Reading APOD this morning, and it has a quote from Edmund Halley

“This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent.”

Quite obviously, people just don’t talk like that any more. Our vocabulary seems quite limited to the way that, at least educated people, seemed to communicate back then. It almost seemed like a competition how ‘descriptive’ you could make a sentence back then.

The dumbing down of language started a long time before the internet and SMS.. I wonder what the precursors were, and the reasons for it. It seems a pity to have lost so much ‘artistry’ in language.

My guess, Newspapers, especially for headlines.

Dropbear said:

Quite obviously, people just don’t talk like that any more. Our vocabulary seems quite limited to the way that, at least educated people, seemed to communicate back then. It almost seemed like a competition how ‘descriptive’ you could make a sentence back then.

Some of the language and salutations in letters during the Napoleonic era is pretty amazing and mostly very succinct descriptive and clear. Even the hurried orders scribbled on noted whilst being shot at have a certain florid character.

my guess is that you only really have historical writings from the gentry and the highly educated people from back then, and it may not be terribly representative of how ordinary people did actually communicate.. but that’s just a guess.

education killed language.

it used to be reserved for the rich, then it became available to everyone and they had to dumb it down.

the more people you expect to use something, the simpler it has to be.

Language was more of a study back then. Any ‘educated gentleman’ was expected to be conversant in Latin and Ancient Greek, and so would have studied the famous orators from those periods.

Someone invented Plain English?

;)

And Viz the comic had Raffles the Gentlemen Thug who would say things like

(To King Edward VII) ‘Is sir perchance passing by the infirmary on his way home? If so perhaps he’d like to stitch this fucker.’

‘Is sir addressing me or is he masticating on a house brick? Because either way sir loses his fucking teeth.’

Pfft…language :/ I speak very clearly..and I get some lowlife punks saying “Huh?” when I speak to them. They then answer me with grunts and shrugs and facial expressions. For crying out loud :|

Arts said:

education killed language.

it used to be reserved for the rich, then it became available to everyone and they had to dumb it down.

the more people you expect to use something, the simpler it has to be.

Not so sure about that. I am lucky enough to have access to stuff written by my great grandfather and great-great-grandfather. Both had only a basic education, but both wrote rather stylishly.

buffy said:

Someone invented Plain English?

;)

I think people took pride in having a wide vocabulary, and even though it can be partly ‘tiring’ to read stuff written so floridly, it does add a certain descriptiveness to the communication …

or as my kid would say.. ‘sik’

I blame the teachers.

Anecdote alert:

Last year my sister in law and I started writing to each other (real letters, ink pens, script writing) in the style of Jane Austen. Initially I had (still have it) a few pages of quotes taken from Pride and Prejudice and the other books, and it was a matter of stringing them together to report pertinent news from what we are doing here. But as you do it more, you sort of swing your brain into the language and you can do quite a good representation without relying on the quotes. It’s fun, and challenging. But I suspect it is really just a language exercise and we have moved with changes in the English language. The word I find most difficult to decipher in the Jane Austen context is when someone is ‘condescending’. Which apparently then was a wonderful thing for the rich to be to their minions….but has now become something more tainted.

In a way I think it’s a pity, as we lose the ability to vividly describe something. Ask someone today to describe a sunset, compared to someone back then and our description today will be dull, lifeless and rather ‘quaint’.

Geoff D said:

Arts said:

education killed language.

it used to be reserved for the rich, then it became available to everyone and they had to dumb it down.

the more people you expect to use something, the simpler it has to be.

Not so sure about that. I am lucky enough to have access to stuff written by my great grandfather and great-great-grandfather. Both had only a basic education, but both wrote rather stylishly.

well, yes, but it died soon after ;)

I found my mothers work book from when she came here and learned english.. her writing is incredibly stylish .. presentation used to be important.

Dropbear said:

In a way I think it’s a pity, as we lose the ability to vividly describe something. Ask someone today to describe a sunset, compared to someone back then and our description today will be dull, lifeless and rather ‘quaint’.

we didn’t lose anything. the words remain and the ability to use them also. Someone can still vividly describe something, but I am grateful for the lack of Charles dickens’eseses who take two pages to say “and he walked down the road”

I blame the insidious creep of splitting one’s infinitives into the common vernacular.

language isn’t ‘dead’ anyway, it still gets used and abused every day..

much as it would have in Ye olde merry Englande..

we didn’t lose anything. the words remain and the ability to use them also

I disagree.. oh well.. i think the ability to use them has been lost by most people – authors being the exception perhaps.

Arts said:

well, yes, but it died soon after ;)

Well, I have examples up to 1905, so we might get a time frame from that.

Dropbear said:

my guess is that you only really have historical writings from the gentry and the highly educated people from back then, and it may not be terribly representative of how ordinary people did actually communicate.. but that’s just a guess.

I just tried finding a book, it was written about a year in the Peninsula of a Rifle Company, although many of the men could not read or write, everyone above Corporal could, and the extracts of letters from rankers showed that some of them were pretty proficient at writing as well.

I will get a ref later if you want, I have to step out shortly.

the words are there for all to use.. we even had a poster that used them rather proficiently and what happened? they got dissed because of their convoluted expression..

but the words are still there available to more people now than at their time of most frequent use..

