11/8/07

Language changes and physically painful solecisms

Often
More people pronounce the t. Pronouncing the t used to seem obtrusive, trying to pad your part, like saying ‘orientate’ instead of ‘orient’. It sounded ignorant.

Orientate
No, just … no.

Transitivity in verbs disappearing
“Then when you hit Command+F, the Find dialog box displays” instead of “is displayed.”
Everything is intransitive, now.
I love this. It saves time and brain power for more important things like the counter-factual subjunctive.


The counter-factual subjunctive misplayed
“If I were the King of England, I’d be invited out more.” sounds right, rather than “If I was the King of England” (which I’m not.)

“I wish I had done something”
, yes.
“I wish I would have done something…”, no.
This is just a clash of academic/literary (my home dialect) against vernacular.

Processes
Look, the root word is not a greco-latin word that ends in '-is' so the plural is NOT pronounced PRO-cess-EEZ. Ouch. This is pseudo-learned, like people who know they don't know where to say 'me' or 'I', but they know that the high-toned thing they don't know about involves saying 'I'. So you get "Thanks for bringing Magel and I this lovely vahz." Ya just wanna go nukyular, n'omesayn?

Derivational suffix of fractions
“It’s ten times smaller” replacing “It’s a tenth as big.” This is really grating and seems so know-nothing, ignoring that bigness is affirmative, something you can measure. Smallness in this sense is just the disappearance of bigness along a scale.

300% smaller

Sorry that this is catching on, too. Evidently, there’s some shift at 100% in these peoples’ minds. If something was 10 and it’s 70% smaller, now it’s 3. Cool. If it was reduced 100%, it’s 0, nothing. So far, fine.
But if it was 500% smaller, the new math is that it’s a fifth of what it was; 2 is 500% smaller than 10. I understand it, but it sticks in my math craw every time.

Mourning adverbs
What happened to things happening "daily" instead of "on a daily basis"? I think this is the "more syllables, more honor" school of declamation.

11/7/07

Coleus, click for a closer look

Extravagant, even for fall.