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[eHalcyon]

I mean, have you ever tried reading The Chaos?  I think I can get through most of it, but seriously -- English is lunacy.

That's a fun poem.

I am so glad hiccough is now usually spelled hiccup. Is there any other word in the English language where "ough" is pronounced "up"?

Dunno. 

Reading the notes at the bottom of the page is interesting.

how many will know what a "studding-sail" is, or that its nautical pronunciation is "stunsail"?

...I did not know.  Stunsail?! English!!

(A more common one that still weirds me out is "lieutenant".)

[sudgy]

I mean, have you ever tried reading The Chaos?  I think I can get through most of it, but seriously -- English is lunacy.

That's a fun poem.

I am so glad hiccough is now usually spelled hiccup. Is there any other word in the English language where "ough" is pronounced "up"?

Dunno. 

Reading the notes at the bottom of the page is interesting.

how many will know what a "studding-sail" is, or that its nautical pronunciation is "stunsail"?

...I did not know.  Stunsail?! English!!

(A more common one that still weirds me out is "lieutenant".)

Colonel?

[soulnet]

Fair enough.  Perhaps it is easier to get by with poor English.  But the fact that people can understand English even with mistakes is not a testament that it's easier to learn.

What is "English" then, if not the intersection of what all English speakers understand? Probably in the UK the way any educated person from the US speaks would be deemed as "poor English". Even more so its writing, with your theaters in the center and the like. Would you say teenagers do not speak English? They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

[Kirian]

They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

Hv u nvr had need to rd a txt fr a teen?  Srsly they look lk ths. lol

----

That being said, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the information content of an English sentence is significantly less than one unit per character, or even one unit per syllable, and that SMS notation simply increases the information density per character.

[sudgy]

They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

Hv u nvr had need to rd a txt fr a teen?  Srsly they look lk ths. lol

I'm a teen, and my dad talks closer to that in a text than me...

[AJD]

They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

Hv u nvr had need to rd a txt fr a teen?  Srsly they look lk ths. lol

So I'm actually teaching a class on electronically-mediated communication this semester, so I have this information right at hand: in a 2005 study of texts from teenagers, a total of 6.5% of words were abbreviated.

[WalrusMcFishSr]

That being said, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the information content of an English sentence is significantly less than one unit per character, or even one unit per syllable, and that SMS notation simply increases the information density per character.

English text has fairly low entropy. In other words, it is fairly predictable. Even if we don't know exactly what is going to come next, we can be fairly certain that, for example, there will be many more e's than z's, or that the combination 'qu' will be much more common than any other combination with a 'q' in it and the combination 'th' will be more common than 'z', 'q', or 'qu'. Uncompressed, English text has about one bit of entropy for each character of message.

[Kirian]

They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

Hv u nvr had need to rd a txt fr a teen?  Srsly they look lk ths. lol

So I'm actually teaching a class on electronically-mediated communication this semester, so I have this information right at hand: in a 2005 study of texts from teenagers, a total of 6.5% of words were abbreviated.

That's certainly interesting, but an eight-year-old study about a field that's not even fifteen years old could not even be described as stale.

I mean, that's like talking about how there are only a few dozen known exoplanets right now based on 2005 data.  Or let me talk to you about how sequencing a particular person's genome would be incredibly expensive in 2005...

[AJD]

They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

Hv u nvr had need to rd a txt fr a teen?  Srsly they look lk ths. lol

So I'm actually teaching a class on electronically-mediated communication this semester, so I have this information right at hand: in a 2005 study of texts from teenagers, a total of 6.5% of words were abbreviated.

That's certainly interesting, but an eight-year-old study about a field that's not even fifteen years old could not even be described as stale.

True, but:

(1) it's not like there are many more recent studies of this particular question out there (though I do have one of IM messages from 2008, which found 2.4% abbreviations and "characteristic IM forms");
(2) at least it gives us a baseline for a quantity that we can calibrate our expectations around;
(3) the stereotype embodied by your example above was no less prevalent in 2005 than it is now;
(4) there's no particular reason to suppose that the rate of use of abbreviations in texting has substantially increased since 2005, and many reasons to suspect it may have decreased with the advent of smartphones with features like autocorrect;
(5) at the end of the semester I may be able to give you an update, since one of my students is writing his term paper on the use of abbreviations;
(6) in a cursory random subsample of 400 words of the corpus of text messages my students have collected, I found at most 15 abbreviations, counting as generously as possible.

[sudgy]

Instant messaging is a lot different than texts, because it's harder to type on a phone than on a keyboard.

[AJD]

Instant messaging is a lot different than texts, because it's harder to type on a phone than on a keyboard.

