. It sounds better and more like what it describes.

[Punkrabbitt]

I said what I said and I'm not taking it back!

[tkdco2]

In the end, it doesn't really matter how you pronounce it. Say the word either way to people in our clique, they'll understand. Say it either way to people outside our clique, they'll respond with "Huh?!"

[hamurai]

Sept 12, 2023 13:08:14 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

I think English spelling needs a complete overhaul, we just need to bite the bullet, get a team of linguistic experts to update the alphabet and spelling. It'll be painful for a generation, but future generations will thank us.

That's been done with many words and orthography rules in German.

Now, about 20 years later, everyone who didn't initially learn to write like this (and who isn't a teacher) still uses the old spelling, which confuses the young ones who learned the new spelling. The big truth is, though, that a lot of people (especially the younger ones) have no idea how to spell in the first place, no matter if it's old or new spelling. (I'm a teacher, I have first-hand experience.)
Because some of the new spellings were so confusing, it was decided to officially allow the old and the new spelling, which is again confusing, because now as a teacher who learned the old spelling and then the new spelling, I have to check many words in the dictionary to check if the old spelling was at some point re-introduced as official.

Linguistics was my major interest in university and I've come to believe that you can't change language and spelling in only one generation. It takes a lot of time to evolve and honestly, it should probably be left alone to evolve "naturally".

[Desparil]

Sept 12, 2023 22:52:40 GMT -6 hamurai said:

Sept 12, 2023 13:08:14 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

I think English spelling needs a complete overhaul, we just need to bite the bullet, get a team of linguistic experts to update the alphabet and spelling. It'll be painful for a generation, but future generations will thank us.

That's been done with many words and orthography rules in German.

Now, about 20 years later, everyone who didn't initially learn to write like this (and who isn't a teacher) still uses the old spelling, which confuses the young ones who learned the new spelling. The big truth is, though, that a lot of people (especially the younger ones) have no idea how to spell in the first place, no matter if it's old or new spelling. (I'm a teacher, I have first-hand experience.)
Because some of the new spellings were so confusing, it was decided to officially allow the old and the new spelling, which is again confusing, because now as a teacher who learned the old spelling and then the new spelling, I have to check many words in the dictionary to check if the old spelling was at some point re-introduced as official.

Linguistics was my major interest in university and I've come to believe that you can't change language and spelling in only one generation. It takes a lot of time to evolve and honestly, it should probably be left alone to evolve "naturally".

Speaking of German, I remember seeing the abbreviation EKG when I was younger, but in the last 20 years it seems like it's been completely overtaken by ECG. Which, to be fair, actually matches the English spelling of electrocardiogram, whereas EKG was an artifact of the German roots of electrocardiography as a discipline. I'm curious, though, what spelling rules were changed? I'm assuming that I learned the new spellings, but I don't really know for certain. My main practice using it in the years since then has been in online spaces where spelling really isn't a top priority for most people, and some even spell the way they speak in their native dialect. On the plus side, it was great for learning more casual, conversational German.

[waysoftheearth]

I love this board.

[hamurai]

Sept 13, 2023 0:05:26 GMT -6 Desparil said:

I'm curious, though, what spelling rules were changed? I'm assuming that I learned the new spellings, but I don't really know for certain.

Without derailing the thread too much (I hope):

The intention was to make it easier to find related words, for example a flower's stem used to be "Stengel", now it is "Stängel", with the reasoning that it's now clear that it's related to the word "Stange" (a pole or rod). Some other words were likewise changed. The first "e" in "Stengel" is pronounced very similarly to the "ä" in "Stängel", and to help writers, it was reasoned that it's better to change the spelling so one can see the relation to "Stange" and derive the "ä" spelling from that.
Note that some of these changes were later taken back, only to be even later used as the "better" spelling, with the old spelling as a "correct alternative". Confused yet?


