Updates from Derren Brown and the Enigma Crew

Graeme goodings says:

What a delight to the ear. As a journalist I have been guilty of cringing at the ‘New Order’ of the English language but we tend to forget that is a living, ever evolving language.

Thank you Mr.Fry for the lesson.

Graeme Goodings

Rich Beer says:

As someone who earns a living from written language every day, I couldn’t agree more. Language is for transferring an idea from one person’s head into another. As long as that is done clearly and concisely, then I will split as many infinitives as I deem necessary for emphasis. And start sentences with conjunctions.

Language is a living thing, as the Acadamie Francaise are discovering to their cost!

alan says:

On one episode of QI Steve teased Alan. In regard to the latter’s apparent amazement, at another contestant’s seemingly extensive store of knowledge.
“I understand your inability to comprehend the connection, between reading books and the acquisition of information”, he quipped.
How I wish Alan had fixed him with a steely gaze and responded, ”Yes Stephen. But the Bible is a book, and you don’t believe what’s in that”.

Kwayzal says:

Ya no wats rong wiv langwidge?
It’s a convention that is limiting and limited. It’s a conditioning process.
Mechanical interpretations.
We’ve been conditioned by it.
Limited by it.

Quasi says:

I don’t agree with pedantry for pedantry’s sake, but too often I find that a lack of regard for the grammar rules slows my reading, while I piece together what they mean in the Queen’s. The end result is that while the clarity has, technically, not been diminished, the overall effect is that my reading momentum has been disrupted, and I find that slightly bothersome, and a little rude.

What we can’t overlook is that while Oscar Wilde may have been a grammatical slacker, he asked for his errors to be corrected before they reached their intended audience.

Dom says:

“On one episode of QI Steve teased Alan. In regard to the latter’s apparent amazement, at another contestant’s seemingly extensive store of knowledge.
“I understand your inability to comprehend the connection, between reading books and the acquisition of information”, he quipped.
How I wish Alan had fixed him with a steely gaze and responded, ”Yes Stephen. But the Bible is a book, and you don’t believe what’s in that”.”

what are you on about? whether or not he believes whats in the book [bible] is irrelevant, knowledge is still imparted through reading.

Jane says:

You see, there’s a real problem with this argument – that people take it, and are taking this very video, to mean that it doesn’t matter if you confuse there/their/they’re, where/were, wander/wonder accept/except, affect/effect. It changes the sentence, sometimes to mean something different (which is often unintentionally hilarious), or to render it completely incomprehensible.

Of course language is plastic, and ‘gay’, ‘random’ or ‘hysteria’ have changed their meanings completely, but the point of language is communication. Pretending that it doesn’t matter if people get things mixed up (and I’m not talking about the odd slip-up that we all make) impedes people’s opportunity to communicate and, in the end, does them a disservice.