The letter is the ranting of an unstable old man. One hundred years from now the question will be "[What] kind of people elected this raving lunatic president?"I don't think he's even tried to imagine how the American written language will evolve over the course of the next 100 years — with all the intense and manipulative usage raging in politics and in social and mainstream media.
I suspect that my use of the word "evolve" will set off Trump haters to characterize him as lagging evolutionarily. He's an ape, an orange ape, an orangutan!
But I think Trump is more of an example of what lies ahead. His language is an early manifestation of evolutionary change. And he's an especially influential user of the language. Look around. More and more Americans are talking like him, including his critics!
The people 100 years from now will probably speak and write much more like him than the people of today. And if that is where we're going, they are likely to read Trump's letter as a quite ordinary expression of a President's position and to read the criticism of his letter (if it survives to be read at all) as trivial banter.
IN THE COMMENTS: Unknown said:
I am reminded of L. Sprague de Camp's "Language For Time Travellers", partially excerpted here.For some reason that reminded me of my all-time favorite "Star Trek" thing:
That's from the episode "Omega Glory," where there are characters reciting the Preamble to the Constitution, but you can't make out the words make out the words, because they "said them so badly":
CLOUD: When you would not say the holy words, of the Ee'd Plebnista, I doubted you.
KIRK: I did not recognize those words, you said them so badly, Without meaning.
ELDER: No! No! Only the eyes of a chief may see the Ee'd Plebnista.
Posts
114 comments:
It is, of course, trivial banter.
History requires a literate readership and I wonder. Right now millions of schoolchildren and former school children, cannot read cursive handwriting. All historical document prior to the invention of the typewriter, were written by hand and cursive writing was a valuable skill acquired by most literate people.
I am reminded of L. Sprague de Camp's "Language For Time Travellers", partially excerpted here.
Michael K--My use of a keyword has so curtailed my handwriting that it is barely legible. I am starting to write things out just to practice my cursive.
keyboard, not keyword. Sheesh.
Not too good on the keyboard, either.
It is clear to me we are well past the cusp of major evolution in the way humans communicate. There is no chance, to my mind, that young people of intellect equal to that of the Althouse commentariat will possibly read as many books as said commentariat. Young people just don't do that anymore, they are all about videos. Short videos. This has all happened before, of course, with the invention of written language, the printing press, the telephone. I am especially interested in the decline of face to face communication and telephone voice communication. Young people I have hired in recent years will cheerfully text and email, but are reluctant to pick up the phone and call customers. As some may recall, my social life is largely led in Eastern Europe and I date women much younger than myself. It is with shock that I report it is easier to get a naked picture of a 20-something woman than to get her phone number. Times have changed. Our blog comments will probably fascinate future communications historians.
I will repeat what I said yesterday: there is no way trump drafted this letter himself.
(Of course, most Presidential speeches and public statements are drafted by their paid speechwriters, so this is not a unique circumstance or a slander of Trump.)
One of the things you did with that post, Althouse, was to hyperlink to the CNN online column authored by Daniel Dale and Tara Subramaniam. (One of a handful that you mentioned.) In that column, the authors detail all of the substantively false claims that Trump made in his letter.
But you haven't addressed those falsehoods. You are interested -- seemingly only interested -- in the style and not the content of the letter. Do you have any interest in challenging the substance of Trump's letter. Never mind, I think I know the answer to that.
Language styles might indeed evolve, but I think that the development of the substantive facts is what will drive the historical regard for Trump's letter.
The .url for that CNN column:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/17/politics/fact-check-trump-impeachment-letter-to-pelosi/index.html
Compare with what is notable and what is still read from 1919 and 1819.
1919: Versailles arguments. Anti-war stuff hadn't yet gotten traction.
1819: Jane Austen freshly dead.
Right now millions of schoolchildren and former school children, cannot read cursive handwriting.
All the better to deceive them into regarding the Constitution as a meaningless scribble.
During my own studies, I had cause to read and cite a number of dissertations housed in my university's main library. Apparently, handwritten dissertations were acceptable as recently as 1910.
Michael K--My use of a keyword has so curtailed my handwriting that it is barely legible. I am starting to write things out just to practice my cursive.
Man, I Hate Cursive
Robert Cook said...
I will repeat what I said yesterday: there is no way trump drafted this letter himself.
(Of course, most Presidential speeches and public statements are drafted by their paid speechwriters, so this is not a unique circumstance or a slander of Trump.)
