Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

"These are “the modern truths about language: language changes constantly; change is normal; spoken language is the language; correctness rests upon usage; all usage is relative.”

There's of course truth to these statements, backed by a lot of linguistic research. Yet one has to be careful so as not to lean too much the other way. Using certain forms of language may be acceptable to your local peer group but may be a marker that others pick up on and label you.

As for "all usage is relative": I think the points pg makes in his essay "Taste for Makers" (http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html) are spot on (though he was talking in the context of art, beauty, and taste):

"Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things.

Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it."

It is better to think of language in the same way we think of maps. Yes, the borders change over time. Yes the map, even a few years ago looks different, but if you start talking about Kashmir you're going to start a lot of fights, and if you say that Paris isn't necessarily in France, people will think you're a lunatic.

As it stands, i don't care how you say the plural of octopus, but if you say something "begs the question" that better end your sentence, you plebe.

I've declared defeat on "begs the question". The original meaning (a logical fallacy where the premise for an argument assumes the conclusion) is just not known to enough people, and the modern (mis)use just sounds too close to what the words mean in isolation.

I've also mostly given up on "literally", which I think is worse, because it's now coming to mean its opposite.

Bryan Garner, author of an excellent and well-regarded dictionary of English usage (famously reviewed at great length by DFW in Harper's), coined a term for such transitional constructions: "skunked words".

The idea is that there are two groups of people, one holding to an original meaning, and one with a new usage. Sometimes the new meaning can be directly opposite the original meaning (e.g.: nonplussed), or just different (e.g., hopefully).

So, writers who wish to be understood cannot use "nonplussed," because readers will not know what is meant. A skunked term.

A longer explanation: http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2014/11/skunked-terms.htm...

Another example:

"That's so bad!" meaning "That's awesome!"

If I can go on a tangent about poor terms...contranyms will throw people for a loop if they are unaware of one of the meanings. Or worse, if the sentence is constructed in a way meant to cause confusion.

"I would be bound for Chicago if I wasn't bound to this chair." [0]

"It is transparent that the transparent man cannot be seen." [1]

"Three people are left after five left." [2]

"If we go back two weeks, when Tom came back, we decided to push the date back three weeks." [3]

[0] I would be moving towards Chicago if I wasn't unable to move from this chair.

[1] It's visible to anyone that the invisible man cannot be seen.

[2] Three people remain after five departed.

[3] If you go into the past two weeks, when Tom returned, we decided then to push the date further by 3 weeks.

I had fun writing those.

> it's now coming to mean its opposite

As long as by "now" you mean, "over the last several hundred years":

My daily bread is literally implored I have no barns nor granaries to hoard;

John Dryden, The Hind and The Panther (1687)

Every day with me is literally another yesterday for it is exactly the same.

Alexander Pope, Letter to H. Cromwell (March 1708)

His looks were very haggard, and his limbs and body literally worn to the bone

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1839)

If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)

He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.

Frances Brooke, The History of Emily Montague (1769)

I look upon it, Madam, to be one of the luckiest circumstances of my life, that I have this moment the honour of receiving your commands, and the satisfaction of confirming with my tongue, what my eyes perhaps have but too weakly expressed — that I am literally the humblest of your servants.

George Colman and David Garrick, The Clandestine Marriage (1766)

Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.

James Joyce, The Dead (1914)

that he had shared her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the a ssistance of a ladder in night apparel...

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom wasliterally rolling in wealth.

Mark Twain, "The Adventure of Tom Sawyer" (1876)

All colors made me happy: even gray.

My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847)

Just goes to show this Nicholas Nickleby person couldn't write their way out of a wet cardboard box if their life figuratively depended on it--and by figuratively I mean literally, except more intense.

(try and disagree with me, some of my words mean the opposite of what I intend)

Most people who use literally "incorrectly" knows very well what it means, but use it hyperbolically. As in "I will literary kill the next person who misuses the English language". "I will figuratively kill the next person who misuses the English language" doesn't really convey the same sentiment...

Somewhat related: There are words that are their own antonyms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym).

A better example is nice, which started bad (meaning "foolish" or "silly"), achieved a positive meaning in 18th century and on it's way down again ("How's my coding? It's nice.") Full story and some other interesting examples are here: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/10/change-in-word-me...

OK, can't help it, another interesting example. The word slut, of unknown origin, was first applied to men and then generally applied to kitchen maids with a mild negative meaning of slovenliness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slut, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=slut). There are other words starting with sl- that made a similar journey but are now fell out of use, e.g. slattern and slammerkin

A common, very confusing one of these is 'granular', which means both 'fine-grained' and 'coarse-grained'.

I swear someone uses the word 'granular' about once every fortnight and I almost always have to ask what they mean because it's not usually obvious from the context.

Honestly, I'm a pedant about most language rules, but the "begs the question" rule is just dumb. There's no reason why a phrase can't have a very specific technical meaning in a particular jargon (debate theory) while also having a different, more literal meaning when used colloquially. If the manager of a football stadium told you he was moving the goalposts to have them cleaned, you wouldn't reply, "Actually, Moving The Goalposts[0] is a type of logical fallacy. You should say 'transporting the goalposts.'"

