The decimation of language

This video is awesome, but not just in the creativity (you really have to stick around until the very end to see it's full awesomeness). The phenomenal Steven Fry's point about the intractable disdain some people have for failures in grammar and expression is provoking at a fundamental level for me.



I admit it, I still bristle when I see a sign saying "thank's for your support". And, seeing pictures like this still causes me to guffaw a bit:



But, as someone who studied Linguistics during his brief college career, I also must acknowledge that language is about communication. Grammar, spelling and punctuation rules are nothing more than arbitrary conventions created for the sole purpose of greasing society's linguistic needs. They don't do a whole lot to convey meaning in and of themselves. As Steven points out, we all still know what "10 items or less" means, even if it's proper to say "10 items or fewer". Frankly, how many of us even knew that "10 items or less" was wrong before watching this? I confess I didn't.

Funny as it is, "We out of meet" still conveys the message intended. It did so with a humorous flourish, I won't dismiss, but meaning was still conveyed. Only those who choose to be scrungent, when faced with a grammatically incorrect but symantically valid sentence, will fail to understand...

No, I'm wrong. They'll FEIGN ignorance while fully grasping the concepts presented, but bemoan loudly to everyone trying to ignore their rants that they just don't understand "how someone could be lacking in the becoming acquainted with?"

To me, even worse are those who still can't grok that meanings change. Anyone who has read ANY Shakespeare knows that between Bill's time and ours our language has evolved slightly. They manufacture* extensive artificial* complaints about how awful* the latest generation's understanding is. If they're feeling brave* enough, they'll tell* you to your face how you're an example of our declining civilization. Yet, I have to wonder how they would read THIS paragraph, seeing as I chose a few common words whose meaning has become quite different from its original intent. I wonder, too, if they'd read the title of this article to mean "the utter destruction of language"?**

Perhaps they're just nice***?

There are currently two major wars in effect, not to mention a few minor border skirmishes and disputes and a couple of completely insane dictators who seem to think they own the world. The economy's collapsed, and while it shows some signs of rebound the fact is it's only going to continue to get a lot worse overall since people keep voting in the same dimwits who created the messes in the first place. The Earth's climate's being forced to change in new and terrible ways. A billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinkable water or a consistent source of food...and yet there's still a large percentage of people who will read this paragraph and complain about my excessive use of ellipses and/or commas.

Seriously, it's time to worry about more important things, don't you think?


* Manufacture: to make by hand. You thus can't "manufacture" an argument. Artificial: full of skill. Awful: wonderful, amazing. You know...full of awe. Brave: cowardly. No, really. Google it. Tell: to count. Now you know why they're called "tellers" at the bank.

** Decimation: a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman army for punishment. After conquering a country or town then would line up all of the people who lived there. They would then kill every tenth person; man, woman or child. Just enough to make a point without, ahem, decimating the resources of the Roman Empire.

*** Nice: In Latin it meant "not to know". A nice person was an ignorant one. Hmmm..

**** Bonus: scrungent's my word. I made it up. :)