I forgot one - when did "sandwich" become "samwidge"?

At least sixty years ago!

This thread is rapidly proving why getting worked up about language usage is a fool's errand.

Language is constantly changing and will continue to do so. It's fine to be cross about "incorrect" usage, as long as you realise that you will get angrier and angrier the longer you hang around this planet - and the language will carry on changing regardless!
In 30 years, today's teenagers will be bemoaning the younger generation's linguistic abuses!

I get wound up over incorrect use of "there", "their" and "they're"

A chap I used to work for always used "their", regardless of the context. Even after I explained the three applications, he just carried on as before....

I was also glad to hear my two year old grand-daughter saying "yes please" and "thankyou, grandma" yesterday. My son is adamant that she will understand the basics of correct (and polite) language BEFORE she goes to school and picks up the rubbish from all the other kids.

And finally....

There are generally three meals in a day - breakfast, lunch and dinner - NOT, breakfast, dinner and tea.

I suspect I'm out of touch on this one though, as modern convention seems to accept that "dinner ladies" serve a meal in the middle of the day, and "tea-time" is accepted to be early evening

Thoughts?

Nigel, I think school dinner, as served by Dinner Ladies (capitals essential) has been common usage for at least the last 50 years. In state schools at any rate.
To an extent, this is a class thing, though fairly loosely.
High tea is acceptable as a substitute for dinner in the evening and many would say that supper, rather than the more formal dinner, is the usual name for an evening meal.
It's all grub.

I say breakfast, dinner and tea

Early morning cuppa.
First breakfast.
Second breakfast.
Elevenses.
Lunch.
Afternoonses.
Tea.
Dinner.
Supper.
Midnight snack.

That sounds about right... But I reckon 'dinner' is the cooked meal, irrespective of when (after breakfast) it happens, so I'm having too dinners today! Woohoo!

Abbreviations and slang really wind me up, il list a few

Abbreviations.

"sorry" Sorry

"Init" Isn't it

"An all" As well

"Totes" Totally

Slang.

Sick: Very good

Bad: Good

"Safe" How are you? (I think)

"What you say'n" what are you upto?

I'm looking to loose my text spk & literally get my ducks in a row, before I take them over the wall and manage the client interface.

Now that's the kind of blue sky thinking that we need more of around here. Someone who's prepared to get all the heavy lifting done.

Check! The low-hangers are for you!

You Sir are a gentleman.

This one's a north of England dialect, rather than slang or abbreviation per se, I think. We used it as kids fifty years ago, in Yorkshire.

Also used in Leicestershire, where majority of my co-workers are from.

I often find myself correcting them.

Which reminds me of one particular worker who has said numerous times "that'll learn you"

No, I'll give you that one! Absolutely sh1te

T'further north you go this is the norm.

In Edinburgh....."You'll have had your tea?"




Thank god the "Not three bad" died a death

interesting conversation. Being a Dutchman and a teacher of two languages, English and German, much of the above is very recognisable.

Some comments though: Dennis's is correct (because it is singular, people like to write Dennis' because they feel it looks better. See Bridget Jones's Diary as an example.

The handbag becoming the "hambag" is caused by a phenomenon called assimilation (of vowels and consonants). This causes them to be pronounced differently because the speaker already more or less anticipates the next letter. A clear example of that can be heard in the beatles song A Day in the Life. Listen to the phrase "I saw a film today..." There you can clearly hear a kind o "r" where the w is written.

I always tell my pupils this assimilation is important, becuase so many English do it.

Henk

And every day, in every way, the English languages loses just a little more redundancy.

I remember the arguments inside the BBC when, in the mid-80s, a policy change was made to encourage local dialects and accents in on-air presentation. Which was fine... until it started to become a badge of pride to *not* know how to speak or write intelligible English.

Point taken. I also feel that we should try to speak and write intelligible English and that we should try and preserve the language. However, even at teacher training college here in the Netherlands we are taught that the assimilation of sound is a fact of lfe.

On the subject of tea: my pupils find it extremely confusing when they hear "Have you had your tea yet?" the evening meal is meant.

English a very confusing langauge when you look into it, all these influences from other languages like German, French ans Scandinavian languages.