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

Also, the colloquial meaning of "begs the question" doesn't always have a good alternative. Sometimes, a situation doesn't just "raise the question" like some tired bureaucrat raising his hand in a meeting. Sometimes, the question is too immediate and obvious to just be ignored. It's the elephant in the room. It cries out to be answered. It begs.

Allowing "begs the question" doesn't degrade the expressiveness and utility of the language, it improves it. This is unlike, for example, the misuse of "literally" (which results in there being no easy way to indicate that a statement should not be interpreted figuratively).

It does degrade the expressiveness and utility of the language, because when someone says "begs the question" you have to guess at what they find objectionable about the argument. And you can't use the term yourself without the risk of ambiguity (which is sad, because it's a short pithy phrase that refers to a concept that requires a lot more words to describe).

The colloquial usage doesn't erase the technical usage. They can coexist. I dare you to construct a normal sentence in which the particular usage of "begs the question" is not entirely clear from context.

(This, by the way, is my personal test for whether a language rule is useful or not.)

> I dare you to construct a normal sentence in which the particular usage of "begs the question" is not completely clear from context.

I'd say that in every case that it is used in its classical sense when heard by person who uses it to mean "raises the question." Using "begs the question" that way is an actual mistake. One can have only heard "begs the question" used properly, but if you weren't familiar with the phrase, easily and understandably take it to mean "a question is begging to be asked", then go on to use it incorrectly.

Using the phrase "begs the question" incorrectly is probably only an hour younger than the phrase itself. Correcting someone about it without completely explaining its actual meaning (because you'd have to, at the least, explain the difference between formal and informal fallacies) is about a minute younger than that.

It's hard to make a case for it being language evolution if the incorrect usage is as old as the correct usage, and isn't growing any more than proportionally with it.

People being upset about being corrected about it isn't new either. People who use it correctly will continue to use it correctly, and people who use it incorrectly will use it correctly after they learn formal fallacies and can't think of a better, pithier way to describe that particular one.

Using it incorrectly, of course, is a sin akin to using an eggcorn (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/) : everybody has misheard or misunderstood many things, and then misuses them. The problem with finding them is that one has to use them in a conversation with someone nice enough or brave enough to correct one.

>One can have only heard "begs the question" used properly, but if you weren't familiar with the phrase, easily and understandably take it to mean "a question is begging to be asked", then go on to use it incorrectly.

I'm not saying this is impossible, but I don't find it convincing. The formal usage is something that a person does, and is usually the end of a statement. ("You're begging the question.") The colloquial (not "incorrect") usage is something that a situation does. It is nearly always rendered in the third-person present tense and directly followed by the question it is introducing. ("Well, that begs the question: what do we do about it?").

I don't see how somebody could hear only the first version, and end up saying only the second version. I can see how someone could be confused the first time they hear the first version (i.e., "Wait, what question is he referring to?") and would need to have the term defined for them. But that's pretty much the definition of "jargon".

That's the problem--you have to look to the context (the other person's argument) to figure out what "begs the question" means. That may be burdensome if, e.g., you're writing to someone about the flaws in a third person's argument.

I recently encountered a sentence where "begs the question" was accurate in both interpretations...

Well, generally, "begs the question" is prepended with an exact expression of what they find objectionable, so that seems like a moot point. There are, however, two ways the term is used, one of which is a reasonable stretching, and the other which is "wrong" (in the sense of being an unrelated meaning):

- "Assuming something big enough to obviate the question": e.g. "They said the searches were legal because they were limited to what was absolutely, but that just begs the question: what are they counting as necessary?"

- "Raises the question": this can be an case of the previous, but it can also be something like "They said the searches were legal, which begs the question of how often law enforcement is conducting searches under those criteria."

I think a better example of the point you're making is what the GP said about "literally" -- it's extremely useful to have a context-free indicator (just like e.g. specialized legal, military, or EMS jargon) that allows the listener not to have to guess. Using it as a generic intensifier then forces listener to guess when the whole point of such a word is to avoid that.

Even if "literally" is a lost cause, people should still coordinate on some word, but that doesn't work if they keep pushing each one down the intensifier treadmill.

You're grasping. Let's be honest, nobody is actually confused about what meaning is intended. If it was really as ambiguous a phrase as you're claiming, it wouldn't have gained as much traction as it has.

You see, I would argue that the facetious use of "literally" is not changing the definition of the word. When someone is saying "Ohh my God, my head literally exploded!" the use of "literally" is not meant to be taken literally. It's intended to add on an additional layer of exaggeration atop a ludicrous situation. The reason people say it is to make a joke. People aren't literally going out and using literally to mean figuratively. If literally meant figuratively, it wouldn't be used to express exaggeration in a joking manner.

