(October 11, 2015 at 1:42 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: I don't make a fetish of traditional terms myself. We are taught that the classics are high art, but if you look at the writing, oftentimes it is far outside the bounds of what was considered at the time good writing -- Hemingway with his run-on sentences, Chaucer with his bawdy punnery, and so forth. The spoken language is only different in that it evolves faster than the written language, but that evolution is entirely natural, because humans use language to describe their experiences, and their experiences change with the eras.
I'm not fond of American shorthand -- "thru", "nu", text-speak, and so on -- but I think that is probably a result of it being evolved from the language as I learnt it, rather than the language itself being debased. Simply because something is old doesn't mean it's better, and simply because something is new, that doesn't mean it is intrinsically inferior. Repurposing words, shortening their length, introducing slang into the "proper" lexicon ("ain't" got your teacher's opprobrium when I was a child, but it's in the OED now) -- that's all fine with me, because at the root of it, language is a tool, and a tool is only as survivable as it is adaptable.
I write that as a lifelong lover of the language.
I refuse to give up my use of the perfectly-good second person plural contraction, "y'all". I don't care who thinks it makes me sound like a stupid Southerner.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