Arts said:

Geoff D said:

Arts said:

well, yes, but it died soon after ;)

I found my mothers work book from when she came here and learned english.. her writing is incredibly stylish .. presentation used to be important.

I have my dad’s workbooks for learning English. He was very big on presentation of hand writting.

Dropbear said:

The dumbing down of language started a long time before the internet and SMS.. I wonder what the precursors were, and the reasons for it. It seems a pity to have lost so much ‘artistry’ in language.

Changes in the media. Newspapers needed to grab attention so they had short, sharp headlines. Cinema used to have newsreels before the show, which was important, but people just wanted to get to the main attraction so the news was short. TV started creating a generation of people with short attention spans.

Ref: New Media: A Critical Introduction 2nd Edition, Lister et al 2011.

Skunkworks said:

Dropbear said:

my guess is that you only really have historical writings from the gentry and the highly educated people from back then, and it may not be terribly representative of how ordinary people did actually communicate.. but that’s just a guess.

I just tried finding a book, it was written about a year in the Peninsula of a Rifle Company, although many of the men could not read or write, everyone above Corporal could, and the extracts of letters from rankers showed that some of them were pretty proficient at writing as well.

I will get a ref later if you want, I have to step out shortly.

cheers, that’d be interesting.

we have proficient use of quotes, without anything added to the post ;)

i try, in my limited way, to keep the dream alive. i guess that is because i like the english language and i think that has something to do with it.

Corporate wank-speak killed language, that’s what.

I present, for your edification, the word ‘leverage’.

Leverage, once understood to mean the mechanical advantage one gained by moving an object by use of a lever against a fulcrum, has been purloined and debased in the most profligatious perversion. It has become a veritable Magic Pudding of vacuous and insidious meaninglessness such that it might now even have surpassed, in flexibility of application, though not resonance, that great icon of linguistic art ‘Fuck’.

The death has not gone unremarked upon but the airheads are levering the fuck out of it.

:-)

Video killed the radio star.

I talk flowery and poetic-like sometimes, but I’m allowed to because I’m an artist and deviant.

#slaps forehead..\=3!.. shrugs shoulders#

I humbly present the hypothesis that this thread presents the most excellent example of a question being begged in the most true and original sense of the phrase.

The Rev Dodgson said:

I humbly present the hypothesis that this thread presents the most excellent example of a question being begged in the most true and original sense of the phrase.

:-)

buffy said:

Someone invented Plain English?

;)

Actually I think the quote in the OP is an example of plain but elegant English, of a kind that’s thin on the ground in scientific speech these days. But as Rev implies, there are still prominent science writers willing and able to bring literary qualities to their work. Stephen Jay Gould was much admired for it, although he did tend to turn a bit purple at times :)

Google Search.. poetry adelaide Australia

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The Rev Dodgson said:

I humbly present the hypothesis that this thread presents the most excellent example of a question being begged in the most true and original sense of the phrase.

Argument Forum ==>

I maintain most normal people speak a vastly dumbed down version of the language from that spoken a century or more ago

I ‘gree wif da bear.

Dropbear said:

I maintain most normal people speak a vastly dumbed down version of the language from that spoken a century or more ago

I maintain that a century ago most normal people spoke a vastly dumbed down version of the language spoken (by some people) now.

certainly less “LOLs. O Hai’s” and other internet speak back then. I’ll give you that

Yeah but Alex wasn’t alive back then. I’d love to see a Jane Austened Alex speaking lolcatz.

Divine Angel said:

Yeah but Alex wasn’t alive back then. I’d love to see a Jane Austened Alex speaking lolcatz.

Jane: Hey Darcy, Inbox me, k?
Darcy: LOLwot?
Jane: YOLO!

Darcy: stuff youse. LOL gone

Dropbear said:

cheers, that’d be interesting.

Called Wellingtons Rifles by Mark Urban. A very interesting read about Napoleonic warfare which was a lot lot more than meeting in open places and blowing 10 types of crap out of each other at 50 paces. All of the elements are there, recon, screening partys, snatching patrols, forage parties, fighting patrols and all the planning needed to organise huge logistic problems with bulky cannons that slowed everyone down and communication done at the maximum speed that a horse can travel. Another interesting thing is vital ground and many of the ridges and fords etc in those wars were also sites of battle in the world war smackdowns. The terrain and its advantages dont change much and Generals of every generation recognise the advantages of holding it or denying it.

Bubble Car said:

there are still prominent science writers willing and able to bring literary qualities to their work. Stephen Jay Gould was much admired for it, although he did tend to turn a bit purple at times :)

And who could forget Australia’s foremost erotic poet/scientician Colin Leslie Dean?

The Rev Dodgson said:

I humbly present the hypothesis that this thread presents the most excellent example of a question being begged in the most true and original sense of the phrase. / I maintain that a century ago most normal people spoke a vastly dumbed down version of the language spoken (by some people) now.

There is a dead easy way to measure changes in language over time – Professional language: The language of newspapers, educators and government documents. If the academic work on the subject is any guide, there seems to be considerable evidence to the contrary on both points.

Rule 303 said:

And who could forget Australia’s foremost erotic poet/scientician Colin Leslie Dean?

Don’t mention his name..






We’ll all have erections.

I wouldn’t mind more erotic scienticians. Spice up the field a bit. Meow!

Lyrics written by decent musicians harken back to the days of old of elegant wording and description