{"id":43603,"date":"2014-07-16T07:19:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T13:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/16\/stephen-fry-on-language.html"},"modified":"2014-07-17T17:10:11","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T23:10:11","slug":"stephen-fry-on-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/16\/stephen-fry-on-language.html","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Fry on Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"gpb-content\">Yes, after posting the video of &quot;Weird&quot; Al&#39;s &quot;Word Crimes&quot; tune, this seems like a contradiction. Very well, I contradict myself; I contain multitudes.<\/p>\n<p>I&#39;ve actually gotten a lot less pedantic (no, really) over language the past several years, perhaps with the perspective of decades of watchng language change and various &quot;end of the world&quot; scenarios regarding some particular new spelling, grammatical error, or word use come and go. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I think there are times when ranting and raving as &quot;Weird&quot; Al does about such things is &#8212; well, maybe not to <i>that<\/i> degree &#8212; appropriate, just as at times one rants about &quot;kids these days&quot; or &quot;modern art&quot; or &quot;how they canceled that show I love and put on a pile of dog poo in its place.&quot; \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And there are times when Fry&#39;s observations both about <i>loving<\/i> language and being aware the rules are not all (literally) graven in stone are the way to approach linguistic issues. \u00a0As Fry puts it, &quot;Context, convention, and circumstance are all.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>(And all <i>that<\/i> said, I think there are distinct differences between heterodoxy in spelling and punctuation, parts of speech and grammar, and word use and neologisms, and it&#39;s possible and even healthy to welcome new words joining the English language without having being so sanguine when folk confuse &quot;their&quot; and &quot;there&quot; and &quot;they&#39;re&quot;.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>(h\/t <span class=\"proflinkWrapper\"><span class=\"proflinkPrefix\">+<\/span><a class=\"proflink\" href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/105138568577624786912\" oid=\"105138568577624786912\">Doyce Testerman<\/a><\/span>)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reshared post from +<a href='https:\/\/plus.google.com\/116481777618588720839'>Epidiah Ravachol<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Going to leave this here as a mur against the oncoming wave of smug classism heralded by the Weird Al video &quot;Word Crimes.&quot;\ufeff<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class='gpb-video'><iframe type='text\/html' width='100%' height='385' src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J7E-aoXLZGY' frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class='gpb-links' style='clear:both;'> <a class='gpb-linkback' href='https:\/\/plus.google.com\/101083456815352083930\/posts\/P2fdtLUYrwa' target='_new'>View this post on Google+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, after posting the video of &quot;Weird&quot; Al&#39;s &quot;Word Crimes&quot; tune, this seems like a contradiction. Very well, I contradict myself; I contain multitudes. I&#39;ve actually gotten a lot less pedantic (no, really) over language the past several years, perhaps with the perspective of decades of watchng language change and various &quot;end of the world&quot; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/16\/stephen-fry-on-language.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Stephen Fry on Language&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts","category-writing-and-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":43601,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/15\/weird-al-sings-my-personal-anthem-huzzah.html","url_meta":{"origin":43603,"position":0},"title":"Weird Al sings my personal anthem (huzzah!)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 15-Jul-14 10:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The new \"Word Crimes\" tune (based on Robin Thicke's \"Blurred Lines,\" whatever the heck that was). \u00a0I can even forgive him suggesting the Oxford Comma should be optional ...\ufeff View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135216,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/30\/google-weird-emoji-problems.html","url_meta":{"origin":43603,"position":1},"title":"Google has some weird emoji problems","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 30-Oct-17 11:50am","format":false,"excerpt":"Nothing scandalous, just ... weird. Google CEO makes fixing hamburger emoji his top priority Bun, salad, patty, CHEESE, bun... WTF View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/emoji-hamburger-google.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":129649,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/05\/when-you-have-official-language-police-things-can-get-ugly.html","url_meta":{"origin":43603,"position":2},"title":"When you have Official Language Police, things can get ugly","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 5-Feb-16 11:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The French are known for being ... um ... determined to intentionally maintain the purity of their tongue, to officially deprecate word imports in favor of their own native words, etc.But that sort of sentiment can draw flak when the government officially makes changes to the language.'French linguistic purists have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2492,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/14\/the_n_word.html","url_meta":{"origin":43603,"position":3},"title":"The N Word","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Jun-02 6:47am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm fascinated by language -- by how we use it, by how it shapes us, by how we shape it. If unconscious use of language is interesting, so, too, is...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ZT &amp; PC&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ZT &amp; PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128325,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/15\/how-mcdonalds-changed-the-english-language.html","url_meta":{"origin":43603,"position":4},"title":"How McDonald&#039;s changed the English language","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 15-Oct-15 9:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"According to this article ...http:\/\/logophilius.blogspot.com\/2015\/10\/how-mcdonalds-marketing-made-us-grimace.html... until the early\/mid-1970s, \"grimace\" was pronounced \"grih-MAYS\" (rhymes with \"face\"). But when McDonald's introduced \"The Evil Grimace\" to their McDonaldLand commercials, they chose to pronounce it \"GRIM-miss\" -- which pronunciation stuck (probably given the fact that it's not a word that's spoken aloud very often).[http:\/\/mcdonalds.wikia.com\/wiki\/Grimace]And,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43729,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/21\/the-very-model-of-modern-business-verbiage-via-weird-al.html","url_meta":{"origin":43603,"position":5},"title":"The Very Model of Modern Business Verbiage (via Weird Al)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 21-Jul-14 10:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I plan on posting this to our internal network tomorrow to see what sort of Likes it engenders.\ufeff \"Weird Al\" Yankovic - \"Mission Statement\" (video) \u2022 Music \/ Video \u2022 exclaim.ca Prolific pop parodist \"Weird Al\" Yankovic has been on a tear over the last week, dishing out a number\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43651,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603\/revisions\/43651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}