Are you a language snob?

so youre a grammar nazi? you must hate me then

Not really, but i really hate it when some words constantly have its meaning altered, like i cannot keep up lmao.

That feeling when someone uses the term "POV" incorrectly, especially on social media.

@Mualani How do they use it? I don't think I've ever seen it used wrong.

I personally don't care about how people pronounce things when they're common misconceptions like your examples, I just take it as an extension of accents and however they were raised.

I really dislike when people diagnosis themselves with social anxiety, you don't have that just because you can't keep up a conversation.

@Anjuro Like, the person says "POV: you're hungry", but the video isn't in POV, it's just someone eating. Like, what the hell, that's not POV...

@Scavendgarr Yeah I mean you could almost say that those people who want to alter language are the counterpart to my position. I want there to be an order to things where there's right and wrong and a defined meaning to things, some other people just want things to be convenient and let the rules be damned.

Imo words should rarely have their meaning altered, giving them more nuances is fine but if you literally want the word to mean something else you should probably make a new word, my 2 cents.

@Dumb

I disagree with that big time. In some languages accent or intonation even bears meaning, its not just irrelevant fluff.

Especially from the perspective of learning a foreign language, I think you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't try to say things properly. I think its a sign of giving up, "I can't sound like a native speaker anyway so why bother? It's out of my control", this is a whether you believe you can't or not, you're right, sort of situation.

@Anjuro Different viewpoints (and languages with their own peculiarities based on your profile) then, I suppose. I interpret it more like getting comfortable with the language. When I talk to a non-native Spanish speaker I can tell if they structure their sentences based on the rules they learned or if they use words that are used in other regions. It's not a bad thing at all, but I don't think it really matters in day-to-day conversations so I don't care if they talk 1% differently.

I can see that you have an interest in learning languages though so I understand why it means a lot more to not give up on learning. But I think in the grand scheme of things, in non-professional settings it really shouldn't matter if there are some minor and common mistakes.

As an English language major, I understand. Can't say I get easily triggered by simple mistakes, but mispronunciations and terrible spelling are two things I can't ignore no matter what. I make grammatical mistakes all the time when texting, but it's cuz I just don't care that much about it in the context of online interactions.

Also, language is ever-changing. Some words will acquire different meanings with usage, so I don't really agree with your whole "phobia" rant. If people start using words in different contexts and start attaching different meanings to them, then that new meaning will find its place into that language's grammar, regardless of the minority's opinion on it. Especially borrowings from foreign languages.

Of course this is true, but I have watched videos on youtube to see what linguists have to say, and there are voices on both sides of the aisle. I guess at the end of the day, the only thing I can say is from my perspective the word is simply being misused.

One thing I am always a little bit sussed out about is this idea that "language evolves over time therefore the meanings of words can change erratically and that's fine". How common is this actually? Of course when words get imported from other languages, they are often bastardized, of that there is no doubt, but when the meaning of a word has already been determined, even if 100 years pass, does it really ever change completely? Idk, I am sure there are examples of it happening, but the way I see it, words have an etymology, and generally speaking, they don't just change randomly. Either they gain new nuances by being used metaphorically or in a certain context or the meaning gradually shifts over time, but no one step in the process should ever be an arbitrary redefinition (again, maybe there are exceptions).

@deg Not a grammar nazi, more like a grammar enjoyer. The more uncommon something is the more understanding I am, but it does annoy me when people get the common stuff wrong, especially if they have this "I am blatantly wrong and I just don't care" mentality.

Also I am only human, if its something that I don't have a very deep understanding of myself then it doesn't bother me. Like say the word forte, I've heard you're supposed to say it the same way you say "fort" but I don't know (the dictionary lists both), whatever you choose in this scenario does not bother me that much.

Not sure if there's an old english word that's spelt forte and pronounced fort, but the way the word is used today is the italian word "forte" which means "strong", the english will usually pronounce it "fortey", it's 100% wrong, the correct pronounciation is actually "forté" like "pokémon", this is not a joke

@DigiCat That seems to contradict what the dictionary says, from merriam webster:

"In forte we have a word derived from French that in its "strong point" sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation.""

as far as what the correct pronounciation is, they had this to say:

"So you can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose. All are standard, however. In British English \ˈfȯ-ˌtā\ and \ˈfȯt\ predominate; \ˈfȯr-ˌtā\ and \fȯr-ˈtā\ are probably the most frequent pronunciations in American English."

Now just because many people are saying it a certain way does not make that the correct way, although I suppose eventually you have to realize you can't be fighting battles like this and just accept the most common pronounciation, but the dictionary does not seem to agree with your proposed forté pronounciation, which is not listed at all (but again, I cannot confirm whether it is actually technically correct and just a lot of people are saying it wrong)

@Anjuro Yes "fort" is french for "strong", same as "forte" is italian for "strong", the 3 words have the same meaning, so i guess it just changes weather you want to use the french or italian pronounciation, both languages derived from latin so it makes sense that there'll be some similarities as they each evolved


Maybe not, but i'm italian

@DigiCat

I guess in this case since the english version was brought over from french (as a lot of english vocabulary has been) it also inherited that pronunciation.



