Cato's Grammar Grumble

[jochanaan]

I asked my friend Fack about that and he nodded.

I wonder if he was any relation to my college classmate, whose last name was Fuchs...? Any more of these and they could resurrect the famous Colorado singing group the Mother Folkers! http://mother-folkers.com/

[Wanderer]

...whose last name was Fuchs...?

That's another family name with huge band potential, e.g. *The Fuchsias*.

[kishnevi]

I have learned from experience with my customers that Spanish speakers not totally fluent in English will pronounce fuchsia with the u as in up,
the chs as ks..a bit startling as they tend to be women of about 70 years old.

[jochanaan]

I have learned from experience with my customers that Spanish speakers not totally fluent in English will pronounce fuchsia with the u as in up,
the chs as ks..a bit startling as they tend to be women of about 70 years old.

[Ken B]

Not grammar, but will interest Cato.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-esquith-investigation-20150617-story.html

[Jo498]

I do not understand. Is "Huckleberry Finn" completely banned (because n word and other slang?) and this includes even passages not containing racial slurs? Or is the episode with the conmen "Duke" and "King" deemed to bawdy or violent (one of them does receive some physical punishment in one town) for children?

[Ken B]

Another, not grammar but will interest Cato.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/oregon-white-privilege-100K

[The Six]

Not grammar, but will interest Cato:

[Cato]

Not grammar, but will interest Cato.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-esquith-investigation-20150617-story.html

Not grammar, but will interest Cato:

Another, not grammar but will interest Cato.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/oregon-white-privilege-100K

Many thanks to The Six and Ken B. ! 

Concerning the LA Times article on the suspended teacher daring to read Mark Twain aloud: nothing in LaLaLand can surprise me, and nothing - no matter how idiotic or bizarre - is currently impossible in our modern world.  Bizarre things impossible 40 or 50 years ago are  now yawns of boredom.

Concerning "micro-aggressions" and needing to be counseled about them: my teaching style has always been about macro-aggressions.  Micro-aggressions are tossed out a dime a baker's dozen!   0:)

And now to some language items: I overheard this conversation in a motel lobby in Virginia:

"Whe' ya gah ea bre'fa'?"
"Ahno. Wha' th' gah?"
"Ba' 'n' aze 'n' wahz 'n' u'er stuh."

I have never heard English spoken with so many consonants completely missing: no, the speakers were not physically handicapped, except for weighing between 350-450 pounds, nor were they mentally handicapped.

Translation (aided by the context of the dialogue):

"When are you going to eat breakfast?"
"I don't know. What (do) they got?"
"Bacon and eggs and waffles and other stuff."

At a farmer's market, which had signs along a major freeway in South Carolina, more fun without consonants, vowels, and decimals!  Assorted signs:

"Canlopes: $100"    "Broclli: $100"  "Callyflowrs $100"  "Taters $500 20#"

The latter - "Taters" - could be seen as a cute Southernism.  The others... 

[Cato]

Many thanks to The Six and Ken B. ! 

Concerning the LA Times article on the suspended teacher daring to read Mark Twain aloud: nothing in LaLaLand can surprise me, and nothing - no matter how idiotic or bizarre - is currently impossible in our modern world.  Bizarre things impossible 40 or 50 years ago are  now yawns of boredom.

Concerning "micro-aggressions" and needing to be counseled about them: my teaching style has always been about macro-aggressions.  Micro-aggressions are tossed out a dime a baker's dozen!   0:)

And now to some language items: I overheard this conversation in a motel lobby in Virginia:

"Whe' ya gah ea bre'fa'?"
"Ahno. Wha' th' gah?"
"Ba' 'n' aze 'n' wahz 'n' u'er stuh."

I have never heard English spoken with so many consonants completely missing: no, the speakers were not physically handicapped, except for weighing between 350-450 pounds, nor were they mentally handicapped.

Translation (aided by the context of the dialogue):

"When are you going to eat breakfast?"
"I don't know. What (do) they got?"
"Bacon and eggs and waffles and other stuff."