Writing at The Bulwark, Jim Swift pointed out a paragraph that he was convinced was written by someone else (with him presuming that the letter was mostly dictated by Trump). Swift makes a convincing case in a very amusing way.
Here:
https://thebulwark.com/a-close-textual-reading-of-trumps-letter-to-nancy-pelosi/
Freder Frederson, writes:
"One hundred years from now the question will be "[What] kind of people elected this raving lunatic president?""
Or how did the people who elected Trump put up with those raving lunatics for all those years without killing them?
They've been wrong from Day One and could not accept it.
I plan on saying we were sympathetic to their mental illness, and leave it at that.
There some things learning to write in cursive teaches our brains that have nothing to do with language, and if we abandon teaching cursive, we'll need to find other ways to stimulate our brains in the same way. But worrying about people in the future not being able to read it is like worrying about people not being able to speak Latin anymore. There will be people who learn to read old documents written in cursive and translate them to text symbols because if we're to become a global society, at some point there's going to have to be a universal language. Hint: It's not going to be English using cursive symbols.
“And if that is where we're going, they are likely to read Trump's letter as a quite ordinary expression of a President's position and to read the criticism of his letter (if it survives to be read at all) as trivial banter.”
I don’t know about your prognostications regarding the language (which actually changes remarkably little over long periods of time), but you’re right that no one will drill down on the criticism. It would have to be preserved on an illuminated manuscript to survive this sea of noise.
I have a younger sister...like much younger than myself (in her early 20s).
About 2-3 years ago I received my first ever emoji-only message (5-6 emojis long). I responded to her by saying if it was easier for her to text me emojis than simply turning on the talk-to-text function on her phone and she said no, that it was harder to actually pull up the emoji menu and tab the individual emojis in a her most-used menu.
Human evolution - animal cave paintings > ideograms > hieroglyphics > characters > alphabet > word syntax > characters > hieroglyphics > ideograms > animal cave paintings.
I'm not too bummed. I happen to like rock art.
From the post referenced...
“You guys might be more convincing if you actually read the letter and pointed out areas that support your contention. However, this has rarely been the method for our leftist trolls. They are justly derided for repeating talking points and giving no evidence of independent thought ... or any semblance of thought at all.”
————————————————
Comment directed to Althouse in this post...
“But you haven't addressed those falsehoods. You are interested -- seemingly only interested -- in the style and not the content of the letter. Do you have any interest in challenging the substance of Trump's letter. Never mind, I think I know the answer to that.”
100 years from now the EDU Elites will have banned it from their Elites Only Internet Server and made it forbidden Mein Kampf stuff. And the rest of the Deplorables will march around town annually with big drums like the Belfast guys while quoting favorite excerpts.
they are likely to read Trump's letter as a quite ordinary expression of a President's position and to read the criticism of his letter (if it survives to be read at all) as trivial banter.
I think you give Freder (and his allies) too much credit, Althouse. It does not rise to the level of trivial banter because:
1. Freder did not read the letter;
2. He cannot provide examples to support his contention; and
3. He is likely just repeating talking points provided by the DNC/MSM.
There is nothing unusual, deranged, or even uncommon in the language used in this letter. Perhaps Trump's English usage strikes academics as base, but I recognize it as language used by ordinary Americans and successful businessmen. Trump hatred colors everything he does and the press, in Soviet-style obedience to the Democrat party and the Deep State, may be the worst offenders.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
I will repeat what I said yesterday: there is no way trump drafted this letter himself.
Agreed Cookie.
I think Trump and his speechwriters did an excellent job of capturing his thoughts and tone. They all deserve credit.
Oh, I think Trump drafted the letter himself all right, and whoever finished it did a good job of maintaining his personal style while polishing the grammar.
Six pages is too long for the left's attention span.
The language of the future will be the quip.
Did you know the BBC publishes news in pidgin English?
https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
I often wonder if this isn't too far off from where English is headed. In other words, as the new coine of world business, finance, and politics you have to have some English proficiency but with all those different cultures and peoples learning the language strange combinations and amalgamations will spring up at a geometric rate making an impact on the mother tongue.
While the link might seem silly, keep in mind that English is destroying native languages and having an outsize influence as well. I speak 4 languages and every time I travel it is getting harder and harder to utilize the native language colloquially as they would prefer to converse with me in English.
Food for thought.
The word processor is mightier than the pen.