Another, bigger, change was the "ß", called “scharfes (sharp) “s””, or “Eszett”, a very strange and German-only letter which mixes “s” and “z”. And this is one of the few really good changes, in my opinion.
There used to be words like “Fluß” (river) and “Fuß” (foot), which were spelled almost identically, but in “Fluß” the vowel is short, in “Fuß” it’s long. To indicate a short vowel, this was changed so that after a short vowel, the “ß” is now “ss”, while the “ß” indicates a long vowel before. Note, however, that a normal “s” may still stand after a long vowel, too.
So, “Fluß” was changed to “Fluss”, and “Fuß” is still the same.
The issue with that change was that many people were completely confused. Some still believe that “ß” was abandoned completely and spell all words with “ss”, misspelling “Straße” (street) as “Strasse” (which would be the correct spelling in Austria and Switzerland, btw).

When the spelling was changed, many TV stations (and ads and other public instances) started to just write capital letters only, because there is no capital “ß”, and technically when writing caps you’d have to use “ss” for “ß”, so STRASSE would be correct. This furthered the issue that people believed the “ß” was gone for good.


So, you see, both changes (and there were others) were meant with good intentions, but in the end there was almost no gain (except the financial gain for those who could reprint all the school books, of course), because those who were able to spell correctly before would always be able to learn the new spelling, but those who can’t spell correctly are mostly still at a loss.

Edit: Another change was made to foreign words, like "Geographie" (geography), where the "ph" was changed to "f" to resemble the pronunciation. That's probably one of the few changes which makes the most sense.

[Parzival]

In my college days I took History of the English Language, which taught me that rigidity in the processes of language is a fool’s pursuit. Things will be spelled, pronounced, structured and defined according to the whims of either speakers or writers and occasionally both. And there’s not a d**n thing a grammarian or expert speller can do about it.
We will boldy split that d**n infinitive (because it’s English, not Latin).
We will find a preposition to end our thought with.
We will say which for that and farther for further and we won’t be hung up about hanged.
And we’ll start a sentence with a conjunction.
And we’ll do it all with or to whoever or whomever we please!

Time and fashion and interaction with other cultures changes language. The academics can argue about it all they want, real language happens when the young Norman soldier meets the cute Saxon bar maid.

[tdenmark]

Sept 12, 2023 22:52:40 GMT -6 hamurai said:

Sept 12, 2023 13:08:14 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

I think English spelling needs a complete overhaul, we just need to bite the bullet, get a team of linguistic experts to update the alphabet and spelling. It'll be painful for a generation, but future generations will thank us.

That's been done with many words and orthography rules in German.

Now, about 20 years later, everyone who didn't initially learn to write like this (and who isn't a teacher) still uses the old spelling, which confuses the young ones who learned the new spelling. The big truth is, though, that a lot of people (especially the younger ones) have no idea how to spell in the first place, no matter if it's old or new spelling. (I'm a teacher, I have first-hand experience.)
Because some of the new spellings were so confusing, it was decided to officially allow the old and the new spelling, which is again confusing, because now as a teacher who learned the old spelling and then the new spelling, I have to check many words in the dictionary to check if the old spelling was at some point re-introduced as official.

Linguistics was my major interest in university and I've come to believe that you can't change language and spelling in only one generation. It takes a lot of time to evolve and honestly, it should probably be left alone to evolve "naturally".

Hah, yeah, I can see that. Instead of fixing old spelling it just adds another layer of complication.

[Desparil]

Sept 13, 2023 7:41:27 GMT -6 hamurai said:

Sept 13, 2023 0:05:26 GMT -6 Desparil said:

I'm curious, though, what spelling rules were changed? I'm assuming that I learned the new spellings, but I don't really know for certain.

