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Pity the poor subjunctive
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3462
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Pity the poor subjunctive (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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I could not agree more, Paul. Unfortunately, in the United States at least, English grammar and punctuation have been deteriorating (and in many cases deliberately dumbed down) for some time. When I hear someone proclaim that punctuation doesn't matter as long as one gets one's idea across, I like to use the following example to demonstrate just how much punctuation does matter. The following sentence seems straightforward and unambiguous, doesn't it? "Woman without her man is nothing." But let's add a couple of punctuation marks. "Woman: without her, man is nothing." E-mail only makes it worse, as no one seems to worry about correct English. Twitter no doubt will drive a stake through the heart of well-written English. I wonder if other languages are experiencing the same dumbing-down in the countries where they are spoken and written? Cheers, Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Dec. 28 2013 21:20:12
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edguerin
Posts: 1590
Joined: Dec. 24 2007
From: Siegburg, Alemania
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RE: Pity the poor subjunctive (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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I believe this decline is noticeable in all living - and thus evolving and changing - languages (and, presumably, past generations complained, just as we do now). Years ago, when still speaking my mother-tongue (English) on a day to day basis, I loved "Fowler's Modern English Usage". Alas, in the 2nd edition from 1968 the subjunctive is already considered "no longer alive". Another deplorable development can be seen in the German language, that not only has "adopted" numerous (pseudo-)English expressions, using them in a sense difficult or nigh impossible for English native speakers to understand (e.g. "Handy" for "mobile phone", "Aircondition" for "air conditioning", "Life-Performance" for "Live performance" ...). I think the present paucity of expression isn't just due to the internet; dubbing from English has definitely changed colloquial German, as in the phrase "lass uns treffen" which is a word for word translation of "let's meet".
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Ed El aficionado solitario Alemania
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Dec. 29 2013 16:05:27
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