You're assuming on 100 years Global Warming won't seriously change how people will communicate? It's this self centered coarseness that passively allows for our collective profligate carbon emissions and resulting genocide. The future peoples will call Trump's letter the second coming of Mein Kaumpf.
Robert Cook said...
I will repeat what I said yesterday: there is no way trump drafted this letter himself.
(Of course, most Presidential speeches and public statements are drafted by their paid speechwriters, so this is not a unique circumstance or a slander of Trump.)
______&&&&&&------
I have not read it yet.
please tell me if it is it too lawyerly for RBG
I’m not so sure about the “kids today” moaning regarding literacy, either. Kids actually read more than they did in my childhood. Just not between the covers of a book. Just what that means for thought is yet to be determined. Curiously, they seem to be more cynical and more conformist.
I have always had a terrible handwriting (genes from my maternal grandmother's family, I think). When my Norwegian teacher in high school asked how I planned to communicate when I grew up, I told him that is what secretary/typists are for.
(Actually, I got fairly proficient in "printing" and, of course, today I have a computer and M/S Word, so not that dependent on secretary/typists anymore.)
future peoples will call Trump's letter the second coming of Mein Kaumpf.
You can't trust Google on titles.
@Howard
You completely misspelled it. "Mein Drumpf". It is more likely that future generations will think it's the 17th version of MeinKraft than anything related to Hitler-cats (sooooo cute).
Also, I thought there wouldn't be people in 100 years? Just morlocks.
I will repeat what I wrote yesterday: We wonder who writes Robert Cook's jejune commentary. A very bitter and lonely adolescent, by the look of it.
Learning cursive is important. We missed it somewhat with our kids. My away at college son voted absentee/mail in ballot in November. Got a letter from the county board of elections that his vote was not counted as the ballot signature did not match registration signature. Never learned cursive and does not need to sign things often enough to have a consistent signature. Trip to board of elections planned for break.
You're assuming on 100 years Global Warming won't seriously change how people will communicate?
Hopefully, science will have spread into the leftist side of the population by then. "Scientism" is what is the term for Howard's idiocy,
Howard--There's a real weather problem in our future, and it isn't global warming, which has throughout history (ahem, going back 10,000 years) been good for human beings. The real problem is the return of the ice. You and your buddies and little Greta and 99 and 44/100 % of all climate scientists aren't going to like that at all. No one is.
In the meantime, enjoy the weather. Here in Chicago it's a balmy 16 degrees. It bet it is snappy in Madison, or wherever you park your carcase.
@Cracker Emcee Refulgent - Let me be clear, I am not bashing the kids, I am just saying the way they take in information AND communicate is very very different. Not worse, not better, just different. But yeah, a lot more conformist.
Chuck and Inga demanding we argue with CNN.
So adorable. Guess you didn't read my post the other day, Chuck - nothing you or your ilk say matters anymore. Summarily dismissed. You've destroyed your credibility utterly and with no possibility of redemption. So has CNN. Maybe you and they should've shown the slightest bit of restraint or ethics during your anti-Trump jihad, but you didn't, and this is the result - no one gives a rat's fuck what you have to say anymore, because we know it won't be true.
When has Trump written, said, or Tweeted anything which wasn't received badly by half the electorate?
And when have they failed to use anything he's produced as evidence of Orange Man Bad?
Never learned cursive and does not need to sign things often enough to have a consistent signature.
I've been trying for over 50 years, and I still don't. It might have turned out better if I'd been forced to write right-handed.
I have always had a terrible handwriting (genes from my maternal grandmother's family, I think). ?
I have, too. My point was that reading cursive, which I can do well, is what will be necessary for the survival of history.
When I was working for the DOD examining recruits, I worked to improve my handwriting as all the reports are hand written. Our government at work.
Trump speaks in plain, matter-of-fact language. As do most people.
Only libs wonder "what could he possibly mean?"
@Michael K
I think it's Lysenkoism you're referring to. Howard's a Lysenkoist.
Co2 is actually bad for plants
Water is not a liquid it is 'wettish'
The Ubermenschen shall appear only with prayers to St. Greta
Carbon can't be a gas. It only comes in pencil form
Good morning Lucid. I like your poetry let's see some more of it
Same thing, but with fewer words:
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.
Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.
Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!
In 100 years siri and Alexa will do all the communicating for us.
‘Chuck and Inga demanding we argue with CNN.”
