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12/05/2008 05:20:18 PM · #26 |
Some of you are missing the point; we're way, way beyond the misuse of "epic" and "awesome", which I'd readily agree is an insifnificant isuue. This was just our springboard into a discussion of the general dumbing down of culture.
Now, I'm sensitive to the idea that I'm just turning into an old fart, and that old farts like me have been bemoaning the decay of civilization since at LEAST the time of the Greeks: after all, I studied that culture and that language as part of my education.
But you know what? For children now, that's not even an option... At the age of 12 I was reading Latin and Greek and studying world history, and somehow this seems important to me. Maybe it's just me?
R.
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12/05/2008 05:25:43 PM · #27 |
Originally posted by citymars:
Today's youth slang is amusing to me because the intentional hyperbole is ironic. An "epic" haircut? It doesn't mean youth is ignorant, it just means they have slang that distinguishes them from adults. |
Ah hah! Now that's what I like to see! Crediting kids for why they use the words they use in the way that they use them. Who would have thunk it? (There I go!)
What the old codgers here don't realise is that today's kids have a different culture than they do, and one that tends to be incredibly tongue-in-cheek. These kids grew up drowning in media, and are acutely aware of language themselves.
And they purposefully twist it for their own amusement.
What really impresses me about it all is how... literary... it's gotten since the advent of the internet. Don't you coots get that what we're discussing here is a subtle form of wordplay? Just because you're not in on it doesn't mean it's not valid.
Old posters are old. :)
LOLCats are the new Shakespeare. |
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12/05/2008 05:25:57 PM · #28 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Some of you are missing the point; we're way, way beyond the misuse of "epic" and "awesome", which I'd readily agree is an insifnificant isuue. This was just our springboard into a discussion of the general dumbing down of culture.
Now, I'm sensitive to the idea that I'm just turning into an old fart, and that old farts like me have been bemoaning the decay of civilization since at LEAST the time of the Greeks: after all, I studied that culture and that language as part of my education.
But you know what? For children now, that's not even an option... At the age of 12 I was reading Latin and Greek and studying world history, and somehow this seems important to me. Maybe it's just me?
R. |
No, it's important to me too, even though it wasn't available to me when I was in elementary school. I don't understand how the world goes from an education in the Classics, British-style, to something quite different and unrecognizable from that. I'm not suggesting that the sky is falling because little kids aren't chanting Latin verb conjugations on cue, but a different world it certainly is. Sharper and uglier in my view, shinier and more accessible in the view of others. |
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12/05/2008 05:27:39 PM · #29 |
| Incidentally, my livelihood is high tech, so it has nothing to do with that. |
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12/05/2008 05:33:54 PM · #30 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
But you know what? For children now, that's not even an option... At the age of 12 I was reading Latin and Greek and studying world history, and somehow this seems important to me. Maybe it's just me?
R. |
Why not learn Java or Python or C# instead of Latin or Greek? They're much more useful languages, today. Heck, why not Chinese?
So sayeth the one who didn't take a lick of the dead languages.
And just to prove my point, I could have used 'moribund' instead of 'dead'. Where did I get this epic linguistic repertoire? Certainly not from Latin or Greek, even if the roots still linger! ;) |
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12/05/2008 05:36:09 PM · #31 |
Originally posted by Louis:
"Epic" meant something quite different to the oral tellers of epic tales. It was the transfer of culture in the only way available to bronze age people. It's a remarkable word, and is why this one in particular saddens me. |
Are you so sure that bronze-age storytellers were using the (now English) word 'epic'?
Even if it were pronounced and spelled the same... it would not be the same word. It would be ! |
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12/05/2008 05:36:35 PM · #32 |
Originally posted by Mousie:
Originally posted by citymars:
Today's youth slang is amusing to me because the intentional hyperbole is ironic. An "epic" haircut? It doesn't mean youth is ignorant, it just means they have slang that distinguishes them from adults. |
Ah hah! Now that's what I like to see! Crediting kids for why they use the words they use in the way that they use them. Who would have thunk it? (There I go!)