"literally, not figuratively" might do the trick

Sure, until people start saying "My eyeballs were literally, not figuratively on fire" as an intensifier, and then insist that anyone who doesn't like that is just a fuddy-duddy who doesn't "get" linguistics.

I basically agree with you, except I don't think there are many cases where the usage of "literally" makes the meaning ambiguous. It should be clear whether someone's head literally exploded (are we having a conversation about an industrial accident, or is a person simply becoming angry?). I treat "literally" and "literally" as two words that are spelled the same but have different meanings.

Yes, usually you can tell. But the times you can't are very annoying. As a writer, you can be forced into awkward circumlocutions to avoid ambiguity.

Her head literally exploded at the idea his head actually exploded.

>Allowing "begs the question" doesn't degrade the expressiveness and utility of the language, it improves it. This is unlike, for example, the misuse of "literally" (which results in there being no easy way to indicate that a statement should not be interpreted figuratively).

Then it's kinda strange that the very same people who are promoting this non-prescriptivism are also rolling their eyes at the "literally-misuse-objectors" and dismissing their complains as baseless for the same reason.

...and I'll think less of you for having that opinion. A lot of people will just stop talking to you if you choose to behave that way. It's hard enough to communicate with a listener who is trying to understand what you're saying. If the listener would rather get hung up on rules which have no basis except in collective usage than listen, I simply can't be arsed to talk to them most of the time.

Also, analogies provide explanation, not proof. You've not provided any justification for your opinion with your map analogy, you've just over-explained your opinion which everyone already understood.

This is one place where pg is simply flat-out wrong, on a couple of levels. If taste being mere preference meant that you couldn't be better at design, no matter how many people want it to be possible to be better at design, that wouldn't refute that taste is preference. That something implies something people don't like doesn't make it untrue.

But more fundamentally, he's wrong that taste being preference makes it impossible to get better at design. A big part of design -- as with any form of communication -- is understanding the particular audience you are targeting and how to address that audience. In design that means understanding the preferences in the target audience and how best to make tradeoffs among them to achieve the effect you want -- whether it's too maximize appeal to a narrow group with cohesive preferences or a broad group with divers preferences. You can get better at that even though taste if preference.

You may not be able to reduce the practical skill involved readily to simple mechanical rules, but for designers that's a good thing if true -- it means it'll be hard to automate then away.

Taste is entirely a personal preference. The trick is to get other people to agree with your own. It's hard to look at the drastically different ideas of what is "tasteful" across different cultures and believe that there's any such thing as a universal view on it. We only have that mindset because Western/American culture in particular has been promulgated across the world and poeple in Hollywood or SV have chosen what is or isn't fine.

Also, who cares if people label you for your use of language. Those people can get over themselves. Some of the linguistic tricks from those in the lowest rungs of society now dominate our discourse and it's because they didn't care.

Well you should care if you want to be hired, published, or generally taken seriously in certain environments. (Note that speaking "proper" English is not always what you want either; there are some social situations where other dialects will get you farther -- and, of course, all of this also applies to languages other than English.)

But I also take your point. The problem--as is often the case with various forms of stereotyping--is that such preconceptions are simultaneously useful as indicators about a person you are dealing with (such as level of education), but also deserving of serious skepticism since they can have the effect of disadvantaging certain groups, cause you to miss interesting opportunities, and generally making life less interesting by enforcing a stultifying uniformity.

It's pretty normal to switch between styles of speech depending on the situation. Word and grammar choices you use with a good friend are different than those you'd use in a television interview are different than those you'd use in court.

There are times in your life in which you need to speak with precision, and that means using generally agreed upon grammar and vocabulary. There's no harm in breaking those rules in everyday speech, but you should know them.

Also, who cares if people label you for your use of language. Those people can get over themselves.

Theoretically true, but how far are you willing to go to defend this? E.g., how much less are you willing to earn per year? How much risk do you want to take for your children not getting into that school you have your eye on? What about getting that promotion "because the boss thinks you show promise"?

Having the benefit of the doubt is a powerful thing, and it makes or breaks decisions in or out of your favor every single day.

That is, assuming you're living in a society, of course. If you're crazy Chad in his forest cabin, then, by all means, talk to the spirits in any tongue you please.

Ok, it's a set of personal preferences mostly shared by the entire human population (and other mammals to a lesser degree). Yes, there is some variance, but it's much smaller than the shared parts.

In reality, everybody cares if people labels them, and for good reason, because we depend on collaboration with others for satisfying about 100% of needs, some of what are exact variants of "collaboration with others", like socialization.

It's hard to look at the drastically different ideas of what is "tasteful" across different cultures and believe that there's any such thing as a universal view on it.

Well said, have an upvote. Taking a global view really does put things in a different light. It reminds me of the old saw about atheists telling Christians:

"We're both Atheists, I just believe in one fewer God than you do".

When you step back and realize that there are thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of religions and deities, it is kinda eye opening. And you can apply that thinking to many (most?) things.

OTOH, if you do find any universal patterns shared across all (or most) human societies and cultures, then it probably means something important. :-)

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