That wasn't the meaning of my comment. My point is that if one focuses on the style of the language and not the CONTENT of the letter one cannot presume to know how future readers of the letter will think about the letter. It may be taken as complete BS in future modern day language as it is in today’s language.
This failing has been a feature of Trump supports, they love his style and don’t bother to really care about or think about his content.
Howard--There's a real weather problem in our future, and it isn't global warming,
I doubt Howard has spent much time in the Mediterranean where 2,000 year old docks and bollards stand with the exact same water level since Julius Caesar.
I think we will learn in the next five years if the sunspot theory is correct on ice ages. We have enough history to know about the Little Ice Age which ended about 1850 and brought the warming that probably ended about 1950. What come next is not at all clear. The hysteria created by the Michael Manns of the world is political and not science.
These comments=troll swarm!
They have come out of hiding folks. They had vanished for a few days to ride out the idiocy, mendacity, and futility of their cronies' cack-handed handling of the OIG report, the impeachment fiasco, the FISA Court rebuke, and the Thanksgiving Dinner Initiative, but now they have something that they can sink their tiny little teeth into. And they are going at it like a cat chasing a laser dot, pawing wildly at the air while the person holding pointer (Althouse? Is that you?) laughs at their antics. What are these creatures, so feral, so persistent, so fundamentally vicious?
Oh, yeah, they are weasels
readering said...
In 100 years siri and Alexa will do all the communicating for us.
If China wins the war, that may well be true. In the meantime, I prefer to keep my privacy.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, orangutan has nothing to do with orange, though their fur is indeed orange. It comes from the Malay, orang (hard g like gong) utan, man of the forest (orang=man, utan=forest). The legend went that they were humans who had escaped to the jungle. They never talked because if someone heard them, they would be put to work.
They have come out of hiding folks.
You'ld think they would be out in the streets demonstrating with the rest of the ORCs.
@Howard
You forgot to say please. Denied.
Mark O at 8:47 AM has the right of it. Dylan goes on to say
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
And a curse it was! The President's letter to the Speaker of the House was a calculated insult, a slap in the face, a declaration of war, a far greater challenge than Andrew Jackson's “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
For the less historically inclined try Jim Croce:
You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Potus or the American people.
Bring it on, pussies.
In a hundred years we will all be bowing to allah's cult 5 times a day unless the Psalm 110 warrior guy shows up first.
Ann, you've been great on this subject for years. Trump uses a kind of discourse we are not used to from politicians--less formal, even jazzy, a word salad that actually does connect the main points in a rhetorically powerful way. Maybe even some hip hop as compared to jazz. Some of us pedants may not be pleased, but it is probably the coming thing. Always amazing that a man of Trump's age is so comfortable with Twitter--sometimes spelling mistakes and all. I love the bit now from some of the critics about random capitalizations. I'm working on Gulliver's Travels--I think random capitalizations can help with emphasis.
Freder ignores the substance. Imagine that.
“No way Trump drafted this himself.”
I agree. Nor did Kennedy write his Berlin speech, or FDR his day of infamy speech. Even Carter's malaise speech was written for him. But they all, just as did Trump, told the writers what to say, and let them help say it better. That’s a good thing Cookie. Presidential statements really should be polished and reviewed.
I welcome the day when we communicate entirely in Emoji.
Rats, Lucid. I thought appealing to your vanity was enough.
I thought you had grandkids Char Char
I have always had a terrible handwriting
As do I, along with poor typing skills.
I started collecting fountain pens in the 1990's. It is an expensive hobby, but I really enjoy writing with them. When I endeavor on my Great American Novel, I write it out in fountain pen longhand first.
The letter was well written, but still in Trump's style. I suspect he is a better writer than many would suppose from the way he talks and tweets. Trump also uses writers and/or editors, as all politicians do and have done for decades, or centuries, even the clean and articulate Obama. The way Trump differs in this is his off-the-cuff style in Q and A's and tweets.
Trump wrote it with help from a writer or writers, or they wrote it with some input from him, or he had it written for him and then added his own take and style to it, or he wrote it himself and handed it over to the pros for tweaking. I suspect the last scenario is what happened.
Exactly how it got written is unimportant. It conveys exactly what Trump meant, exactly what he should have said, all genuinely and persuasively in his own style.
No. No I haven't.