What the old codgers here don't realise is that today's kids have a different culture than they do, and one that tends to be incredibly tongue-in-cheek. These kids grew up drowning in media, and are acutely aware of language themselves.
And they purposefully twist it for their own amusement.
What really impresses me about it all is how... literary... it's gotten since the advent of the internet. Don't you coots get that what we're discussing here is a subtle form of wordplay? Just because you're not in on it doesn't mean it's not valid.
Old posters are old. :) |
I'm sorry, but I'm just as involved in the media as the kids (and I'm not that old), and I still believe that some measure of a standard (especially respect) is a must.
You seem to be of the impression that every person misusing these words is misusing them purposefully.
Wrong.
Someone does in the beginning, but then it goes to "OMG THAT'S FUNNEH" land and everyone, in an attempt to be cool and individual snaps it up and uses it over and over again in increasingly misguided and inappropriate circumstances until even the people that once used it purposefully and ironically are now telling these other people to STFU.
It's also ironic that in striving for this individuality, everyone tends to become exactly the same.
Has it been like this for as long as humanity has been around? Sure, probably. Doesn't make it inalienably right.
I like to play around within a select community as much as the next person. I have no problem using slang and silly vernacular in the proper context. I can teabag with the best of them on XBox Live, and can LOL in a forum, and tell a close friend that their new TV is SWEET.
It's when this type of language use goes outside the context and starts being overused and abused and placed into situations that don't warrant it, or are disrespectful to the people it is being used around, that I have a problem. A real problem.
That doesn't make me a fuddy-duddy, or old, or beind the times or anything else. It just makes me respectful and desiring others to be respectful back is not a fault.
Message edited by author 2008-12-05 17:38:46. |
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12/05/2008 05:37:03 PM · #33 |
Originally posted by Louis:
"Good conscience." :-P |
Hey, I'm just a product of the times we live in. :P
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12/05/2008 05:57:03 PM · #34 |
Language is an evolving entity, ever changing in subtle and not so subtle ways. Words take on new meanings and old meanings take on new words.
I am just thankful we no longer speak like the King James bible and Shakespeare.
That said this all reminds me of a very funny conversion in World of Warcraft I had the "pleasure" of witnessing years ago.
There were two friends standing by the road...
Guy 1: gt 2 tn bags
Guy 2: What?
Guy 1: gt 2 tn bags mrchts k?
Guy 2: I can't understand what you mean.
Guy 1: gze! gt two tn bgs full! mrchants! ok?
Guy 2: I don't have any idea what you are talking about, how about English.
Guy 1: Damn it! I need to go back to town and empty my bags, they are full!
Guy 2: Why didn't you say that the first time?
Guy 1: I did!
I was with a couple people are we just stood in awe at the whole thing. and horror... mostly horror...
Message edited by author 2008-12-05 17:57:46. |
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12/05/2008 05:59:31 PM · #35 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Originally posted by yanko:
But where's the evidence of this regression of wisdom in society? How can we accurately compare past societies with the present one? I think we cloud our views of past societies because we celebrate some of the works and the achievements of the select few who come from those times but is that an accurate way to measure those societies as a whole? How can anybody in good consciousness say a past society was wiser when things like biogotry and violence ran rampant more so than today?
Now, I don't necessarily disagree with your assertions, but I think we need a stronger foundation of evidence to go on besides personal pet peeves and assumptions. |
I'm equating "wisdom" with "awareness of the past" for the sake of argument. All you need to do is look at turn-of-the-century curricula to see what I'm talking about. I'm willing to concede, even, that web are *collectively* better educated than we were, say,100 years ago, when countless numbers of children were pushed into manual labor at a young age, but that isn't the point. 10,000 quarter-full bottles in a row may look impressive, but they don't equal 5000 full bottles, in sum.
