Is Grammar Really That Important Any More?

[no.guru]

Yes, grammar is very important.

Maybe not for casual texts, but you won't get a job using "gr8" on a resume. Not much of one, anyway.

[pruss]

It's also worth noting that a number of misspellings and grammatical slips promote ambiguity or call on the reader to mentally correct the text. Both of these can harm communication, if only by making the reader have to think about a less important issue.

Sometimes, such slips can waste the reader's time. I remember spending some time in grad school with a sentence in a translation of Kant that said something like: "This can not happen". (The "This" and "happen" are made up right now, because I no longer remember the exact words; the "can not" is an exact quote.) Given that the situation Kant was talking about seemed like something that Kant would think is impossible, I spent some time trying to figure out why instead of saying that the situation is impossible, Kant merely said that it can fail to happen. Finally, puzzled, I pulled out the German version, and even though I don't actually know German, it became obvious that "can not" was a misspelling of "cannot". Oops.

I also find that a writer's holding on to the distinction between "who" and "whom" makes complex phrases easier to parse. (I have never actually seen, however, a case in print where there was real ambiguity due to the use of "who" for "whom". Though a case is possible. Compare "Who am I to kill?" (the speaker thinks he or she is not a killer) with "Whom am I to kill?")

That said, it's still true that language changes, that distinctions disappear and new ones show up.

[pruss]

Originally Posted by no.guru

Maybe not for casual texts, but you won't get a job using "gr8" on a resume. Not much of one, anyway.

You might get away with it if it's a well-placed case of irony, though few employers probably have the right kind of sense of humor. :-)

[teh603]

Originally Posted by HarryT

but there's a difference between grammatical changes and not knowing the difference between "its" and "it's"; the latter is just dumb ignorance which there's absolutely no excuse or reason for.

So why don't we BBQ people for getting "hanged" and "hung" confused if "its" and "it's" are such a big thing? Or "lay" and "laid"?

I'll be honest, getting those two mixed up is a lot more noticeable than whether or not an apostrophe is there.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pruss

Sometimes, such slips can waste the reader's time. I remember spending some time in grad school with a sentence in a translation of Kant that said something like: "This can not happen". (The "This" and "happen" are made up right now, because I no longer remember the exact words; the "can not" is an exact quote.) Given that the situation Kant was talking about seemed like something that Kant would think is impossible, I spent some time trying to figure out why instead of saying that the situation is impossible, Kant merely said that it can fail to happen. Finally, puzzled, I pulled out the German version, and even though I don't actually know German, it became obvious that "can not" was a misspelling of "cannot". Oops.

Philosophy is an area where I imagine it's pretty easy for ambiguities to arise, precisely because clarity of thought is key to the subject. I remember struggling mightily with some of Plato's dialogues, and just not being able to follow some of the arguments. It was only when I was able to read them in the original Greek that the meaning became clear. There are some parts of the text which are almost untranslatable.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It was only when I was able to read them in the original Greek that the meaning became clear. There are some parts of the text which are almost untranslatable.

1) Show off.
2) I'm pretty fluent in English, but still have a hard time understanding what was meant in stuff written a few centuries ago (even a few decades ago sometimes). Wouldn't genuine understanding require not only being fluent in the language, but in the idiom of the times?
3) Untranslatable? C'mon....2000 years removed or not, these are humans, with human brains, raised in cultures of Earth. I can accept not having a word, or a convenient phrase, but untranslatable? I find that very difficult to believe, Mr. Smart.

ApK

[HarryT]

No, I mean it literally. There's a dialogue called the "Euthyphro" in which Socrates is talking about the nature of "holiness". He asks the question "are things holy because the gods love them, or do the gods love them because they are holy?" and goes on to illustrate the point with a whole series of examples of cause and effect. The examples are written using active and passive participles in Greek, and, if translated literally, the result is virtually meaningless in English. It can be paraphrased in English, but it can't be translated - at least not in any literal sense. It all makes perfect sense in Greek, though. That's why I say that I wasn't able to understand what Plato was actually saying until I was able to read the original - it's the literal truth.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It can be paraphrased in English, but it can't be translated - at least not in any literal sense. It all makes perfect sense in Greek, though. That's why I say that I wasn't able to understand what Plato was actually saying until I was able to read the original - it's the literal truth.

I'd like to hear more about this, but am not sure if this thread is the right place.
Surely there must be a way to accurately express or explain the meaning in English?
I wonder if what you call "paraphrasing" might really be the interpretation of grammar and idiom that is required for all good translation? It's never a 'literal' process, as you'd have by just decoding a substitution cipher. Even translating "Hello" usually involves a "paraphrase" to "whatever the target language's term of greeting is."
In other words, I wonder if what we non-Greek-speakers need is a better translation.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

In this Tuned in, Taped in, Turned on world with its super infra-red highways, WiFi and SMS, does grammar and punctuation really have a place?

For someone who was schooled in a system where punctuation, verb conjugation, proper use of prepositions and pronouns was drummed into me via the edge of a steel ruler across my knuckles, I still sometimes forget the rules, as anyone who has read my posts will attest to. So was it all worth it?

In this new mobile world where R U OK, C U 2nite, LMAO and ROLF actually mean something, does it really matter anymore if what you write is grammatically correct?