But that is also what makes it more interesting!

English is the tool of my trade as a translator and although I love the beauty of well-written language, I also have teenage children, so I understand the absolute inevitability that what we now see as correct usage has already changed for those 30 years' younger.

It's also interesting to listen to my daughters - both born and bred in France; their English is remarkably good (you wouldn't know they hadn't grown up in the UK at first), but as a linguist, I spot the alien influences that are present.
The thing I feel most irrationally irritated about is that the younger one is studying an extra module for her BAC in English... US English. Fortunately, I''ve never had to correct her saying she will "write" someone. It shouldn't bother me. But it does!
Luckily, she can do a passable Sheffield accent and has a friend from Leeds and they sit at'back and tek mick out at' teachers' pronunciation.

I was also taught to speak RP, but it seems it is not to be heard on TV anymore. Which is perhaps something that is wrong, but then again...

RP now stands out as awkward and unusual; even on the BBC. That's not to say it isn't a joy to hear sometimes, but it is beginning to sound like a parody of itself.
Radio 4 or R3 announcers are probably the last bastion!

Yes, you're right there.

Spelling according to some does not matter anymore.
You probably know typoglycemia. :))

But sooner or later we arrive at the point at which people are unable to read the research in which it is shown that spelling and punctuation *does* matter.

The classic papers aren't even related to spelling except in passing; they're by Shannon (Shannon, C. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. The Bell System Technical Journal, 27:623-656 and Shannon, C. (1949). Communication In The Presence Of Noise. Proceedings of the IRE, 37(1):10-21) and they discuss redundancy of information in the context of noisy transmission paths - which is what written text with spelling or grammatical errors is.

The conclusion is that if something has sufficient redundancy, it can be reconstructed *exactly* if what is removed does not exceed that redundancy. You'll probably have seen the example where a sentence has all the words displayed as anagrams, but with the first and last letters maintained correctly - it's readable, but it's not unambiguous, and it's difficult... because it's approached and in some cases passed the limit of the redundancy.

Most Latin and Germanic languages contain extra in-built redundancy in that not only is there a standardised spelling, as in English, but there is much more required agreement within the parts of the sentence: case and gender must also agree as well as multiplicity. In English, only the multiplicity is required - because English has stolen bits from so many different languages that it can't maintain the grammatical rules in which they evolved.

So when you take English and get rid of the consistent spelling, ignore punctuation rules, forget the grammar... you're getting close to the limit where what you write is ambiguous at best, unintelligible at worst, and too much like hard work to be bothered transcoding.

If you want to be understood, make it *easy* for the reader. Good authors break the rules, but they know which to break and when to break them!

Here's something from seven hundred years ago; see how things change. But say it out loud, and it's easy, bar a couple of words:

“His coat-armure was of clooth of Tars,
Couched with perles whyte and rounde and grete.
His sadel was of brend gold newe y-bete,
A mantelet upon his shuldre hanginge
Bret-ful of rubies rede, as fyr sparklinge.”

Neil, I don't doubt for a moment that you are right, but I'm not sure the battle for intelligibility will be fought on the same ground.
You and I share a distaste for emoticons, yet many people rely on them to convey additional meaning not evident from the way they use written language.
I suspect these and other devices will take over (inelegantly) from concise language in day-to-day use.

I don't know what the consequences will be for the future of "correct" language, but they don't look great, except possibly in fields where it is essential.

I think the emoticons are quite useful when communicating, or attempting to, online. The reader is unable to see your face, doesn`t know you and may be of a very different disposition.

A gives an indicator as to whether one is attempting to be humorous or not.

I have seen one today on a paper billboard:

Is the correct word hanged or hung, in the context of:

A farther hanged himself after killing his family.

It was headlined as above, yet hung sounds more correct?

Hanged.

“Hung” is correct except when capital punishment is being imposed or someone commits suicide.

I fear you are right; a language capable of incredibly fine shadings of meaning is gradually demolished by people who can't be bothered to learn how to use it. Presumably there are only a dozen emotions required in this wonderful world.

Long live the illiterati!

Well, I had this discussion with AndrewR - not someone you could accuse of slovenly language use or membership of the illiterati - and he both used and saw the point of emoticons. I just hate them.