R. |
What's the use of awareness of the past when you don't apply it to the present? and by that I mean the present as experienced by those past generations and societies you hold on a pedestal.
Why did it take so long for slavery to end? Why would someone willingfully build bombs that they knew would destroy cities and threaten all of humanity and actually USE them? Did these smart people suddenly become dumb overnight? I guess I can't separate the people from their actions. I can't celebrate the person while ignoring their conduct. It doesn't say much about their character when they know but do nothing.
Message edited by author 2008-12-05 18:01:15. |
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12/05/2008 06:02:32 PM · #36 |
Originally posted by K10DGuy:
I like to play around within a select community as much as the next person. I have no problem using slang and silly vernacular in the proper context. I can teabag with the best of them on XBox Live, and can LOL in a forum, and tell a close friend that their new TV is SWEET.
It's when this type of language use goes outside the context and starts being overused and abused and placed into situations that don't warrant it, or are disrespectful to the people it is being used around, that I have a problem. A real problem. |
Pardon me for a very reductive take on your statement, but are you suggesting that using 'sweet' to describe a TV is not appropriate in mixed company? That it rises to the level of disrespect, just because others wouldn't use that particular adjective to describe a TV themselves?
You seem hell-bent on equating the use of innocuous words in a positive sense to disrespect!
In my mind, it's much more disrespectful for one culture (assuming themselves to be superior; the standard bearers for us all) to point derisive fingers at another culture who's mode of communication, while perfectly acceptable to them internally, perhaps even cherished, might grate just because it's different. All the while falling back on some illusory ideal of the 'true' meaning of words... when it's really just a snapshot in time they cling to! |
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12/05/2008 06:16:28 PM · #37 |
Originally posted by yanko:
... those past generations and societies you hold on a pedestal. |
C'mon, Richard. Where did I "pedestal" them? It's so simple I didn't think I had to spell it out, the old cliché:
Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it..
How's it gonna be remembered, if it isn't valued and isn't taught? Sure, THEY screwed up too; so what? LEARN from it... Don't you think a little histrical perspective might have helped keep the economy from cratering?
R.
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12/05/2008 06:22:47 PM · #38 |
One thing I think some of you may be missing is the change in input. My son is a teenager now and his main input is the internet. When I was a teenager it was tv. When my mother was a teenager it was radio. When her mother was a teenager it was silent movies.
Until recently, the information we received was censored, sheltered, and biased. Even on television and radio we are limited to what is deemed important, appropriate, funny or interesting, BY SOMEONE ELSE. Now, this generation, the children of the internet, are exposed to vast numbers of things from many points of view with no true filter. If you want to talk about lack of knowledge, I'm pretty sure the farther back in time you go, the less knowledgeable people will be. 100 years ago, if you left home, you were lucky to end up more than 20 miles away. the exceptions were miners and soldiers but for the most part, people stayed put and experienced very little. That's good if you're from a large city, but farm dwellers often saw nothing more than the next town. Some of my husband's older relatives haven't ever been out of southern Virginia, and have lived on the same farm they were born on for their entire lives.
I disagree. the new generation is far more advanced than my generation (GenX), we were more advanced than the baby boomers, etc. My parents didn't understand me and their parents didn't understand them; we won't always understand our own children. But to say the culture is dying is kind of funny. I think you are just seeing the new culture rising...
For what its worth, the greatest thing about language is that it is alive and ever changing. I had a huge disagreement with one of my professors over this, with regard to connotation, denotation, meaning and use...Languages, like humans, are constantly evolving. And that is how it should be.
the newest generation is not stupid, nor is society as a whole. Due to the instant availability of multiple inputs (internet, tv, etc) we are just more able to see them. I blame youtube and Howard Stern. ;) |
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12/05/2008 07:17:44 PM · #39 |
Originally posted by Mousie:
You guys are getting frighteningly close to sounding like old men shaking their sticks at kids and yelling them to keep off the grass. :)
While I personally hold dear many things about language in general (I'm a programmer generalist who reads books and writes journals, ya know!) and am someone who is driven to apoplexy by things like the use of an apostrophe for pluralization... I also think that language is a living thing that grows and changes as the environment and culture changes.