Without derailing the thread too much (I hope):

The intention was to make it easier to find related words, for example a flower's stem used to be "Stengel", now it is "Stängel", with the reasoning that it's now clear that it's related to the word "Stange" (a pole or rod). Some other words were likewise changed. The first "e" in "Stengel" is pronounced very similarly to the "ä" in "Stängel", and to help writers, it was reasoned that it's better to change the spelling so one can see the relation to "Stange" and derive the "ä" spelling from that.
Note that some of these changes were later taken back, only to be even later used as the "better" spelling, with the old spelling as a "correct alternative". Confused yet?


Another, bigger, change was the "ß", called “scharfes (sharp) “s””, or “Eszett”, a very strange and German-only letter which mixes “s” and “z”. And this is one of the few really good changes, in my opinion.
There used to be words like “Fluß” (river) and “Fuß” (foot), which were spelled almost identically, but in “Fluß” the vowel is short, in “Fuß” it’s long. To indicate a short vowel, this was changed so that after a short vowel, the “ß” is now “ss”, while the “ß” indicates a long vowel before. Note, however, that a normal “s” may still stand after a long vowel, too.
So, “Fluß” was changed to “Fluss”, and “Fuß” is still the same.
The issue with that change was that many people were completely confused. Some still believe that “ß” was abandoned completely and spell all words with “ss”, misspelling “Straße” (street) as “Strasse” (which would be the correct spelling in Austria and Switzerland, btw).

When the spelling was changed, many TV stations (and ads and other public instances) started to just write capital letters only, because there is no capital “ß”, and technically when writing caps you’d have to use “ss” for “ß”, so STRASSE would be correct. This furthered the issue that people believed the “ß” was gone for good.


So, you see, both changes (and there were others) were meant with good intentions, but in the end there was almost no gain (except the financial gain for those who could reprint all the school books, of course), because those who were able to spell correctly before would always be able to learn the new spelling, but those who can’t spell correctly are mostly still at a loss.

Edit: Another change was made to foreign words, like "Geographie" (geography), where the "ph" was changed to "f" to resemble the pronunciation. That's probably one of the few changes which makes the most sense.

I don't see it as off-topic, really, I interpreted the OP as intentionally being a jumping-off point for a discussion on philology. After all, there's not too much discussion to be had if we limit it to just the word grognard.

Anyhow, I actually didn't know there was a pronunciation-based reasoning behind why some words used 'ss' and others used 'ß', thanks for teaching me something today! I did know that 'ss' was often used on signs instead of 'ß', and generally I understood either way - dass/daß was probably the one word that was common enough that I really noticed it being spelled two different ways on a regular basis. Though I must admit, since I learned higher math before I learned German and the two letters look very similar, my brain does always read 'ß' as a beta before self-correcting! But yeah, I definitely remember Geografie and Grafik with no mention of an alternative 'ph' spelling.

Honestly, I think the biggest mistake was being indecisive and taking back the changes, then reintroducing them later. If they just said "these are the new preferred spellings" while still accepting the old spellings in the first place, I don't think it would have been a problem. Reasonable changes won't happen overnight, but generally I'd think people would be amenable to them over time - after all, that's how Noah Webster and Konrad Duden pushed their spelling reforms for American English and Standard German, respectively, just by the popularity of their dictionaries and schoolbooks.

[DungeonDevil]

My French is poor, and I am ashamed to admit that as a professional Linguist.
My only excuse is that there are so many other languages out there that need my attention.
I have always pronounced it as grown-YAHR, but the slang adjective is groggy (GRAW-ghee).
A very stubborn, set-in-his-ways, backward gamer is a Drangorg.

[hamurai]

Sept 13, 2023 19:27:09 GMT -6 Desparil said:

I don't see it as off-topic, really, I interpreted the OP as intentionally being a jumping-off point for a discussion on philology. After all, there's not too much discussion to be had if we limit it to just the word grognard.