Young people just don't do that (read) anymore, they are all about videos. Short videos
As I high school teacher I see this every day. As a consumer of media, I've noticed it in myself. I never watch TV anymore, and rarely watch movies. Instead I watch YouTube. The more YouTube I watch, the worse it gets. I've even noticed that I (who owns literally thousands of books) read less now, and when I do it is for shorter periods of time.
Who said I have grandkids? Do I look old enough to have grandkids?
I doubt Howard has spent much time in the Mediterranean where 2,000 year old docks and bollards stand with the exact same water level since Julius Caesar.
20,000 years ago sea levels were at historic lows. 12,000 years ago the Holocene began, bringing with it rising sea levels. Sea levels rose over 400 feet in 4,000 years, among other things, sinking the Bering land bridge. Then 8,000 years ago, the seas stopped rising and have been stable ever since.
The only prediction I can make confidently is that the writing of the future will include even more exclamation points!!!!!!!
One thing is, I predict that English will continue to grow as the world language. My guess is that well before that century, you will need to be able to read and write in English to succeed in the world economy. Not being fluent will likely become a career killer in many lines of work. Already down that road in a lot of areas. I just expect it to get progressively worse.
Fetus, on Gunsmoke, was effectively illiterate. That pointed out that even in the 19th Century, much of this country, and more so around the world, a significant portion of the population could not read or write. And yes, we are heading there again in this country with our socialized public education system. Millions graduate from our public education system who cannot adequately read and write. And their opportunities are extraordinarily limited as a result. Sure couldn’t do the work that almost everyone here does, or did. Imagine practicing law, medicine, etc without being able to read well.
I think that fluency is English is going to work the same way. The reason that the world has seemingly focused on English as the international language is complexly fortuitous. It was mostly a question of fortuitous timing. If the rapid internationalization had happened a century earlier, the world language might have been French, German, or most realistically, Spanish (spoken natively by many more, and much easier to spell phonically than French). Indeed, I think that Chinese and Russian could also have been contenders. Chinese is hard to read and write, and the Soviet Union fell, in the case of Russian. My guesstimate is that Spanish is the next most likely world language, and that it was mostly just economic, political, and scientific success of the Anglosphere throughout the 20th Century that gave English the edge. Oh, and we invented the Internet.
English will change over the next century, but how much? Some simplification, of course. And it will continue to pick up words from other languages around the world. But I don’t think that much simplification, since that would cause it to lose some of its expressive ability. Probably the loss of many of its vestigial elements - for example, it might lose “whom” in preference to “who”. We are heading in that direction already.
Would we be able to read the language of 2100 CE? Mostly, I think. It would be interesting, but we probably won’t be around to find out.
"You're assuming on 100 years Global Warming won't seriously change how people will communicate? It's this self centered coarseness that passively allows for our collective profligate carbon emissions and resulting genocide. The future peoples will call Trump's letter the second coming of Mein Kaumpf."
Comedy gold. Great parody!
Teaching cursive is a waste of time. I was taught cursive in school, more than 100 years after typewriters were standard in every office, and I still can't sign my name the same way twice. Do you people understand that PRINTING PRESSES existed in 1776, and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, although originally handwritten, were typeset and PRINTED, published for general distribution?
This trivial obsession with cursive is part of what gives conservatives a bad name, along with phonics -- yes, phonics with a P! Although spelling is tough, if you try hard enough sounding out the letters, you'll pull through!
This trivial obsession with cursive is part of what gives conservatives a bad name, along with phonics -- yes, phonics with a P! Although spelling is tough, if you try hard enough sounding out the letters, you'll pull through!
Teaching cursive helps develop fine motor skills. Phonics has been proven through time, testing and experience to be the absolute best way to teach children how to read in English.
Lucid,
Pidgin is the British attempt to reproduce a Cantonese speaker trying to say "business." In more recent years, people have started talking about Globish, a sort of Basic English used by those who can't speak each other's languages. Interestingly, the EU is also now promoting something called intercomprehension, where people learn to passively understand other languages so that each person can speak his native language and both parties will understand enough. Many are the schemes to escape English as the lingua franca. Ironically, the continuing watering down of English due to its use by non-natives is simplifying it, though, so that it becomes easier to speak "good enough" while all the other languages keep their quirks and as a result English becomes evermore the best international language.
" phonics -- yes, phonics with a P! Although spelling is tough, if you try hard enough sounding out the letters, you'll pull through!"
Other than the fact that phonics works and whole language doesn't, you dope.
