Not To Sound Harsh, But . . .

[sharktown]

One of the primary reasons I—or any of us—come here is because of the community, so much genuine desire to help each individual succeed and enjoin us in our fascination and utter joy of DE (or SR) shaving. The installation and servicing of Acquisition Disorders is at once well-intentioned, universally understood, and happily shared if not outright enabled. All part of the fun and intrigue.

I am no Rhode scholar (see, note the sloppy grammar!), certainly did not graduate high school or college Cum Laude. But somewhere along the line I acquired a deep respect, an abiding love for the written word and its ability to convey, to evoke, to move and inspire. Those of us who have spent most any amount of time online, in most any regard, are witness to the galling disregard native English speakers seem to have for their language. ‘News’ articles lacking editing, comments seemingly concocted by drooling troglodytes, and flame wars pitched and hammered out by those who lose a little mental acuity with each sneeze.

Surely you’re wondering where I’m headed with this (<—dangling participle—not good form!), so here it is.

I find it so thoroughly and utterly refreshing to come here, day after day, and read posts and responses written in full sentences with actual punctuation and, for the internet, an exceptional grasp of spelling. Moreover, to read over replies which are thought out and delivered with personality. Sadly, I had allowed myself to begin believing the English language was taking a huge dump and would very soon be flushed down the toilet of irrationality whilst the aforementioned troglodytes clap their hands and drool with glee.

Gentlemen, thank you for, unbeknownst to you, helping to lift my faith in the American/ English use of language. B&B has provided ample proof it is still alive and kicking in the best of ways.

+1 yes great post! I too enjoy reading B&B posts with the proper punctuation, spelling and the use of the English language. If only my grammar school English teacher were here to see this.......whoa.
This brings me to a thought, I do not like texting very much and know it's a necessary evil, especially when trying to communicate with my 12 year old daughter as kids have a language that's all their own.
But here on B&B its a breath of fresh air - bravo and keep up the good work everybody!

 

[Procver]

Not an native english speaker nor living in an english-speaking country, but I can definitely see your point.
Who knows, maybe because this wet shaving world encourages to read and investigate.

 

[les24preludes]

i write books and did English in college together with a couple of other languages, so I need to be literate! But I work with performers and creatives, many of whom are dyslexic and who are great people and very talented, as well as mostly very likeable since they are good at verbal communication to compensate for problems with reading and writing. So for many years now I just go with whatever English people have, and am grateful for that. I work so much with people from other countries and languages that I constantly grow in admiration of their ability to speak such good English. I once spent a few hours in a language lab trying to get into Chinese and gave up in frustration since I couldn't even pronounce it. English is a way of communicating that spans a lot of the globe and whatever you can do with it can only be great for bringing people together.

 

[octoserge]

i write books and did English in college together with a couple of other languages, so I need to be literate! But I work with performers and creatives, many of whom are dyslexic and who are great people and very talented, as well as mostly very likeable since they are good at verbal communication to compensate for problems with reading and writing. So for many years now I just go with whatever English people have, and am grateful for that. I work so much with people from other countries and languages that I constantly grow in admiration of their ability to speak such good English. I once spent a few hours in a language lab trying to get into Chinese and gave up in frustration since I couldn't even pronounce it. English is a way of communicating that spans a lot of the globe and whatever you can do with it can only be great for bringing people together.

Now this is a great post - meaningful message that is free of soapbox pretension and the use of Middle English words like “whilst”. I wonder how many here speak multiple languages. Given how hard one must work to speak and understand multiple languages, I focus more on the message and the messenger than I do syntax or typos.

 

[les24preludes]

There are probably a lot more people in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America that speak multiple languages for a number of reasons. First their mother tongue is not English, and if they speak English to a decent level they're bilingual. Some countries have more than one spoken language, like Belgium and Switzerland. And then there is a substantial movement of people, especially in the EU.

I can immediately think of a Croatian who lives in Sweden and speaks perfect English. That's three languages. Add countries from the old Soviet blok and you add Russian. Take a Serbian from near the Rumanian border - the family spoke Rumanian and Serbian equally, and the children learned Russian in school. Add English and you have four languages. That's without studying languages at university even.

In London you will hear multiple languages on any bus you get on. In my son's primary school his class of 30 contained only 6 children who had two native English parents.

Another thing to bear in mind is that English is a horror story to spell. Russian is a phonetic language. It is spelled as you say it. There are single letters for sounds like "ya", "ch" and "shch". The spelling is pretty automatic.

 

[DEPenguin]

I am so glad you brought that up, les24preludes. I have worked with a Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, to this day work with plenty of Hispanics, have known two Japanese people and a French man. Some were born into families where the parents only spoke their native tongue, but as children they went to school (typically here in America) and learned English . . . or they learned it from watching American television and movies, or secondarily from listening to American rock and/or pop music.

When we watch the Olympics we almost assume athletes from all over the globe will interview in English, and while some don't it still astounds me how many can still effectively communicate in English despite it not being their primary language.

I read somewhere English is the global lingua franca, a language conduit used between two disparate languages to communicate; doesn't mean a lingua franca is always English, but globally it tends to be. I wouldn't consider myself to be fluent in Spanish but I understand and can speak enough of it to be dangerous to myself and those around me. What learning Spanish has taught me--as has simply giving consideration to words in other languages--is that if we give thought to the development of language we can easily arrive at the simple conclusion that all human need to communicate to thrive. I'll grant you, that sounds borderline imbecilic, but that doesn't reduce its veracity.