Good reasoning, I agree

Sept 13, 2023 19:27:09 GMT -6 Desparil said:

Anyhow, I actually didn't know there was a pronunciation-based reasoning behind why some words used 'ss' and others used 'ß', thanks for teaching me something today! I did know that 'ss' was often used on signs instead of 'ß', and generally I understood either way - dass/daß was probably the one word that was common enough that I really noticed it being spelled two different ways on a regular basis.

Yay! I wish it was so easy with my students!
Street signs are the worst in some places because the folks who are responsible for the spelling apparently don't know the rules for street names either. For example, the main street where my parents-in-law live has street signs "Römerstraße", "Römer-Straße", "Römerstrasse" and "Römer-Strasse" (Roman street). The first spelling is correct, but all these spellings can be found on the street signs there. I've been resisting the urge to carry a red pen around ever since I noticed

Sept 13, 2023 19:27:09 GMT -6 Desparil said:

Though I must admit, since I learned higher math before I learned German and the two letters look very similar, my brain does always read 'ß' as a beta before self-correcting! But yeah, I definitely remember Geografie and Grafik with no mention of an alternative 'ph' spelling.

Many folks already wrote it with "f", so that change made a lot of sense. There's no need to keep a foreign spelling when the word is a true part of the language.

Sept 13, 2023 19:27:09 GMT -6 Desparil said:

Honestly, I think the biggest mistake was being indecisive and taking back the changes, then reintroducing them later. If they just said "these are the new preferred spellings" while still accepting the old spellings in the first place, I don't think it would have been a problem. Reasonable changes won't happen overnight, but generally I'd think people would be amenable to them over time - after all, that's how Noah Webster and Konrad Duden pushed their spelling reforms for American English and Standard German, respectively, just by the popularity of their dictionaries and schoolbooks.

Absolutely. Now, just imagine the money lost on school books printed when they announced that some changes would be taken back! Thousands of books were usable for only about 2-3 years and then had to be replaced yet again.

And now, reality is that more and more people seem lose the ability to spell each day. Chat apps don't care about the correct grammar in German and as long as it's a correct word on its own, it's accepted, first example is "(die) Jagd" - (the) hunt - and "(er/sie es) jagt" - (he/she/it) hunts. The app doesn't know which is correct and since the pronunciation is so similar, people substitute one for the other.
But for English speakers this is probably even more common.

[Desparil]

Sept 13, 2023 22:47:15 GMT -6 hamurai said:

Absolutely. Now, just imagine the money lost on school books printed when they announced that some changes would be taken back! Thousands of books were usable for only about 2-3 years and then had to be replaced yet again.

And now, reality is that more and more people seem lose the ability to spell each day. Chat apps don't care about the correct grammar in German and as long as it's a correct word on its own, it's accepted, first example is "(die) Jagd" - (the) hunt - and "(er/sie es) jagt" - (he/she/it) hunts. The app doesn't know which is correct and since the pronunciation is so similar, people substitute one for the other.
But for English speakers this is probably even more common.

There are two whole genres of memes dedicated to it in English - if it's foreigners with poor fluency, it's called Engrish, but if it's native speakers then it's "Bone Apple Tea," named after a particularly egregious mistake on what should have been "bon appetit." Though of course, with the latter type, unless you have more context (like a friend or family member trying to correct the person) it's always hard to say whether these things are the fault of carelessness with AutoCorrect or talk-to-text, or if it's a legitimate misunderstanding of the word or phrase.

More generally, of course, spelling or even using complete sentences isn't a super big deal in texting, messenger apps, or short-form social media, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that as long as people can understand one another. But hey, I was around when l33t was still a thing and used to be in a gaming guild with a guy who went by "Pwnlord" so maybe I'm a little easygoing about this kind of thing 

[hamurai]

My students don't even understand 1337 anymore, and many don't know "lol" or "rofl" either. Why use acronyms when you can send voicemails?

When I was young, I used to tell the adults how computers work and stuff like that. Our generation grew into this thing. Now I'm telling the youngsters how their generation's modern tech works because they only know how to use it, but it's completely magical internal workings they don't even want to understand.