“I've even noticed that I (who owns literally thousands of books) read less now, and when I do it is for shorter periods of time.”
I too own literally thousands of books. I put in bookcases on one wall of the garage for my sci-fi/fantasy paperback collection. It is thirteen rows high, and 16’ long. Over the decades I have read most of them. And in my office I have maybe 12’ of 7’ high oak bookcases for hardback books. All have to be moved next month to the new house. Yet, I read or reread very little out of either set of bookcases. Instead, I squander my time time on the Internet. Much of it in places like this.
But one of the real benefits is that you can do what my kid calls going down a rabbit hole. Over the weekend, I followed an ad for the company they work for and wondered what it meant to crack hydrocarbons. That ended up with an hour of organic chemistry (which I avoided as an undergraduate because of the required memorization). Then into physiology and endocrinology. You used to need to go to a library for this sort of thing. Now, I can do it on my iPads in bed.
I think we will learn in the next five years if the sunspot theory is correct on ice ages.
The “sunspot theory” is not at all the prevailing scientific explanation for the repeated cyclic ice ages seen during the recent Pleistocene geologic epoch, which began about 2.6 Ma (million years before the present). Rather it is the Milankovitch cycles — a result of periodic variations in the earth's orbit and orbital inclination — which are held by most scientists to be responsible for the periodicity observed.
As for the cause(s) of the Little Ice Age, one might note that, while “sunspots” are in the running for that, the Little Ice Age per se was little — a far smaller variation than what was experienced during the last ice age proper. To see that, here's a condensation I did a while back of Xkcd's far lengthier “Earth Temperature Timeline,” covering the last 20k, years. Notice what a tiny bump the Little Ice Age was relative to the (ending of the) preceding Pleistocene epoch.
The Eloi won't be able to read.
"Teaching cursive helps develop fine motor skills."
And there's no other way to do it. Playing music or video games, using tools or utensils, typing, Legos, building or repairing fine motors -- none of these do shit for fine motor skills!
"Phonics has been proven through time, testing and experience to be the absolute best way to teach children how to read in English."
Bullshit. Did you notice my word choice above? I purposely used the COMMON words "although", "tough", and "through", and "enough", leaving out the Seussian "coughs", "dough", and the antiquated "ploughs". What "rule" tells you how to pronounce "ou" and "gh" in these words? Can you GUESS? Can you sound out the "u" in GUESS? Is the first "s" silent, or is the second?
I never had to teach my son how to read. I simply a lot read to him every day while he followed along on the page, and soon discovered that he could read.
“Pidgin is the British attempt to reproduce a Cantonese speaker trying to say "business." In more recent years, people have started talking about Globish, a sort of Basic English used by those who can't speak each other's languages. Interestingly, the EU is also now promoting something called intercomprehension, where people learn to passively understand other languages so that each person can speak his native language and both parties will understand enough. Many are the schemes to escape English as the lingua franca....”
And I suspect that the French are hardest hit. I can remember when the French minister of culture came out with a long list of official substitutes for English words. So, for example, a “PC”, instead was to be called something maybe 20 characters long. Didn’t work. I was working for the US subsidiary of a French computer company around that time, and used to razz my French counterparts. They were not amused, because everyone else in the world knew what computers and PCs were, but they couldn’t call them that in their home country. So, they would slip and call these things by their official French names, and we would play dumb.
I had cause to write a check last week for the first time in about 5 years. I don't think I had written anything in cursive in about that amount of time except for my signature. I was out of practice- I ended up rending the first draft, and printing on the second one.
A big serving of Shantner ham.
Given the current open borders, the USA will be unrecognizable 50 years from now, let alone 100 years. I doubt anyone will care what Trump says, huge numbers won't even speak English.
Maybe it'll evolve (or devolve?) into something like this (and how delightful that would be):
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
"I" before "E"
Except after "C"
Or when sounded as "A"
As in "neighbor" and "weigh"
And all the other exceptions that ruin this rhyme
I too own literally thousands of books.
I have a thousand books just on my kindle.
The boxes and boxes of books that have followed my through every move will eventually be donated except those with sentimental value, art & illustrated books and references.
It used to take me hours even to decide just what books to take on vacation. Now I just grab one thing.
Just finished the 2009 Ronand White biography of Lincoln in which he wrote that after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address all the Democrat newspapers said his remarks were the ravings of a madman and all the Republican papers said it a pretty good speech.
