[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY&feature=player_embedded[/url] Thoughts?

True. I kind of lol'd at the part about people not finding words sensuous, but that's kind of a private joke with myself. :P I didn't finish the video, but he makes sense. I like him, and find the truth sad. We don't really use words, except to express our anger and desire for changes in what aren't exactly the most important things in life. LIke signs that say fewer instead of lesser. :P

No no, watch it all. He makes some very good points near the end. Incidentally, I really like Stephen Fry. And he's coming to New Zealand pretty soon and I approve of this. (y) Although, he'll be going to Wellington and I will be not in Wellington so it really makes no difference whether he's in England of Wellington. But y'know, whatever.

I love Stephen Fry. I saw that video a while back and generally I have to agree with it. Language is meant for expression and communication, and we don't do it any services getting hung up on all the tiny little rules at every moment. Breaking or ignoring some of those rules hardly keeps us from communicating or expressing ourselves. I mean, look at e.e. cummings, right? He broke a million rules quite often but that didn't keep him from writing [i]beautiful[/i] poetry and I think his crazy grammar honestly enhanced his work. Generally I find that this is why I just don't care to be a grammar nazi around the internet anymore (I mean, aside from the fact that my grammar is hardly a shining beacon of perfection). As long as a personal is understandable, then they're fine. If it's hopelessly mangled then some advice needs to be offered but only to facilitate that person's ability to communicate. The content of what a person is saying is more important than whether they used "affect" instead of "effect" or something similarly trivial. It's communication, not a graded exam.

[b]Owlright wrote:[/b] [quote]I love Stephen Fry. I saw that video a while back and generally I have to agree with it. Language is meant for expression and communication, and we don't do it any services getting hung up on all the tiny little rules at every moment. Breaking or ignoring some of those rules hardly keeps us from communicating or expressing ourselves. I mean, look at e.e. cummings, right? He broke a million rules quite often but that didn't keep him from writing [i]beautiful[/i] poetry and I think his crazy grammar honestly enhanced his work. Generally I find that this is why I just don't care to be a grammar nazi around the internet anymore (I mean, aside from the fact that my grammar is hardly a shining beacon of perfection). As long as a personal is understandable, then they're fine. If it's hopelessly mangled than some advice needs to be offered but only to facilitate that person's ability to communicate. The content of what a person is saying is more important than whether they used "affect" instead of "effect" or something similarly trivial. It's communication, not a graded exam.[/quote] That's true.. to an extent. Where poor spelling or grammar actually changes what is being said then it does need to be corrected. However there's a difference between teaching correct grammar and just being a meanyhead. "Affect" and "Effect" are actually two different words that do mean different things, just like "your" and "you're" or "then" and "than" are different things. However, I think that's more an education problem than anything else. It is a real problem and it does need to be dealt with, but not to the exclusion of other things. The correctness of language shouldn't drown out the joy of language, but I think that's more about the attitude and approach taken about it. It is possible to love correct grammar and still enjoy language. Sometimes pedanticism gets in the way, but that doesn't make the 'rules' less valuable, I think.

[b]larry229 wrote:[/b] [quote] That's true.. to an extent. Where poor spelling or grammar actually changes what is being said then it does need to be corrected. However there's a difference between teaching correct grammar and just being a meanyhead. "Affect" and "Effect" are actually two different words that do mean different things, just like "your" and "you're" or "then" and "than" are different things. However, I think that's more an education problem than anything else. It is a real problem and it does need to be dealt with, but not to the exclusion of other things. The correctness of language shouldn't drown out the joy of language, but I think that's more about the attitude and approach taken about it. It is possible to love correct grammar and still enjoy language. Sometimes pedanticism gets in the way, but that doesn't make the 'rules' less valuable, I think.[/quote] Yeah but I mean, affect and effect are kind of like uninterested and disinterested. It's incredibly easy to suss out the meaning by the context of what a person's saying, so it doesn't really have that much of an effect on what's being said. I'm not trying to say that the rules aren't valuable or that you can't love correct grammar while still loving language, just that many of them aren't so incredibly essential to expressing a meaning that they need to be hung up over. Half the time, at least on the internet, getting worked up about how it's "a lot" and not "alot" drowns out the message of what the person who said "alot" was trying to convey in the first place and that's just massively counter-productive. So while the fact that it's "a lot" and not "alot" or "affect" versus "effect" is important, it's not the most important thing. A lot of people treat those things like they [i]are[/i] the most important thing, when in fact the most important thing is that which is trying to be expressed. The problem I have is when people jump on other people for not having proper grammar and feel superior for having more correct grammar than somebody else. Language doesn't exist to be correct, it exists to communicate.

I quite agree, and yet: [img]http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPQPSWaGNtplsm0Qmt7K_U0sAIFQyEe7Xt9309L7j1RZb3r5TI2A[/img]

I like the video effect of how the words fly by. It's pretty cool. :P