True. Note the 2004 texting data had about two and a half times the rate of abbreviations as the 2008 IM data.

That said, a random subsample of my students' IM data had 17 abbreviations in 400 words, vs. 15 in 400 words of text-message data, so the hypothesis of difference at least isn't borne out in the amount of checking I was willing to do in five minutes.

[soulnet]

Definitively interesting data. Anyway, I was not just talking about abbreviations, but also things like using z instead of s for plurals and lots of slang words that I guess are as not proper "English" as a beginner's pronunciation or Capitalization.

[eHalcyon]

Fair enough.  Perhaps it is easier to get by with poor English.  But the fact that people can understand English even with mistakes is not a testament that it's easier to learn.

What is "English" then, if not the intersection of what all English speakers understand? Probably in the UK the way any educated person from the US speaks would be deemed as "poor English". Even more so its writing, with your theaters in the center and the like. Would you say teenagers do not speak English? They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

I was referring more to egregious errors in grammar rather than chat speak/abbreviations.  For example, my mom will mess up tenses and word order sometimes, but I can still figure out what she means.  English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

[sudgy]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

Yeah, verbing weirds English.

[mail-mi]

Fair enough.  Perhaps it is easier to get by with poor English.  But the fact that people can understand English even with mistakes is not a testament that it's easier to learn.

What is "English" then, if not the intersection of what all English speakers understand? Probably in the UK the way any educated person from the US speaks would be deemed as "poor English". Even more so its writing, with your theaters in the center and the like. Would you say teenagers do not speak English? They do not write English in tweets, SMSs, etc?

I was referring more to egregious errors in grammar rather than chat speak/abbreviations.  For example, my mom will mess up tenses and word order sometimes, but I can still figure out what she means.  English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

I love that when you're talking about verbing nouns, you're actually verbing a noun!

[Kirian]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

Yeah, verbing weirds English.

No, verbing weirds language.  Have to get the quote right.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25

[sudgy]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

Yeah, verbing weirds English.

No, verbing weirds language.  Have to get the quote right.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25

Hey, I actually said language at first, but edited it because English sounded better.

[AJD]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

"'Mistakes'"?

[Morgrim7]

Four pages on adjective order. This thread is so f.ds

[Awaclus]

Four pages on adjective order. This thread is so f.ds

Nah, there isn't enough Alchemy math.

[eHalcyon]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

"'Mistakes'"?

Well, I guess the quotation marks are inappropriate there.

[AJD]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

"'Mistakes'"?

Well, I guess the quotation marks are inappropriate there.

…Okay, in all honesty you've lost me. I don't know what you mean by this, or whether you're joking, or what.

[eHalcyon]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

"'Mistakes'"?

Well, I guess the quotation marks are inappropriate there.

…Okay, in all honesty you've lost me. I don't know what you mean by this, or whether you're joking, or what.

I meant that you can intentionally (or accidentally, I suppose) make "mistakes" by verbing nouns.  Such usage could be considered incorrect, but meaning can still be interpreted with ease (which is why I said English allows for it).  Since it is still understood and may be intentionally done, maybe such cases shouldn't be called mistakes, which is why I used quotation marks there.

Does that make sense, or am I way off base?

[AJD]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

"'Mistakes'"?

Well, I guess the quotation marks are inappropriate there.

…Okay, in all honesty you've lost me. I don't know what you mean by this, or whether you're joking, or what.

I meant that you can intentionally (or accidentally, I suppose) make "mistakes" by verbing nouns.  Such usage could be considered incorrect, but meaning can still be interpreted with ease (which is why I said English allows for it).  Since it is still understood and may be intentionally done, maybe such cases shouldn't be called mistakes, which is why I used quotation marks there.

Does that make sense, or am I way off base?

I just don't understand in what sense verbing nouns per se can be considered either a "mistake" or a mistake.

[eHalcyon]

English also allows for "mistakes" like verbing nouns.

"'Mistakes'"?

Well, I guess the quotation marks are inappropriate there.

…Okay, in all honesty you've lost me. I don't know what you mean by this, or whether you're joking, or what.

I meant that you can intentionally (or accidentally, I suppose) make "mistakes" by verbing nouns.  Such usage could be considered incorrect, but meaning can still be interpreted with ease (which is why I said English allows for it).  Since it is still understood and may be intentionally done, maybe such cases shouldn't be called mistakes, which is why I used quotation marks there.

Does that make sense, or am I way off base?

I just don't understand in what sense verbing nouns per se can be considered either a "mistake" or a mistake.

Would you not consider it a mistake to use a verb (or any word) that is not found in any dictionary or even used in any dialect?  Verbing a noun can mean entirely novel constructions, like nonsense words, except that the root noun allows someone to interpret the meaning.