LL-L "Orthography" 2005.12.14 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
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   L O W L A N D S - L * 14 December 2005 * Volume 03
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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.13 (03) [E]

Dear Paul (F.-B.),

you wrote:

> ...present your arguments in perfect
> grammatical English.  It has nothing to do with class, ethnicity or any
> prescriptive "rightness"; it is simply that the message gets through
> without distraction.....
> ..."good writing is actually un-noticeable....the meaning goes in with a
> minimum of effort".
Yes!!! And it's a question of politeness, too, not only to foreign speakers. 
What a desaster already, if a text contains too many very modern, 
short-living idioms- sometimes impossible to find out their special meaning.

> ...if you work in Microsoft Word, you spend half
> your
> life clicking on "ignore" or "add" to get rid of all the red and green
> underlinings!
That's a real problem in writing LS- even if you switched off the 
correction-tools they still work in some special words, in English as well 
as in Standard German. It (Office XP Pro) doesn't give up at all, and that's 
a great inconvenience.

Greutens/Regards

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.13 (03) [E]

> From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.13 (02) [E]
>
>   Sandy,
>  I believe there is one over-riding reason for using "standard
> spelling" or "correct" forms in writing, and I alluded to it in my
> earlier tongue-in-cheek comment that you present your arguments in
> perfect grammatical English.

I was aware of the irony! OK, I'll be less of a hypocrite, starting...
NOW!  :)

> It has nothing to do with class, ethnicity or any prescriptive
> "rightness"; it is simply that the message gets through without
> distraction. If'n fokes roits loik thiz cuz tha's 'ow they tauks, you
> immediately spend some brainpower on the quaint, curious or possibly
> incomprehensible writing, not what's being said. There is a place for
> it (this list for one), but as I was taught on a report writing course
> once: "good writing is actually un-noticeable....the meaning goes in
> with a minimum of effort".

i dont necessarily think that using prescribed punctuation is the main
element in clarity. i think in the past, punctuation was rather
overdone, and while im quite clear myself about how to use semicolons
etc, and indeed i occasionally use them, i very much welcome their
recent demise. there is a point to them, but i think their finickiness
outweighs their usefulness. by the way, your use of hyphens in
"overriding" and "unnecessary" seems very odd to me!

as for writing without capitals or apostrophes, i have a friend who
always emails me in this format, and while it looks odd at first, you
very soon get used to it. i write back in the same fashion and at first
i keep capitalising and apostrophising but after a few sentences the
problems go away. if i write her a very long email and then write an
email to someone else i find myself getting a bit annoyed at having to
press the shift key over and over again and wonder if my friend is the
only person in the world who isnt stupid, or a sheep!

but the wall between writing like this (no capitals or apostrophes) and
writing the usual way is very thin indeed, and the experience of moving
from one to the other and back is very like code switiching in spoken
language: uncomfortable until you get used to it, after which you hardly
notice.

as i was saying, though, it may be all about motivation. my idea was
that if linguists studied linguistic motivation more as a subject we
could have more homest assessments of what sort of writing was advisable
and what inadvisable in given contexts, instead of an unthinking (or
often even hypocritical) dismissal of anything proscribed.

for example, the need to use capitals in writing isnt overriding, its
just what readers expect, and therefore assumed ot be commercially
viable for publishers, therefore advisable for writers who actually want
to get published. its also part of corporate culture, so advisable for
preparing children for the wonderful world of work too.

but if youre just writing to friends or on a website with no commercial
consequences then your motivations can change quite drastically. ok, so
you may have the sort of friends who think less of you for writing that
way and if they notify you of the fact then you just move them from your
friends to your acquaintances list and write to them the prescribed way.

if youre writing in lowlands-l then you might ask yourself, will ron
block this? then you decide it doesnt matter as hell let you know first
and you can fix it (though it ain't hardly broke).

the question is, of course, whether its worth it. do capitals make it
more difficult for children to achieve literacy? would
capitalisation-free publishing houses be able to produce cheaper books
and newspapers? does capitalisation really make reading easier or is
this just a myth and its actually the other way round?

i think the fact that there are - especially these days - some
situations where you can experiment with what sort of writing works best
is worth thinking about, rather than just assuming that what you've been
told, or (different motivation) what everybody else is used to, is your
only option.

>  Of course the standards will mutate and shift as they have for
> centuries, but that also should occur without notice, in the same way
> that speech changes.

why should it occur without notice? frequent spelling reforms have been
reported on the list - apparently they happen in a strange distant
galaxy referred to in hushed tones and dark corners as "the continent".
mind you, ive heard theres a planet there where they changed from
driving on the left to driving on the right overnight, so this may all
be a myth.

>  Another good reason is, if you work in Microsoft Word, you spend half
> your life clicking on "ignore" or "add" to get rid of all the red and
> green underlinings!

i always have the grammar and spelling options switched off. really,
some people are their own worst enemy!

> From: Ian Pollock <ispollock at shaw.ca>
> Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.13 (02) [E]
>
> Oy...oops! Sorry, Sandy!
> /me grins nervously

dont worry, its not an insult to be mistaken for a woman. some of my
best friends are women  :)

sandy fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

Sandy (above):

> for example, the need to use capitals in writing isnt overriding, its
> just what readers expect, and therefore assumed ot be commercially
> viable for publishers, therefore advisable for writers who actually want
> to get published. its also part of corporate culture, so advisable for
> preparing children for the wonderful world of work too.

Exactly.  And with time people come to overestimate small differences of 
this sort.  Noun capitalization in German and in Germanesque Low Saxon 
spelling -- a past-time oddity all other languages that had it have 
discarded in the meantime -- is seen as essential by many German speakers 
now, which is why they have been resisting its abolishion tooth and nail. 
Some even go as far as claiming that German texts are difficult or even 
"impossible" to read without it, while they don't say the same of the 
foreign languages they know.  This is a case where "not (quite) right" 
simply means "not conventional," even where "conventional" is of little or 
no consequence.

> I was aware of the irony! OK, I'll be less of a hypocrite, starting...
> NOW!  :)

Ah, but then you run the risk of even more people having crushes on you and 
of having to beat them off with a stick!

Cheerio!
Reinhard/Ron 

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