I must admit that I do this, too. I read my completed post, then go back and re-write and edit, then post, then do it all over again. This is as much from my OCD as from my "Grammar Nazi" training. [I hate the word Nazi and wish there was another term for it. My Jewish blood boils at anything Nazi.]
Current attempt by whom? If it's something that's being attempted over in the UK, I don't think that would be too successful on this side of the pond, mostly because of the large number of Spanish speakers here. "Yo" is the Spanish word for the pronoun "I".
Yo? Oh for fuck's sake just use "he" or "they". I, for one, say no thanks to having our eminently creative urban rhythmic poets dictating the course of the language...
I agree that it's not a nice term. I'm not Jewish so that's not it (although I am gay, and the Nazis weren't overly fond of the gays either), but I just don't like such a negative word being applied to people who actually just want to stick to the rules and do things correctly. I know, but it's an experiment by school kids in Maryland, apparently. http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/2008/01/yo_peep_yo_the_birth_of_a_gend_1.html http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/content/82/3/262.abstract I don't think it will ever catch on, and I agree that the single generic "they" is fine. But, they're trying. .
I am Christian by choice, Jewish by ancestry and gay by birth. That makes the term triply offensive to me. How about Section 31, Grammar Division? Nah, too long.
How about Grammar Perfectionist? As a writer myself, I love all the things that language can be tricked, cajoled, seduced and tortured into doing for me. And evolution is a wonderful thing. The strange changes of English over the centuries fascinate and entertain me and I do my best to incorporate that in my own work, even as I occasionally play the role of a gamma ray poking at the linguistic genes. What I don't like is watching the de-evolution of language through ignorance. Whenever I see people wreck havoc with English, it makes me loose my mind.
This thread is awesome. Has anyone read "English: The Mother Tongue and How it got that way" by Bill Bryson? In it, he argues many of the same things people are arguing in this thread and makes some interesting observations. In it, I think he even makes a point in saying that before Chaucer, there weren't any rules, that there wasn't any standard, and so you could encounter many different spellings, and that the only sense of standard came when they had to write things down. It's interesting how the language can evolve. Sometimes it's dialects widening their geography and getting more popular. In some cases, very secluded areas haven't had much change at all, like a certain part of Canada's eastcoast. I've always found the evolution of language interesting, and I remember a TV show on PBS that I can't remember the name of, but was very interesting and entertaining. The one pet peeve of mine, and I started seeing this in the mid 90's is the misappropriation of rouge for "rogue.", as in a rouge agent. I originally thought it was a misspelling, and maybe it still is, but I do see it very often and I find it annoying as I'm French-Canadian and know my French pretty well. Rouge = Red. If someone is "red", they're either red in the face, and if literally an agent wearing red, well, they'd stand out a bit much and not be very covert They might as well be a painted target. In French, rouge can also mean "lipstick".
Also used among some religious sects here in the States. And I wouldn't say they had more meaning so much as a slightly different meaning, being singular instead of plural.
Can't say I've ever come across that particualr misspelling, if I saw the word rouge I would think of the colour red. And It's been a long time since I learned a little French. Rogue and Rouge are two different words.
Mobile devices have overtaken the internet. Predictive spelling, used as it is by most people, sucks ass. Pardon my frustration. People are more concerned with getting their thoughts online than they are with being understood. Excuses like "language evolves, deal with it" or "stupid spell check" are just another way of saying "I don't care what you think. Look at me!" or "I can't spell my way out of a paper freaking bag, but look how smart I am!" Just take the time to say what you mean without being pretentious (a near impossible task for a lot of Treknoids), and have a good time. Row, row, row your boat ...
Now I admit I'm not the world's greatest speller, I was always strong at Maths and Scicences, but even with predicitve text, I still try and make sure it's predicted the right word.
Ritualistic use isn't the same as common use, though. Otherwise we could say that modern English still uses the noun->verb word order because people recite "With this ring I thee wed" at weddings. No one says, "I you kiss." Unless you're referring to more isolated sects like the Amish -- do they use those words in everyday language? As to the meaning, a collective noun is a different meaning to a singular noun. Modern Standard English, with the exception of the regional Scots and Northern English noted, does not have a distinct word for plural 'you', as 'ye' once was. As I understand it, thee, thy, thou, etcetera, were also context-specific, in the same way that the use of vous and tu in French connote formality, or watishi, atashi, boku in Japanese (although those change depending on the speaker and not who is being spoken to). There is one exception I know of, which is the American southern plural you: y'all and all y'all. I'd be fascinated to learn of more exceptions, though! This post is the most hilariously ironic thing I've read all day.
If you have any typing skills whatsoever you're better off disabling predictive text on your smartphone. Ever since I've killed that cursed interloper, my texts have been much improved. Occasionally, I'll mistype something and have a minor typo. But, that's a fuckton better than having the piece of shit make wholesale word substitutions that completely strip away intended meaning. On older cellphones I did like T9 predictive text. It worked reasonably well once I rounded out its dictionary. Most importantly, it was extremely easy to switch to manual entry when it lost the plot.