Epic, awesome, elite, radical, tubular, wicked... why NOT use these words as common superlatives?
Do you worry that 'epic' somehow loses stature because of a 'watering down' of its potency when used in the chatter of gamer kids? Won't another word come along to fill the gap that's supposedly left? The concept that used to back 'epic' hasn't vanished... even if the terms we may use to describe it change.
Anyway, what's so special about the word itself? Epic: a long story. Wow! That's some Earth-shattering depth, there. You're seriously lamenting the loss of a synonym for 'long story'?
I am always amused when I see each generation claim that the new generation is a bunch of carefree, no priorities losers. This has only been happening for... what... milennia? I'm frankly shocked, what with the abject decay of our youth, generation after generation, that we haven't already collapsed into rubble on the garbage heap of history. So says one of those nigh-40 Gen-X 'slackers' we used to hear about so much!
Could it not be your own discomfort at falling behind that is causing your negative reactions? An erosion of standards my ass. Different standards, maybe. The same standards wrapped in new clothes, most likely... IMO.
That said, using an apostrohpe to pluralize... is just stupid and wrong. :) |
Dood! that post is bitchin' rad! I'm stoked. |
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12/05/2008 07:30:16 PM · #40 |
| Methinks this thread is a great example where the bar of acceptance is set just below our own feet... |
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12/05/2008 07:40:30 PM · #41 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Originally posted by yanko:
... those past generations and societies you hold on a pedestal. |
C'mon, Richard. Where did I "pedestal" them? It's so simple I didn't think I had to spell it out, the old cliché:
Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it..
How's it gonna be remembered, if it isn't valued and isn't taught? Sure, THEY screwed up too; so what? LEARN from it... Don't you think a little histrical perspective might have helped keep the economy from cratering?
R. |
Ok forget the pedestal comment and just address the rest of what I said. Yes I do think we should remember the past. That is exactly what I am trying to do here. If we were wiser in the past why did we allow ourselves to do the horrible things we did? These more cultured and more educated societies were also far more brutal than the one we live in today. Wouldn't that suggest we are wiser today than in the past? That we have learn the mistakes of the past far more than generations of the past? How is this possible if our wisdom of today has regressed? It would seem we would be getting more barbaric not less so.
Message edited by author 2008-12-05 19:42:59. |
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12/05/2008 07:42:42 PM · #42 |
Originally posted by Mousie:
So sayeth the one who didn't take a lick of the dead languages.
And just to prove my point, I could have used 'moribund' instead of 'dead'. Where did I get this epic linguistic repertoire? Certainly not from Latin or Greek, even if the roots still linger! ;) |
Especially working in the medical field, a broad knowledge of Greek and Latin roots is quite valuable, as it is in understanding much of English and several European languages. Since I don't want to read the historical records in the original, I'm not particularly interested in learning all the grammar and stuff, but expanding one's vocabulary is almost always helpful. |
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12/05/2008 08:23:22 PM · #43 |
Originally posted by Spazmo99:
Dood! that post is bitchin' rad! I'm stoked. |
Your own post is hella frosh! I'm sooooo pumped after reading it! |
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12/05/2008 09:13:51 PM · #44 |
In 'olden' times (not so long ago), parents took responsibility for educating their children and rearing them in all things.
Nowadays, we give our children's education up to the government (whom we all agree can't do anything right -- no matter WHICH side we're on)... we give our toddler's upbringing and morals up to which ever childcare we're honored to be accepted into... and we are too tired at the end of our earning day to do anything OURSELVES about teaching our children the things we believe in and want them to believe in, so we allow the 'gun game on the xbox' just "a few minutes" so we can have just a minute's rest that we so need after working all day to provide them with food and a comfortable bed.
