h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> You just sound like a tw*t.

Whereas if you just feel smug and superior internally, you *are* a tw*t.

Except how you express yourself isn't the marker of intelligence: it's the sophistication of the ideas you're expressing.

Incidentally...when I say this stuff...I honestly *don't* think anyone will mistake me for being youngblacksexyhipcool. Who'd be stupid enough to be taken in? Quite the opposite. I'm just being silly.

But *is* amazingly creative dialogue. There was one whole scene several minutes long in which the only two words spoken by McNulty and Bunkum were funk and motherfunker. Genius!

>>This is just a grumpy old old pedant repeating the complaint of every generation of grumpy old pedants.

No, the author specifically says that there's nothing wrong with what he calls "New English", it's just different from what he calls "Old English".

This is true.

You mean you're not black, Ed?

No. Nor young. Merely gifted. And my soul's intact.

Mar:

>><<If a dialect's speakers wield political and economic power, they establish the de facto standard for the whole language<<<

cl:

>>I think he means that that form of speech is becoming a dialect for the economically disadvantaged. Consider as well that he is not talking about _your_ neighbours and culture but _mine_.

The poet and educator Michael Rosen often makes the point about language as an instrument of power. A CV will be thrown in the bin if it is non-standard English. This not because there is anything objectively wrong with the English but because the employer and not the applicant has the power to decide what's acceptable and what isn't.

Now obviously at a practical level, the applicant had better just shape up. But at a *political* level...arguably something wrong with the picture.

Incidentally, SoRB - you almost certainly do use Black English, even if you're a late adopter. I'll bet you've used the word 'cool' before. And I've heard it say (confirmation, anyone?) that when we was 'very, very good' we're picking up reduplication from West African languages.

Aii?

So don't diss it.

Of course I've used the word "cool", and while that may have come originally from black culture, it's been well within the vocabulary of a significant number of educated adult white people since well before I was born, so I contest its identity in 2012 or even 1982 as what you might call a "black" word. (What a weird concept...)

You might just as well say I'm trying to sound Hindi if I wear pyjamas in my bungalow, or using Inuit when I put on my anorak to go kayaking. Sure, those words came from there, but there comes a point where they're so ingrained in the language of everyone that it can come as a surprise to find their origins are so exotic. I'd say "cool" is there.

If asked, I wouldn't have said it was Black English. If anything, I'd have identified with 50s American, and white, hipster American at that, which of course could be traced further back to black culture there, but "Black English" - no, don't think so, never.

And reduplication is specifically West African? Really?

Well my point is that you'd never have had these useful words if everyone had been mocked out of using them, Daddyo.

Meh. Some words stick, other's don't.

(I'l admit that I'm sceptical about the reduplication. I mean - why the hell not? - but I just haven't seen the evidence. Phrases like 'This too, too solid flesh' suggest otherwise.)

>>You might just as well say I'm trying to sound Hindi if I wear pyjamas in my bungalow, or using Inuit when I put on my anorak to go kayaking. Sure, those words came from there, but there comes a point where they're so ingrained in the language of everyone that it can come as a surprise to find their origins are so exotic. I'd say "cool" is there. <<

This from the person who, fairly recently, refused to use the word 'niqab', or acknowledge others who used it, because it wasn't English.

Indeed. "Mask" has been an English word for 500 years or more, being derived from a French word that sounds exactly the same. I see no reason why I should even bother to remember that some foreigners call a mask a qaqbag or whatever when there's a perfectly good English word already that more clearly describes it and I have no intention of ever visiting such countries.

You might just as well insist I refer to a BMW as "das automobil", and get all huffy and whiny if I persistently go on calling it a car. Yes, it was built in Germany. There may even be a German IN it. But I'm in England, it's in England, and it's a *car*. And the jabbering creatures of indeterminate gender in front of me in the queue at the supermarket are wearing masks. I really can't see the objection to the use of the correct English word.

If there was a single English word that already meant "light jacket and trousers you wear to bed", "house, specifically of one-storey design", "warm waterproof coat with fur-lined hood" or "canoe that's watertight around the pilot and can thus be rolled", then English people would probably not have bothered appropriating the foreign terms for them. But there's already a convenient word that means "thing that covers your face and conceals your identity". There's simply no need to bother learning or ever using any foreign equivalents when there's a perfectly good single syllable, easy to spell English word that does the job.

Interesting that, instead of admitting you were wrong and just plain ornery in that whole debate, you've chosen to keep digging and make yourself look even more daft.

Have fun with that. I really can't be bothered playing Hoo's wearisome game of pedantry so I'll be off now.

Another example: cafetiere. I call a cafetiere a cafetiere. Why? Because there's no shorter way of referring to it in English. That word has thus become the English word for that object, accent (that I can't be bothered typing) and all (or more likely not, ultimately, and for that reason...). Nobody questions using that word, because, well, there's no other short way of saying it. If you asked in a shop for a "glass coffee jug with a perforated filter on a plunger", I bet you ten of your English pounds the person you asked would say something like "Oh, you mean a cafetiere?"

But I don't call my washing machine une machine a laver, just because it was made in France. You wouldn't walk into Currys or Comet and ask where les machines a laver are. That would be *stupid*, and probably more than a bit pretentious. It's more syllables, it's a foreign word and it means "washing machine"... so why not just say "washing machine"? Who would you think would be impressed?

Agreed.

And sometimes pronunciation can highlight the difference. I once had a boss from Jamaica (no, not the limerick) who objected to the way I pronounced the word Caribbean. He said his was the proper pronunciation since he came from there.

I asked if he owned a bureau, using the French pronunciation.

"I really can't be bothered playing Hoo's wearisome game of pedantry"

Hey... you brought it up, not me.

Although 'niqab' refers to a particular kind of mask, with political and religious overtones.

I would suggest veil then, instead of mask. Seems a betterer description and not too difficult to remember

Place names are an interesting one. Is there a sibilant or a vowel sound at the end of "Paris"?

I remember reading once about some eminent scientist (wish I could remember who it was) who, it was said, spoke many languages and was a stickler for accuracy to the point that he would correct people's pronunciation of "Montreal". Including, and this is the kicker, people who lived there. (He didn't live there). I'm sure that the journalist intended this anecdote to convey just how very clever and detail-oriented he was. Unfortunately, my impression was simply that the guy was a dick. A clever dick, I'll grant. But a dick.