The same is true for spelling. Why write when you can use voicemail? Why write a text yourself when someone's magical AI can write a much, much better text anyway? Why even care for spelling as long as the other understands? - The fact is, though, I've tried to let this run for a while in my last class, and when they're writing actual texts (not short chat messages), they often don't get what the other wants to say. Spelling is hardly a problem because most don't know or care, but sentence structure is the most difficult thing which often kills understanding.
They now leave out prepositions and make sentences like "I go swimming pool." Or "I am McDonalds." Which mostly make sense in the context. But a longer text with bad grammar and no punctuation is hardly understandable even for their peers.

[Parzival]

Well, let’s be honest and admit that the “rules” of grammar and spelling are relatively new concepts in any modern language. Prior to the invention of dictionaries and grammar primers, there were no rules for language. Illiterate people don’t care about spelling or sentence structure— they only care about momentary clarity in spoken communication.
And even literate people in a time before dictionaries and grammar texts were simply using basic phonetics and commonly encountered spellings. There was no such thing as a Spelling Bee prior to the mass acceptance of dictionaries. Even in writings within a largely literate community, as say military officers in America during the Civil War, “invented” spellings appear in their letters and other communications, because widely established standards had not yet been fully embraced.
“Grammar” was essentially the product of celebrated authors being widely disseminated combined with growing literacy— especially with religious texts and legal decrees. (Which is how we get the phrase “the King’s/Queen’s English.”)

So all modern “rules” of grammar and spelling are largely by communal accident— as is language itself. It is the need for clarity which drives such— and if it is sufficient to be clear, it will not alter, not even by the forceful (and silly) declaration of any self-appointed “governing” body. If it is unclear, it will vanish.

And to round it out, thus the actual pronunciation of “grognard” is dependent upon that which is clear to the hearers (and the speaker). It is irrelevant what anyone else thinks, or even what is inscribed in a text.

[doublejig2]

Today's mood?
Grognard!

[tdenmark]

Sept 14, 2023 9:58:30 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Well, let’s be honest and admit that the “rules” of grammar and spelling are relatively new concepts in any modern language. Prior to the invention of dictionaries and grammar primers, there were no rules for language. Illiterate people don’t care about spelling or sentence structure— they only care about momentary clarity in spoken communication.
And even literate people in a time before dictionaries and grammar texts were simply using basic phonetics and commonly encountered spellings. There was no such thing as a Spelling Bee prior to the mass acceptance of dictionaries. Even in writings within a largely literate community, as say military officers in America during the Civil War, “invented” spellings appear in their letters and other communications, because widely established standards had not yet been fully embraced.
“Grammar” was essentially the product of celebrated authors being widely disseminated combined with growing literacy— especially with religious texts and legal decrees. (Which is how we get the phrase “the King’s/Queen’s English.”)

So all modern “rules” of grammar and spelling are largely by communal accident— as is language itself. It is the need for clarity which drives such— and if it is sufficient to be clear, it will not alter, not even by the forceful (and silly) declaration of any self-appointed “governing” body. If it is unclear, it will vanish.

And to round it out, thus the actual pronunciation of “grognard” is dependent upon that which is clear to the hearers (and the speaker). It is irrelevant what anyone else thinks, or even what is inscribed in a text.

I have the opinion that languages had more complex and structured grammar, and while vocabularies have increased, grammar has worsened over time. Dictionaries have put us in a sort of temporary stasis, but English changes radically from century to century. Granted beyond English I've only studied Greek and Korean (and a bit of Old Norse recently), so I don't have a particularly broad basis. But when I look at ancient Greek it is a much better language than modern Greek, in terms of clarity of meaning and robustness of sounds.

[tdenmark]

Sept 14, 2023 13:12:09 GMT -6 doublejig2 said:

Today's mood?
Grognard!

Hear, hear!