And then we claim that the world is "going to hell in a handbasket".
I wonder why.
Message edited by author 2008-12-05 21:14:50.
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12/05/2008 09:54:19 PM · #45 |
Originally posted by Mousie:
Originally posted by Louis:
"Epic" meant something quite different to the oral tellers of epic tales. It was the transfer of culture in the only way available to bronze age people. It's a remarkable word, and is why this one in particular saddens me. |
Are you so sure that bronze-age storytellers were using the (now English) word 'epic'?
Even if it were pronounced and spelled the same... it would not be the same word. It would be ! |
It's precisely the same word. Our English word "epic" is directly derived from the Greek "epikos", meaning "epic" in the Classical sense. Greek "epikos" derives from "epos", meaning "song", which was the method of delivery of oral tradition. Short answer: exactly the same word.
Edit to fix quote tag
Message edited by author 2008-12-05 21:54:54. |
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12/05/2008 09:58:02 PM · #46 |
Originally posted by Mousie:
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
But you know what? For children now, that's not even an option... At the age of 12 I was reading Latin and Greek and studying world history, and somehow this seems important to me. Maybe it's just me?
R. |
Why not learn Java or Python or C# instead of Latin or Greek? They're much more useful languages, today. |
As I've already pointed out, my livelihood is high tech, which includes about forty hours a week of web application programming in PHP. Give me Classical Greek any day of the week. What do you care? |
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12/05/2008 10:28:37 PM · #47 |
Originally posted by Mousie:
Why not learn Java or Python or C# instead of Latin or Greek? They're much more useful languages, today. Heck, why not Chinese?
So sayeth the one who didn't take a lick of the dead languages.
And just to prove my point, I could have used 'moribund' instead of 'dead'. Where did I get this epic linguistic repertoire? Certainly not from Latin or Greek, even if the roots still linger! ;) |
I took enough of the dead languages to understand derivations of words, I can abuse the language as well as the next kid, but the difference is that I understand the initial meaning of the word so that when I abuse one, it's a lot more interesting.
Personally, I like the interesting twists between English, American, and Australian.
Three countries, separated by a common language. If you've exchanged much dialogue with our English speaking brethren, you'll know what I'm talking about.
I am also bemoaning the basic interest in what the other generations are doing, how and why they do and say what they do......both older and younger. I noticed more people of my generation with a natural curiosity than that of my daughter's peers.....(she's 13)....and having had a couple of kids fresh out of school who worked for me closely enough that I couldn't help but get to know them and their friends, I feel safe in saying that this curiosity I spoke of is not too prevalent today.
I never graduated high school.....bored to tears with the confines of formalized education.....and feel strongly that I began to learn once I shook those constraints.
I am fairly often derided for my use of the language, and often, in situations where it's abundantly clear that the verbiage I use isn't understood. That'd be at work, in the grocery store, at the gym........I have to be careful when filling out descriptions on work orders because some of the customers just won't understand the language. I can't say "Remove engine mounting bolts and ancillary bracketry to enable engine removal" because those are technical terms that customers won't understand.
Huh?
How often do those of you in this thread have to reword something you've said because someone just stared at you blankly when you asked a reasonable, but specific question?
Haven't you ever caught yourself modifying your normal speech patterns to suit your immediate environment?
I didn't do that 25 years ago.....ever.
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12/05/2008 10:39:28 PM · #48 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
But you know what? For children now, that's not even an option... At the age of 12 I was reading Latin and Greek and studying world history, and somehow this seems important to me. Maybe it's just me?
R. |
Originally posted by Mousie:
Why not learn Java or Python or C# instead of Latin or Greek? They're much more useful languages, today. |
Originally posted by Louis:
As I've already pointed out, my livelihood is high tech, which includes about forty hours a week of web application programming in PHP. Give me Classical Greek any day of the week. What do you care? |
Why not learn both? Is there a limit?
