short takes

[cellio]

Happy 05/05/05. (First pointed out to me by lensedqso.)

Harkening back to a recent entry: how lightsabers work (link from ralphmelton and mabfan).

Ridiculous food challenges just got even weirder: 15-pound burger challenge -- if you and a friend can eat it in three hours it's free; otherwise it's $30. Ugh. On the other hand, if you go into it blowing off the challenge from the start (and get the wet condiments on the side), it's not a bad price for a week's worth of meatloaf for the right person. (I got the link from nsingman.)

Emails 'pose threat to IQ' (link from brokengoose). Well, at least a threat to the ability to write correct English. "Email" is not a counting noun! C'mon, journalists should know better! (I know -- many of them don't. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to criticize.) Easy way to tell that the phrase "an email" is wrong: substitute by analogy. Do you send "a mail" (physical) to your pen-pal? Email is the mass noun, like mail; it is not the instance, like a letter.

I was reading something recently and saw a reference to Rabbi Micha Berger. Rabbi? When did that happen? I feel bad that I failed to notice somehow. (While we don't talk often, we're occasional correspondents and I have been a guest in his home. He wasn't a rabbi then.)

Comments

[jducoeur]

I thought it was more general among Silverwing heralds.

Actually, I'm the outlier -- the Silverwing who (technically, at least) isn't a herald. Well, okay, neither is Argyle, but we're conspicuously the weirdoes: the non-herald Laurels in a household of heraldic Pelicans.

(Of course, twenty years hanging around heralds means that I probably know more heraldry than most Baronial Pursuivants. But it isn't how I self-identify...)

In that case I say "messages" and let context carry it. It won't be long before a paper message is the flavor that needs to be explicitly clarified anyway.

While that's an entirely reasonable usage, it's less semantically precise than the definite form of "email", so I tend towards the latter.

Like I said, though, this is *mostly* a descriptivist/prescriptivist argument, and I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on it. I'm a fairly hardcore descriptivist when it comes to the English language; I get the impression that you're somewhere on the other side of that fence, although I don't know precisely where. That alone means that we're proceeding from different sets of assumptions of how to address a question like this.

I've been known to use "y'all", though I might also say "you folks" or even "you, plural" in certain cases.

Me, too. But over the years, I've gradually been getting more comfortable with "y'all". Really, the only thing that makes me at all reluctant is that it comes across as a bit affected from the northerner like myself. But again, utility uber alles -- it's such a concisely useful word that it's slowly become a central element in my vocabulary...

[cellio]

Actually, I'm the outlier -- the Silverwing who (technically, at least) isn't a herald.

Technically, shmecklically -- I've seen you act as a herald and a pretty darn good one. :-) But ok, two non-heraldic laurels in a heraldic-pelican household is pretty nifty, so I won't hassle you too much (nor ask to join and mess up your stats as a non-herald pelican). :-)

Like I said, though, this is *mostly* a descriptivist/prescriptivist argument, and I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on it.

Sounds like, yes. I'm not entirely prescriptivist, but in my own speech/writing and in that of anyone I'm responsible for, I will work very hard to make sure that usage is logical and correct, semantically and grammatically in the ways that matter. I agree with Bill Walsh that many of our "rules" aren't compelling, but I feel pretty strongly about some factors that I think really are rules.

And I'm not against new usage patterns; heck, I've championed some. I've been on the "wrong side" of the "terminal punctuation and close quotes/parens" dispute for decades, as I believe that logical placement must trump an out-of-date concession to typesetting. But my guiding principle is logic, not what the average guy on the street is actually doing. So in that we disagree.

Really, the only thing that makes me at all reluctant is that it comes across as a bit affected from the northerner like myself.

That's exactly why I sometimes hesitate to say "y'all". But it's darn useful.