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Comment by daffy | Hacker News Reader

The author seems to claim that `irregardless' is all right and that caring about it is caring too much and vain. He compares it to other malformed words such as `television' and `flammable'. But there seems to be a significant difference between these and that. While recognizing the malformedness of these words require knowledge of Greek and Latin, recognizing that of `irregardless' is trivial for anyone who is proficient in current English: it is obviously a stupid word, and that makes it stupider.

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> it is obviously a stupid word, and that makes it stupider.

This is the social signaling aspect of language at work, not the communication part.

Human brains can trivially digest the correct meaning of “irregardless”. Using the word, however, marks someone as not having had a “proper” education, and would perhaps brand the speaker as “stupid”, “irregardless” of whether the idea they were expressing was intelligent or not.

> Human brains can trivially digest the correct meaning of “irregardless”.

It can also understand the meaning of "iregardles", "ireggardless" and "irregardlless". Is that really a sufficient condition for the word to be considered correct?

Given that the purpose of language is to convey meaning, I'd say yes.

if meerly "convaying meening" iz the bar then tihs snentenennce is currect english.

You'll find that people, even those without formal education in English like me, don't generally write like that. I think just reading and writing a lot makes one's spelling naturally converge to the most common one.

Except if you are actually well-educated then you would know that “irregardless” is widely used to mean the same thing as “regardless” and thus to use it as such would not be a sign of a lack of education.

> This is the social signaling aspect of language at work

How so? Surely those who say `regardless', the vast majority, are not trying to signal anything.

Pure conjecture on my part: irregardless is an intensifier of dismissal. It allows the word to start with a vowel. Since (American) English requires exhortations to start with a consonant, it forces the speaker to begin the sound with a glottal stop. Initial glottal stops are markers for interjective cursing, like “‘Asshole!”

The conjecture is likely wrong. Some speakers simply reach for irregardless whenever they want to say "without regard" and are never heard using regardless.

I dunno: perhaps irregardless began as an interjection, and then became the norm for certain speakers? Similar to hypercorrection.

Just a mix-up of irrespectively and regardless.

Plus, blindly copying a word used by others. "If my geography teacher used it, it must be right."

> it is obviously a stupid word, and that makes it stupider.

One might argue that 'stupid' was originally intended to describe a person of low intelligence and because words aren't sentient, it's a misuse of the word.

It seems like a stupid argument to make, though.

> and `flammable'.

Which has the same definition as inflammable.

This has always been inconceivable in my mind.

Similarly infuriating fact: in Italian, "infranto" means broken, but "infrangibile" means "unbreakable" (as in glass).

And how do you say breakable?

"Fragile" would be the closest translation of "breakable". It has the same meaning as in English.

Even though I know the correct meanings, no matter how hard I try the word “flammable” sounds to me like “able to flame” while “inflammable” sounds like “incapable of flame”.

I hate English.

English is beautiful. I say that as an ESL who speaks Spanish and Italian fluently.

English spelling, and etymology are fascinating and closely related. English spelling often retains the original spelling despite changes in pronunciation.

Inflammable come directly from the Latin where “in” is not a negation but putting something “in” a state of being, in this case flame.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thus I have no business telling you whether you are wrong or not in your assertion.

However, both its grammar and spelling is incredibly ad-hoc. To someone who is a fan of structure (such as a programmer like myself), this is frustrating. I was going to make a comparison to a programming language, but I came to the conclusion that there isn't really a programming language out there that absorbs everything without making it natural in the adopted framework.

Like you, I learned English as a second language and even though I can speak it reasonably well, I'm constantly annoyed by its idiosyncrasies.

> … original spelling despite changes in pronunciation.

An accident of history: the printing press and the first dictionaries started arriving and codifying spelling just before the shift occurred:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

English is exceptionally beautiful. And I hate it.

Inflammable means able to be put “in flames”. But most people read “in-“ in this case as a negation, and therefore assume it’s the opposite.

So “flammable” is born and people start using it and thinking the original form is opposite.

But inflammable materials are dangerous to treat otherwise! Since no one confuses “flammable” for inert, for safety reasons, the word “flammable” is used when labeling inflammable material.

The Simpsons made a joke about it once with Dr. Nik.

Not commenting on the content of your comment but what the hell is your formatting?

What do you mean?

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