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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • That’s not at all the argument I’m making. My argument is that English’s inconsistency is, at this point, the reason it is successful. By integrating everything into it, it has become a good enough medium of communication for almost everything. That would not have been possible unless the language eschewed consistency.

    Really, a better argument against changing the spelling is the classic “standards” xkcd, where now you’re just making another dialect of English where they spell words differently again, and now it needs to be adopted, fracturing the language further. Honestly, though? It doesn’t matter. Fix the spelling if you want. English can take the fracturing. The changes might take, they might not, but I doubt it’ll make the language more consistent overall, for every fix you put in, you’ll have someone who disagrees and doesn’t put it in, making your dialect more consistent, but the language overall less so, but it doesn’t matter. English will continue to be inconsistent, and that’s okay, that’s why it works.


  • The fool’s errand is trying to make the language consistent, when it never has been, especially trying to do it via spelling. English isn’t consistent. It’s not supposed to be. It takes pieces from every other language and integrates them into English whether it makes sense to or not, leading to inconsistency. That inconsistency, I think, is by design. It makes the language more versatile than any other, a “good enough” medium of communication for everything, but usually not the best, which for communication, tends to be fine.


  • To the spelling point: The world, for the most part, has moved away from the grammarian tradition of the 19th and 20th century of having a handful of dictionary makers decide what English is proper and what isn’t - the language evolves on its own, and if a misspelling becomes popular enough, it becomes a proper spelling. For example, facade is a french word, spelled façade, the accent under the C means it’s pronounced like an S. We dropped it in English because we don’t use accents in English, and now we spell it facade. It’s a “misspelling”, but you’ve probably never spelled it correctly. The language was never consistent to begin with, pretending you can fix spelling to make it so is a fool’s errand.


  • That’s fair, they needn’t quote it, you’re right, they can just link it, context included.

    I do not have examples of those, nor did I claim to.

    What was misrepresented was a quote about SNL, where an offensive clip from old SNL was posted, and he said it was from when SNL was still funny. He didn’t even comment on the clip except for the era in which it came out. (I think there was a second one, but I don’t recall the other offhand, so I’m not gonna try to pull it out of my ass here)

    What I disliked is that by not linking the originals, we have to trust their judgment entirely and have to infer which incidents they’re referring to and what was said. That’s stupid. Just link the damn discussions, they were public. If it was bad, it will be obvious. I should not have to make my judgment based on their view of what was said, I want to make my judgment based on what was actually said. I don’t agree with what Tim said, but I also feel like they’re not being as transparent as they should be.