Given that people not native to America (much less the English language) can learn to use our language to not only survive but thrive, makes the throbbing, teeming mass of English butchers stand out all the more readily, for me at least. I have a great respect and warm admiration for those who come here and manage to learn--and use--English. As you mentioned, English ain't always easy to suss out from context if you don't know the language, for example: meddle, metal, medal, and mettle--I have no problem traipsing between those, but non-native speakers always stumble on them; advice and advise: wound and wound--one is a physical injury, the latter a wrap-around; latter and ladder--yes, these are two different things . . . and so many more. English is at once colorful and nightmarish.

As for our own vernacular, even shaving has idiomatic tendencies. It seems obvious to pursue or achieve 'a close shave', yet we often refer to a 'near miss' as "that was a close shave." We may experience a "brush" with death or celebrity, and as humans occasionally get ourselves worked into a 'lather' over this matter or that. We encounter people with 'razor sharp wits'; something sliced 'wafer' thin is still thicker than something sliced 'razor' thin.

As if trying to understand our idioms weren't enough, as Leverspro pointed out, coming into wet shaving completely new can't help but force one into learning a slew of new acronyms . . . . how daunting must it be to not speak the language naturally and then have to try to figure out what SWMBO means, or TTO, DFS, MdP, PdP, AoS, etc. It is a testament to the human will to push forward, to seek answers to questions, to grow beyond what we were just moments before.

And yet there remains a steadfast collective of people who refuse to differentiate between there, their, and they're . . . and I don't count non-native speakers as violators. For better or worse, I confess, I am something of a stickler. But again, to my original point, coming to B&B is akin to being in the eye of the storm--I know once I leave the friendly confines of these forums I must brace myself against the hurricane force of lunacy in the internet at large.

 

[Clay S]

meddle, metal, medal, and mettle

Those are easy for non-native readers. As a native English speaker, I am amazed sometimes at the number of words I know, but have no idea how to pronounce, being an avid reader. Read and Read, and wound and wound as you mention are harder for non-native readers, as well as idioms.

 

[rockviper]

The great thing about english is that you can use the same word to mean several different things.
The bad thing about english is that you can use the same word to mean several different things.

 

[Scaramouche]

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

 

[mumB_L_E]

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

Doubleplusgood.

 

[BigJ]

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

+2! Excellent!!

 

[AshleyC]

English may be a horror for spelling, but at least it doesn't feel the need to assign a gender to nouns and have that change the ending of every darn word in the sentence. That just addles the mind.

 

[DEPenguin]

There are some masculine and feminine nouns in Spanish that do that, and others which you would expect to require gender change that actually don't. No wonder I so often fall into just using Spanglish.

 

[sharpstar90]

I also love this about B&B. I think the love of shaving and collecting are inseparable from "Gentleman's culture". I don't know if such a thing even exists objectively anymore, but I think most of us here idealize it. We hold ourselves to a standard, and that is what drew is here in the first place.

 

[DEPenguin]

^^

 

[John Rose]

... I am no Rhodes scholar ...

Fixed that for ya.

On a purely linguistic note, I also remember reading that American deep South manners of speaking and accent (some might call "redneck") are in fact the closest remaining dialect to English as it was spoken in Elizabethan times.

Think about that for a moment. Original productions of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" may have sounded a lot less like Kenneth Brannaugh and Patrick Stewart, and more like Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy.

Ummm.... Sounds more like a pirate (Cornish?) to me,

 

[pbrmhl]

i write books and did English in college together with a couple of other languages, so I need to be literate! But I work with performers and creatives, many of whom are dyslexic and who are great people and very talented, as well as mostly very likeable since they are good at verbal communication to compensate for problems with reading and writing. So for many years now I just go with whatever English people have, and am grateful for that. I work so much with people from other countries and languages that I constantly grow in admiration of their ability to speak such good English. I once spent a few hours in a language lab trying to get into Chinese and gave up in frustration since I couldn't even pronounce it. English is a way of communicating that spans a lot of the globe and whatever you can do with it can only be great for bringing people together.

I'm humbled daily by working with creative music types whose grace and facility with verbal communication far outmatch mine. I went to a fancy US law school where we were ingrained with the notion that we were masters of the language universe. Not true. Put a well-educated, academic-oriented professional in front of a computer with a lot of time, and you'll see a nice product. Put a passionate DJ in front of a microphone and you'll hear passion, wisdom and seamless spontaneous paragraphs.

 

[Tokyospike]

Well, this thread has been a joy to read. Thanks, all. In New York City, as in London, I hear half a dozen languages daily. I work with native Russian and Tamil speakers in a Chinese bank at the moment . . . we all do well with spoken English - the written form, not so much . . .

My best language story is from when I lived in Tokyo and my customer was a giant Japanese import-export business. I traveled to their office in Hong Kong, where the senior managers were Japanese and the rest of the employees were Hong Kong Chinese. Generally, they communicated with each other in English, but when things got complicated they wrote notes to each other in Chinese characters, which both could read, though they were pronounced completely differently in Japanese and Mandarin.

 

[DEPenguin]

Fixed that for ya.

You know what . . . initially I had the 'S' there, then when I went back and proofread the post it looked odd to me, so I took it out. Just goes to prove you can't polish a turd

 

[BigJ]

I also love this about B&B. I think the love of shaving and collecting are inseparable from "Gentleman's culture". I don't know if such a thing even exists objectively anymore, but I think most of us here idealize it. We hold ourselves to a standard, and that is what drew is here in the first place.

+2!! Well stated Sir!!