I never had to teach my son how to read. I simply a lot read to him every day while he followed along on the page, and soon discovered that he could read.
Good for you. Seriously.
However "whole language" has been a disaster, the facts prove this out. Somehow, when schools were teaching reading with phonics, most kids learned to read. Then we switched to whole language and suddenly kids stopped learning how to read.
Or maybe it'll evolve into something like this:
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.
ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned,
geong in geardum, þone god sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat
þe hie ær drugon aldorlease
lange hwile.
Pretty much everyone on this forum right now can read the English language novels written in the last 400 years, but not easily anything written 800 years ago. The language isn't going to change much in a 100 years time, nor in 400 years. However, a 1000 years from now, the people reading the sacred scriptures of The Althouse Blog will have to have an ancient to modern translation guide.
"Who cares how a barkeep looks? Or a writer? But people wanting to adopt pick little blue--eyed golden--haired morons. Later on, the boys want bulging breasts, a cute face, and an Oh--you--wonderful--male manner." He shrugged. "I couldn't compete. So I decided to join the W.E.N.C.H.E.S."
"Eh?"
"Women's Emergency National Corps, Hospitality & Entertainment Section, what they now call 'Space Angels'---Auxiliary Nursing Group, Extraterrestrial Legions.'"
I knew both terms, once I had them chronized. We use still a third name, it's that elite military service corps: Women's Hospitality Order Refortifying & Encouraging Spacemen. Vocabulary shift is the worst hurdle in time--jumps---did you know that a 'service station' once served oil fractions? Once on an assignment in the Churchill Era, a woman said to me, 'Meet me at the service station next door'---which is not what it sounds; a 'service station' (then) wouldn't have a bed in it. -- Heinlein "All You Zombies"
I can remember when the French minister of culture came out with a long list of official substitutes for English words.
There's actually an organization in the French government whose job this is. Not only do the French resist the immigration of foreign words (especially English) into their language, their language is not well adapted to creating new words. One of the reasons English is the international language is precisely because we steal words from every other language, and it is extremely easy to create new words in English.
Phonics does nothing but teach nonexistent rules that hinder reading proficiency beyond "See Spot run." Even "Go, Dog, Go" presents a problem, with two different pronunciations of the letter "o". I was taught phonics, but I didn't learn to read well until abandoned that nonsense.
People taught phonics end up either semi-literate, or as pedantic twats who pronounce the second "l" in "Lincoln".
Ted: shhhhhhhh.
I pronoun the non-existent first "n" in pendantic because phonics.
rigor or rigor mortis
"The power of a great speech (letter) is the force of its logic.""peggy noonan
Trump wrote a great letter. he won the argument. he will now lose the vote.
the effort to "remove the monster from the throne" has little to do with facts or logic.
my hypothesis is the leadership in the media don't care any more if half the country knows they are lying/misdirecting. they only care if their gullible progressive audience (and presenters!) will believe their reports or accept them and act accordingly. the narrative is the primary tool for the left. for the right, to win, it's rigor or rigor mortis.
In his speech, Trump, like Churchill (as noted by Boris Johnson) uses simple Anglo-Saxon words, short and direct and not too many syllables. In his letter, he uses longer, latin-origin words that when used in political speech are often used for obfuscation, misdirection or evasion, or at least often come across that way in political speech. I think that will still be true in 100 years, this distinction between what persuades verbally vs. in written form. The main thing about Trump's letter is its assertiveness. He's happy to accuse specific people of specific deeds and lay out the consequences. There have been other political orators with this style, going back to our earliest political oration. The reason his opponents' responses will look bad by comparison is not because style will change, but because they use language to obfuscate, misdirect and evade: the contrast with Trump just makes it obvious.
"There's actually an organization in the French government whose job this is."
All the Spanish speaking countries have these, too, either governmental or quasi-. They even have one for Spanish speakers in the US. So when you hear that someone's offended by our use of "American" to describe ourselves, it's really just a policy decision to take offense.
“However, a 1000 years from now, the people reading the sacred scriptures of The Althouse Blog will have to have an ancient to modern translation guide.”
“A Canticle for Althouse”
Yes, as the images and metaphors change, so also do the perspectives through which the world is viewed. For an interesting take on that phenomenon, focusing on the changes in American culture from post-WW2 to the '90s, as reflected in the changing idioms and metaphors used to describe it, see Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture. He focuses in particular on how Reagan's rhetoric worked a major shift in the larger culture. Rodgers won the Bancroft Prize of that book, and it's well worth a read.