At a farmer's market, which had signs along a major freeway in South Carolina, more fun without consonants, vowels, and decimals!  Assorted signs:

"Canlopes: $100"    "Broclli: $100"  "Callyflowrs $100"  "Taters $500 20#"

The latter - "Taters" - could be seen as a cute Southernism.  The others... 

Similar to Ken B.'s "not grammar" links, this vignette is technically not grammar, but a use of language impossible 20 years ago and before, but now...

A female teenager - very obese and unhappy looking - at the motel in Virginia was wearing a T-Shirt which used the font of the now ubiquitous "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan from England.

What it proclaimed, however, was quite different, and gave me an image of the Apocalypse:

"Fu... You

    and

Su.. My  Di.."

The last line made me wonder if the creature might be a hermaphrodite.  What made this especially depressing was that the idiot girl's idiot mother was with her.  One wonders about the company which manufactured such a shirt, and the angry mentality behind the decision to buy and wear such a shirt.

I made my displeasure known with a sneering glower and a sarcastic clearing of the throat aimed at both of them, and left the area.  Freedom of speech to be sure, but...

[kishnevi]

Seen on the Book of Face

[The Six]

This is a real sign.

[Ken B]

This is a real sign.

Good thing they didn't include a call in number.

[Ken B]

Not grammar but will interest Cato

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/209868/

[Florestan]

Not grammar but will interest Cato

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/209868/

The original article: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/why-college-kids-are-avoiding-the-study-of-literature/#gf_18

There is an obvious proof that the great novelists knew more about human psychology than any social scientist who ever lived. If psychologists, sociologists, or economists understood people as well as George Eliot or Tolstoy did, they could create portraits of people as believable as Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke or Anna Karenina. But no social scientist has ever come close.

Amen!

[The Six]

There is an obvious proof that the great novelists knew more about human psychology than any social scientist who ever lived. If psychologists, sociologists, or economists understood people as well as George Eliot or Tolstoy did, they could create portraits of people as believable as Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke or Anna Karenina. But no social scientist has ever come close.

It's almost as if scientists study actual, living people, instead of creating characters in works of fiction!

[Florestan]

It's almost as if scientists study actual, living people, instead of creating characters in works of fiction!

That is exactly the idea: for all their studying actual, living people, social scientists know less about them than writers creating fictional characters do. 

[The Six]

That's asserted, but I didn't see anything to back it up. The writer's "obvious proof" is nonsense.

[Cato]

Not grammar but will interest Cato

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/209868/

Thank you!  A salient quote:

Literary texts, like other artworks, are neither more nor less important than any other cultural artifact or practice. Keeping the emphasis on how cultural meanings are produced, circulated, and consumed, the investigator will focus on art or literature insofar as such works connect with broader social factors, not because they possess some intrinsic interest or special aesthetic values.

This is the war-cry for killing off the love of reading in the schools, at least on the higher levels.  Why would the professor talk about the psychology of a  character like e.g. Pierre in War and Peace or of the personal tortures in Lord Jim ?

"The private life is dead in Russia." - The Communist terrorist Strelnikov in the movie version of Dr. Zhivago.

Anyway...

At my doctor's office a poster from an international drug company which was pushing a drug for asthma and other breathing problems:

"Help us, help you have control over your COPD symptoms."   

I did not have my red pen with me, otherwise...! 

[DaveF]

At a farmer's market, which had signs along a major freeway in South Carolina, more fun without consonants, vowels, and decimals!  Assorted signs:

"Canlopes: $100"    "Broclli: $100"  "Callyflowrs $100"  "Taters $500 20#"

The latter - "Taters" - could be seen as a cute Southernism.  The others... 

You think that's bad!  In the UK, it would also be sprinkled with the, in this case, accurately named "Greengrocers' Apostrophe", so: "Canlope's, Callyflower's, Tater's".  (For good measure, they would probably add "Its all fresh today".