The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Questions of that structure make me wish English had a contradictory/negatory affirmative like the French "si" - so very useful!

That would be good, but does any other language have the equivalant of "Yeah, right."?

What English really needs is the ability unamibguously state something like "Then he hit him." following a sentence mentioning two people. I know Latin can, and assume other languages can as well.

My rant of the day is that I frequently encounter such ambiguity absent any nearby context to resolve it.

[Quoth]

Also I considered people that speak English and the first language of the country isn't English. I've no idea how many that is.

For Example
India is 7th largest by land mass and now largest population.
English is used extensively in business and administration and has the status of a "subsidiary official language". The literacy rate in 2011 was 74.04%: 65.46% among females and 82.14% among males.[370] The rural-urban literacy gap, which was 21.2 percentage points in 2001, dropped to 16.1 percentage points in 2011. The improvement in the rural literacy rate is twice that of urban areas.[368] Kerala is the most literate state with 93.91% literacy; while Bihar the least with 63.82%.
India has 28 States and 8 Union territories.

Nagaland in India is far North East with pop. of over 2 million. Its official language (and main one in use) is English. It's about 80% Literacy. About 88% are Chrisitans.

Kenya (East Africa) is over 52 Million. Official languages are Swahili and English. Over 85% Christians. British English is primarily used in Kenya. Additionally, a distinct local dialect, Kenyan English, is used by some. There are about 120 ethnic groups and maybe 70 languages. Literacy: total population: 81.5%, male: 85%, female: 78.2%

Botswana, Greek Cyprus, Israel, Netherlands, Scandinavia have high numbers of English speakers.

How many in USA speak Spanish?
How many in USA speak "ethnic" English rather than USA English?


It's more useful to consider people that would easily and regularly use English, which outside of USA and American Colonies isn't American English. Australian and South African English is closer to "British" English. Canada is the only major place with mix, but also has French.

Adult Literacy in the USA is 86%. How many of those have Spanish as first language, or don't speak "White" official USA English? World Average is about 87%

Also interesting is the distribution internationally of sales of English Language books.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

I've seen it, along with "I could of been mistaken" (instead of "could have") and "He's lyin, is all I'm sayin." (omitting the apostrophe)

Both were intentional by the author to indicate the character's brain actually formed the words that way on purpose. And, these examples are from books that are now at least 20 years old, and some close to 50.

As far as I'm concerned, dialog in books has the same rules of grammar as dialog in reality...none.

The instances I was ranting about were not in a dialog, though. I would certainly forgive the use if I sensed it was intentional. Sadly not in this case, just sloppy writing and editing.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

What English really needs is the ability unamibguously state something like "Then he hit him." following a sentence mentioning two people. I know Latin can, and assume other languages can as well.

You have to replace he or him with a name. That sort of thing in English isn't going to change.

Latin can do all sorts of stuff, but it's dead and horrible. I spent 3 years learning it. Currently it's not pronounced properly and Church Latin isn't what Romans (a nasty evil empire) had. Too many people since have tried to emulate the Empire days. Look at source of Kaiser and Tsar. Or the names in USA such as Senate, Capitol etc. Far too much worship of Roman stuff, esp. in England upper classes in the past. Ask Jerusalem in 67 AD, or Carthage, or the Greeks, or European Celts (Keltoi). Oh they are dead. Their cities and cultures destroyed by Romans that wrote lies about them.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Renate

Well, it's like negative questions. They don't translate well out of English. "Don't you want to go to dinner?"

In Estonian negative questions are quite common and translate perfectly well. The example above would mean exactly the same in Estonian.

We even have an analogue to "Do you mind?", although it's far less common and used rarely.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The instances I was ranting about were not in a dialog, though. I would certainly forgive the use if I sensed it was intentional. Sadly not in this case, just sloppy writing and editing.

Yes, the author can do anything appropriate to ethnicity / culture / class / period in dialogue, but not otherwise.

Publishers used to employ good editors. Now even the Agents expect polished work, so more junk slips through than 50 years ago.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The instances I was ranting about were not in a dialog, though. I would certainly forgive the use if I sensed it was intentional. Sadly not in this case, just sloppy writing and editing.

Oh, that is terrible.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

In Estonian negative questions are quite common and translate perfectly well. The example above would mean exactly the same in Estonian.

We even have an analogue to "Do you mind?", although it's far less common and used rarely.

Hibernian English (British English spoken / written in Ireland) and to an extent in Wales and Scotland has more nuances and constructions that amuse rather than confuse actual Southern English people*. Some of the grammar is based on Irish, even though the person (and maybe the family never) knows no Irish.

[* Yorkshire, Northumberland, Cumbria etc might be different]

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Oh, that is terrible.

Absolutely!

[Sirtel]

Yesterday I came across an even more egregious example in the same book. The nose of the main character (female) itched because there was a lot of dust and she scratched it. Well, in the book, it was written "His nose itched. She scratched it."

The editor was definitely mostly unconscious on the job.

It's not a bad book, but both the writing and editing are unbelievably sloppy, especially for a tradpub.
(And it was first published almost 30 years ago, so it has no excuse of sinking standards either).

[Quoth]

However even fixing gender it's still really clunky:
"Her nose itched. She scratched it."

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

That would be good, but does any other language have the equivalant of "Yeah, right."?

What English really needs is the ability unamibguously state something like "Then he hit him." following a sentence mentioning two people. I know Latin can, and assume other languages can as well..

YES! This would dramatically reduce ambiguity. Hindi achieves that in a slightly roundabout way by its reflexive pronoun - if "he" hit "himself", the sentence would have to say "himself, effectively. If it didn't, then it means person b hit person c

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

However even fixing gender it's still really clunky:
"Her nose itched. She scratched it."

Yeah, the writing is nothing to write home about. Fortunately I don't read it for fine phrasing or lovely language.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

YES! This would dramatically reduce ambiguity. Hindi achieves that in a slightly roundabout way by its relexive pronoun - if "he" hit "himself", the sentence would have to say "himself, effectively. If it didn't, then it means person b hit person c

It's the same in Estonian - no one says "He hit him" if they mean "he hit himself". "Him" and "himself" are two totally different words in this case.

However, as Estonian has no gendered pronouns, we almost always have to use names in such cases, or the phrase would be totally unintelligible.

[ownedbycats]

I can't think of any specific examples at the moment, but books where there's no indication it's a sequel.