I have read all of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets- all written over 400 years ago. I don't have too much problem interpreting any of it without a reference guide, even when the idioms, words, similes, and metaphors are completely unfamiliar to me. However, when I read Chaucer in the original (written over 600 years ago), I had great difficulty without having a reference guide.
Michael McNeil said...the Little Ice Age per se was little
And thank god for that! I have little enough interest in living through a little ice age; none whatsoever in living through the real thing.
Yancey Ward said...
Pretty much everyone on this forum right now can read the English language novels written in the last 400 years, but not easily anything written 800 years ago.
Curious, isn't it? Go back 400 years and little has changed, but go back an additional 400 years and it's practically a different language. Which means 400 years ago, people needed to go back only 400 years to be faced with dramatic differences in language, whereas we need to go back 800 years.
So what changed 400 years ago that slowed it all down? IMO, what changed is widespread literacy and the creation of dictionaries froze language, fixed spellings and meanings, and slowed new coinage. As a result, I think the last part of your comment is incorrect. 1,000 years from now, language will be little changed from today. There will be some new words, but the old words and pronunciations will be largely the same.
WK said...“A Canticle for Althouse”
Fantastic book. A Canticle for Leibowitz changed the way I view religion and its role in an evolving culture.
Germane to several topics raised...
Last night YouTube recommended a strange looking video about the Bikini atomic bomb test. I was curious and watched it. It is a video of old (1950s is my guess) military films that were declassified in 1999. Given the content, I'm not sure why they were classified in the first place. Anyway, the language was perfectly understandable, but the FORM of it was completely different. It was very interesting to see what was considered important about it, then; not at all what would be considered important if a similar film/video were to be made now. The vocabulary was impressive.
So, the language has undergone near-Shakespearean change in a mere 65 years. The words are the mostly the same, but sentence structure and idiom has changed a lot. Don't Forget about the olde Habit of Random Capitalization. That if not the fmallest change fince the 18th century. It may be Manageable, but it if ftill ftrange.
Unrelated: Phonics rule. After one masters that, the next step should be Dearest Creature in Creation. Very few people can read that aloud, correctly on the first attempt. (I wasn't one of them.) And, no, ghoti is not fish.
that little ice age coincided with the American and French revolutions, so that Chinese curse comes to mind,
Notice what a tiny bump the Little Ice Age was relative to the (ending of the) preceding Pleistocene epoch.
Michael Mann eliminated it completely. My point is that sun spot cycles are one theory and may get tested.
Blogger fucking up again.
the fourth season opener of Babylon 5, riffed on canticle, the last part was set some 800 years in the future, after a great cataclysm that scorched the earth,
I see another of we Unknowns is out today :-)
Asimov once suggested, partially in jest, that English no longer changed as radically as it once had becuse that would render Shakespeare incomprehensible.
Chester Himes books are interesting because nobody ever spoke that way anywhere, but he was writing genre fiction in a supposedly real milieu. Sometimes he even pulled it off, although it’s often a slog.
Pinktoes is the strangest of all of them. I remember wondering what it would be like to live in world where “mother-raper” serves the same rhetorical purpose as motherfucker.
Canticle was really hard for me to engage with. I’ve started it three separate times but the language is so weird. One of these days.
I wish people talked the way they speak in Deadwood season 1. The otter seasons and especially the movie went full Shakespearean pastiche, but the first season or two was something special.
In 100 years we’ll all be using bland accents. Dialects will be mostly gone too. But most politicians will still speak evasively and there will always remain opportunity for plain-spoken, assertive and intimate political rhetoric. A man who thinks out loud in careless ways will still stand out.
I have yet to read Canticle but have meant to since this nice appreciation in the New Yorker 5 years back:
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/science-fiction-classic-still-smolders
There was an interesting article recently on Miller & Canticle:
But as for Canticle itself, Miller claimed he didn't consciously
connect the Abbey of St. Leibowitz with the Abbey at Monte
Cassino until the very end:
It never occurred to me that Canticle was my own personal
response to the war until I was writing the first version
of the scene where Zerchi lies half buried in the rubble.
Then a lightbulb came on over my head: Good God, is
this the abbey at Monte Cassino? This rubble looks like
south Italy, not [the] Southwest desert. What have I
been writing?
Oops, didn't re-linewrap my cut&paste!
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