[Parzival]

Sept 14, 2023 19:19:50 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

Sept 14, 2023 9:58:30 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Well, let’s be honest and admit that the “rules” of grammar and spelling are relatively new concepts in any modern language. Prior to the invention of dictionaries and grammar primers, there were no rules for language. Illiterate people don’t care about spelling or sentence structure— they only care about momentary clarity in spoken communication.
And even literate people in a time before dictionaries and grammar texts were simply using basic phonetics and commonly encountered spellings. There was no such thing as a Spelling Bee prior to the mass acceptance of dictionaries. Even in writings within a largely literate community, as say military officers in America during the Civil War, “invented” spellings appear in their letters and other communications, because widely established standards had not yet been fully embraced.
“Grammar” was essentially the product of celebrated authors being widely disseminated combined with growing literacy— especially with religious texts and legal decrees. (Which is how we get the phrase “the King’s/Queen’s English.”)

So all modern “rules” of grammar and spelling are largely by communal accident— as is language itself. It is the need for clarity which drives such— and if it is sufficient to be clear, it will not alter, not even by the forceful (and silly) declaration of any self-appointed “governing” body. If it is unclear, it will vanish.

And to round it out, thus the actual pronunciation of “grognard” is dependent upon that which is clear to the hearers (and the speaker). It is irrelevant what anyone else thinks, or even what is inscribed in a text.

I have the opinion that languages had more complex and structured grammar, and while vocabularies have increased, grammar has worsened over time. Dictionaries have put us in a sort of temporary stasis, but English changes radically from century to century. Granted I've only studied Greek and Korean beyond English (and a bit of Old Norse recently), so I don't have a particularly broad basis. But when I look at ancient Greek it is a much better language than modern Greek, in terms of clarity of meaning and robustness of sounds.

Keep in mind that what we know of Ancient Greek, Latin, and the like are the very literate, high end works crafted by masters of the language— Homer, Aeschylus, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Xenophon; men who knew how to write well and even beautifully. These were texts that were shared and copied— so precious and appreciated that men would spend their lives copying these down by hand, over and over again. Common, everyday stuff… not so much. The only real point of comparison would be modern Greek writers of equal skill. Everyday language use isn’t a fair comparison. It’s no different than comparing Shakespeare’s English to a post on social media today. You don’t compare masters to amateurs.

A real comparison would be a modern work of philosophy, or tragedy, or poetry; all languages will have points of beauty at all times, if the culture which produces this language is sufficiently advanced— though that doesn’t necessarily mean literacy. Homer’s works were poetic ballads shared and repeated orally long before they were written down. (The fact that they were poetry helps assure that we do have a close approximation of at least some of the original composition— the elements of a poem contribute to memorization; rhythm, beat, meter, cadence, rhyme, and other artistic linguistic structures are mnemonics for human beings. That’s why we use songs to teach children concepts like the alphabet; songs and poems are easy to remember, and the human brain wants to remember them because the effect is pleasing, and we want to repeat that pleasing experience. (The next time you want to remember something, try making it fit a beat or musical rhythm, or even sing it. To this day, I know the Preamble to the US Constitution because I sang along with Schoolhouse Rock!)

Everyday conversation is rarely that rich, because it’s not meant to be. We’re trying to convey information, often practical only in its immediacy, and thus we strive to say it quickly in few, blunt words. Texting and social media posts are no different. We’re spare with words because we seek not to waste time with them. But that’s not what we do when we strive to entertain, or when we want to convey emotion, faith, philosophy, love— in those times we choose words more for their effect than efficiency, and beauty enters in.

[tdenmark]

Sept 14, 2023 20:42:09 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Everyday conversation is rarely that rich, because it’s not meant to be. We’re trying to convey information, often practical only in its immediacy, and thus we strive to say it quickly in few, blunt words. Texting and social media posts are no different. We’re spare with words because we seek not to waste time with them. But that’s not what we do when we strive to entertain, or when we want to convey emotion, faith, philosophy, love— in those times we choose words more for their effect than efficiency, and beauty enters in.