That's what I discovered, and remember hearing all through my really formative years, that there are no boundaries.
I like it that I know about cars, and some about WWII, and things about guns, and women's clothes, and paperweights, and stamps, how many monotremes there are, why helium is better than hydrogen to fly things, how cool of a guy Da Vinci was, that Louis Leakey discovered a lot in Olduvai Gorge, that there are completely different critters in Australia from the rest of the world, that there are penguins at the south pole but not the north......
I don't run into kids that even give a shit about the very planet they inhabit.
And I am exposed to a lot of different kids, and their parents, and people of various backgrounds and cultures.
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12/05/2008 10:57:58 PM · #49 |
Originally posted by dahkota:
Now, this generation, the children of the internet, are exposed to vast numbers of things from many points of view with no true filter. |
And they just gloss right over most of it because they're so beseiged by information little of it sticks.
The 'Net to me is the most amazing research tool. But you have to know how to use it as well. I cross check virtually everything I find because of the volume of information. How many of these electronic whiz kids do you know that could be bothered to do that? My kid's smart, but she doesn't have a lot of patience......because of this rapid electronic age, she wants everything NOW, so all too often she is guilty of glossing over something in her haste to get to what she wants. The 'Net, and the next-day-air society we live in today doesn't promote deep thought.
Originally posted by dahkota:
I disagree. the new generation is far more advanced than my generation (GenX), we were more advanced than the baby boomers, etc. My parents didn't understand me and their parents didn't understand them; we won't always understand our own children. But to say the culture is dying is kind of funny. I think you are just seeing the new culture rising... |
DUDE!!!
I am a baby boomer....8>)
I do understand my kid; I make it a point to.....and she's fascinating. That's my responsibility to her as her father. I may not share her tastes, but I'm damn sure going to make the effort to be a part of her life even if I don't spend all my time with her like I did when she was five. Daddy's little girl is gone, so I have to learn to live with this smart, funny, lively, intelligent, slightly eccentric younhg woman who has taken her place.
I have to grow with her if I'm to be a half-decent parent, don't I?
Originally posted by dahkota:
For what its worth, the greatest thing about language is that it is alive and ever changing. I had a huge disagreement with one of my professors over this, with regard to connotation, denotation, meaning and use...Languages, like humans, are constantly evolving. And that is how it should be. |
Of course it is, and a hep cat, a cool dude, a regular guy, or just another person such as myself in order to live with that evolution simply needs to pay attention.
One thing I figured out a long time ago is to not try to be someone that I'm not, and that if I'm in an environment I'm not familiar with, keep my eyes and ears open, find someone who's "native", and learn from them. I find for the most part that acedemics are the worst culprits as far as resisting change. It's kind of anathema to what they do on a daily basis if you think about it.
Originally posted by dahkota:
the newest generation is not stupid, nor is society as a whole. Due to the instant availability of multiple inputs (internet, tv, etc) we are just more able to see them. |
I don't think that the newest generation is stupid, my observation just seems to indicate that they're less inclined to want to gain knowledge. Why would they want to learn anything if the answer to any question that they MIGHT want answered is just the click of a mouse away.
Knowledge for its own sake just ain't that cool it seems these days.
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12/05/2008 11:04:29 PM · #50 |
Originally posted by Louis:
It's precisely the same word. Our English word "epic" is directly derived from the Greek "epikos", meaning "epic" in the Classical sense. Greek "epikos" derives from "epos", meaning "song", which was the method of delivery of oral tradition. Short answer: exactly the same word. |
I really don't understand how you can claim Greek 'epikos' is EXACTLY the same word as English's 'epic'. They're not even spelled the same! Likewise, in English 'epic' means a long story, not necessarily a song. Epic is, on the face of it, a derivative of 'epikos' with an altered meaning, and is clear evidence and that language changes over time and that new words come to represent the ideas behind old terminology... you seem to be making my points for me, without realizing it! |
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