Maybe that is the answer to dwindling book sales (E or P). Perhaps if we all adopted “Newspeak” it would encourage the younger generations to read more.

Yes, it is.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by ApK

I'd like to hear more about this, but am not sure if this thread is the right place.
Surely there must be a way to accurately express or explain the meaning in English?
I wonder if what you call "paraphrasing" might really be the interpretation or grammar and idiom that is required for all good translation? It's never a 'literal' process, as you'd have by just decoding a substitution cipher. Even translating "Hello" usually involves a "paraphrase" to "whatever the target language's term of greeting is."
In other words, I wonder if what we non-Greek-speakers need is a better translation.

I also read Greek, but that is because I study biblical texts, and we have the same problem that Harry mentioned. There are constructs in Greek that do not exist in English, and since no one speaks that kind of Greek any more there are cases where we just can not know with a high degree of certainty what it means.


The simplest example I can think of is:

Acts 2:38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized... (NASB)

Is a translation of:
Πέτρος δὲ πρὸς αὐτούς, Μετανοήσατε, [φησίν,] καὶ βαπτισθήτω...

(I know, I know, it is all Greek to you! Sheesh)

The problem there is the word βαπτισθήτω which is a 3rd person imperative. We do not have that construct in American English at all. This passage is one of considerable theological dispute, which would go away if we knew what a 3rd person imperative should mean. The best case I have heard is that is a order to a 3rd party to allow the event to happen. So in this case "and let them be baptized" is probably closer to the intended meaning, but since that version of Greek died out a long time ago, the debate will carry on.

Another example that is easy to point to is in Romans 12:1

The Greek says : τὴν λογικὴν λατρείαν ὑμῶν

And that could mean:

This is your spiritual worship
This is your logical worship
This is your reasonable worship
This is your spiritual service
This is your logical service
This is your reasonable service

There is just not enough information in the Greek to tell us which was meant by the writer. As with the first example, volumes have been written on which is write, and will carry on til the end.

To give you a reverse example, if you came across the expression:

Buy and large dogs are bigger then house cats

"Buy and large" could be a very hard expression to translate 1,000 years after the last American English speaker had died out.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

and since no one speaks that kind of Greek any more there are cases where we just can not know with a high degree of certainty what it means.

That's part of what I was getting about needing more than being able to speak the language. It's sounds like it's not a matter of being untranslatable, it's a matter of being incomprehensible in any language, because the knowledge to precisely interpret is lost .

Πέτρος δὲ πρὸς αὐτούς, Μετανοήσατε, [φησίν,] καὶ βαπτισθήτω...

(I know, I know, it is all Greek to you! Sheesh)

I think you spelled πρὸς wrong.

Buy and large dogs are bigger then house cats

"Buy and large" could be a very hard expression to translate 1,000 years after the last American English speaker had died out.

You spelled "by" wrong.
Yes, if knowledge of the idiom was lost, then full understanding could be impossible regardless of the language.

But didn't the ancient Greeks have, just as we will hopefully have, grammar books, or books on rhetoric, or translations between contemporary languages, a la the Rosetta Stone, that survived to inform this sort of thing?

ApK

[HarryT]

I know we're slightly straying from the point, but good translation is as much about what reads well, as what is absolutely literally right. Another example from the Bible, this time the Latin Vulgate:

dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux

which is, of course, translated in the KJV as the beautiful:

And God said "Let there be light", and there was light.

Now "fiat" is actually the 3rd person singular passive subjunctive form of "facio" - "to make", so a more accurate translation of "fiat lux" would be "Let light be made", but "Let there be light" is just so much "better" as a translation, even if it's not 100% literal.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by ApK

Yes, if knowledge of the idiom was lost, then full understanding could be impossible regardless of the language.

And this is a big problem with the ancient languages.

Originally Posted by ApK

But didn't the ancient Greeks have, just as we will hopefully have, grammar books, or books on rhetoric, or translations between contemporary languages, a la the Rosetta Stone, that survived to inform this sort of thing?

ApK

We do use other places where the word was used, where the meaning was known. For example βαπτίζω from above was used by the clothing industry at that time to describe the action of submersing cloth in a dye. So we know the word means to submerse under liquid.

A lot of information was lost during the dark ages, and etc.

Future peoples will have easier time of it because we store and save SO much more information then previous generations. Heck the Bible alone is in 1000's of languages, one could reconstruct much of many of our languages just from that one book, never mind everything else we have.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I know we're slightly straying from the point, but good translation is as much about what reads well, as what is absolutely literally right. Another example from the Bible, this time the Latin Vulgate:

dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux

which is, of course, translated in the KJV as the beautiful:

And God said "Let there be light", and there was light.

Now "fiat" is actually the 3rd person singular passive subjunctive form of "facio" - "to make", so a more accurate translation of "fiat lux" would be "Let light be made", but "Let there be light" is just so much "better" as a translation, even if it's not 100% literal.

Yea, when I translate I often have to smooth out the English a bit, which makes it a bit easier to understand, but can hide some of the meaning. Its a trade off that is made with each every sentence.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by ApK

You spelled "by" wrong.
ApK

I also used the wrong write LOL ops