I can see your point. But there is no question that vowels have become slurred and less distinctive over time. I forget what its called, linguists have a name for that drift in sounds. But you only have to listen to a proficient middle-English speaker on YouTube to appreciate how much we've lost. English was once a beautiful language.

[Desparil]

Sept 14, 2023 4:04:37 GMT -6 hamurai said:

My students don't even understand 1337 anymore, and many don't know "lol" or "rofl" either. Why use acronyms when you can send voicemails?

When I was young, I used to tell the adults how computers work and stuff like that. Our generation grew into this thing. Now I'm telling the youngsters how their generation's modern tech works because they only know how to use it, but it's completely magical internal workings they don't even want to understand.

The same is true for spelling. Why write when you can use voicemail? Why write a text yourself when someone's magical AI can write a much, much better text anyway? Why even care for spelling as long as the other understands? - The fact is, though, I've tried to let this run for a while in my last class, and when they're writing actual texts (not short chat messages), they often don't get what the other wants to say. Spelling is hardly a problem because most don't know or care, but sentence structure is the most difficult thing which often kills understanding.
They now leave out prepositions and make sentences like "I go swimming pool." Or "I am McDonalds." Which mostly make sense in the context. But a longer text with bad grammar and no punctuation is hardly understandable even for their peers.

Oh, that's very different - over here, voice calls have been on the decline for the last 15 years, texting (and messenger apps or other equivalents such as DMs on Twitter or Instagram) is king. Some of the older shorthand expressions are becoming less common, but that's mainly because of emojis muscling in on their territory. But yeah, I can see how texting would be much muddier in German where word order and case are important, whereas English makes heavy use of prepositions and gerunds that are very easy to construct by rote. One of the hardest things for me when speaking German (as opposed to writing where it's easier to take your time and be thoughtful) is resisting the urge to use "zu" where it doesn't belong because its cognate "to" is so prevalent in English.

[Parzival]

Sept 14, 2023 22:18:19 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

Sept 14, 2023 20:42:09 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Everyday conversation is rarely that rich, because it’s not meant to be. We’re trying to convey information, often practical only in its immediacy, and thus we strive to say it quickly in few, blunt words. Texting and social media posts are no different. We’re spare with words because we seek not to waste time with them. But that’s not what we do when we strive to entertain, or when we want to convey emotion, faith, philosophy, love— in those times we choose words more for their effect than efficiency, and beauty enters in.

I can see your point. But there is no question that vowels have become slurred and less distinctive over time. I forget what its called, linguists have a name for that drift in sounds. But you only have to listen to a proficient middle-English speaker on YouTube to appreciate how much we've lost. English was once a beautiful language.

In English it’s a phenomenon called The Great Vowel Shift. It occurred from the late Middle Ages until close to the American Revolution. (It’s also one reason why modern American accents are so different from modern British accents; arguably, American speakers are closer to the original intonations than British speakers— especially in rural Appalachia, where little influx of other speakers occurred, thus causing pronunciations to be retained with less change than more populous and diverse urban regions or areas where immigrants were more likely to move and settle. Yep. That drawling “hick” is closer to the King’s English than a celebrated Shakespearian actor is!) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

Of course, do keep in mind that all claims to be pronouncing a word as it was “actually” sounded in any time prior to the invention of audio recording is at best well-informed speculation.  Language and pronunciation are always in a state of change; the only languages which don’t change are the “dead” ones. Thus, it’s very difficult to know with certainty what phonetic sounds were attached to the various letters in the unrecorded past, or how those sounds have changed over time. And standardized spelling doesn’t help, because it cuts away the phonetic clues provided by an “invented” spelling, which would reveal how the writer thought a word sounded.

I would argue that English still is a quite beautiful language… just not so much in the everyday.