Ah so we were neighbours all along :) Well, used to be, nowadays I live in Finland. All my Italian friends be saying "sto cazzo" or something, idk XD

@Anjuro Haha i guess we can settle somewhere in the middle as it was brought over from the french but somehow inherited the italian spelling xD


They probs saying "sto cazzo" cuz they envy you, rn you're nice and cool near the arctic while we're melting in an inferno-like heatwave 🥲

No, I'm not a language snob. I just think that low-level programming is better than high-level programming, and C and Rust seem to anchor the proper amount of freedom versus safety in terms of computational paradigm?
Anyway, transphobia is about phobia. Phobia is not just about repulsion but also fear, and the result thereof. Transphobia, coming from othering and dehumanization, comes from both fear and repulsion, but also disgust. When I'm scared of a spider, I am both disgusted and horrified irrationally. That's a good point to come from etymology. Plus the fact that homo- and trans- are from the same sphere of prefixes (Greek and Latin) makes it proper... at least by the establishment of academia lol
I believe transphobia to really be phobia. It's certainly provoking irrationality, and as I've faced it disgust. The essence of your being becomes scanned as something else entirely the moment you come out.
@Noboru same thing here: I think phobia implies a repulsion, like the neurophysiology of fear & disgust & frustration altogether
now for homophobia & transphobia & fatphobia (whose prefix could be better chosen) there is also behind the representation of social reproduction, however abstract or concrete (having children for instance), and oftentimes religion (parasively I believe to be so) dictates representations, hence Sodom

Amen XD I mean there's always a tradeoff between low-level and high level, do you take 10 times as long to build your own custom solution, and then you also have to maintain it till the end of the project, or do you use tools others have created as a starting point. And of course development in a low-level language tends to be harder and more error prone (if you are not already highly experienced in that language) but at the end of the day, sometimes you just need the performance. And sure you can use Numba in python to pretend that your code is fast, but that only gets you so far.



I can sort of see your point, but this is not how these words are really used. Perhaps its easiest to show if you consider the word "fatphobia". Believe me, I am neither repulsed by my overweight relatives, nor horrified irrationally, but simultaneously I do think some of them should lose weight and some of them agree. What people call fatphobia is actually more about fat acceptance or fat positiivity, so when you are being called fatphobic basically they are saying "you presented a negative opinion regarding being fat, and that means you are a bad person". So not only is the definition of phobia extended to any negative reaction, there is also the asscociation of moral wrongness, whereas there is no morality to a phobia, its just a strong fear reaction that you have to something that is out of your control.

Also might I add, not all phobias are irrational, some are quite rational, like say the fear of heights. I guess you could say the fear itself is irrational since you didn't reason about the situation and come to a conclusion, you're just immediately scared and/or there is no rational advantage to being scared other than avoiding the dangerous situation in the future, but all I am saying is sometimes there is a reason to be scared.

So those are my 2 problems with the usage. It redefines phobia to any negative reaction or comment, whereas phobias are not about whether something was negative or positive but rather the fear and/or possible repulsion of the person suffering from the phobia, in these words that redefine phobia its no longer a description of mental state but rather a subversive attack on your moral character.

@Anjuro I disagree with the fear of heights example, it's rational :x
I'm awkward and prone to die with heights lol

In certain matters, since in general I am a rather tongue-tied person. For example, I really doesn't like when people use slang that is too strange or absurd (in my opinion) or use established terms in a gross violation of the meaning. So, I don't like "cooking" anthologies like "we ate well today" because I find such comparisons devalue the content to the level of "fodder".

@RobertBobert I think you're cooooooking, we're eating good today

@EmiliaHoarfrost Don't rub salt in my wound (c).

@RobertBobert I will rub exactly 13 bits of salt in your wound with my left hand while riding a black cat on Friday 13th

In certain matters, since in general I am a rather tongue-tied person. For example, I really doesn't like when people use slang that is too strange or absurd (in my opinion) or use established terms in a gross violation of the meaning. So, I don't like "cooking" anthologies like "we ate well today" because I find such comparisons devalue the content to the level of "fodder".

@RobertBobert This bothered me too at one point, people saying things like "this is good eats", I mean it just sounds stupid and barely even makes sense grammatically speaking. But the way I have come to view it is that is basically brainrot talk "lvl 10 sigma gyatt only in ohio, sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler skibidi". I mean this is no longer English, or coherent in any way, its just scat that some people find vaguely funny. When I view it from that perspective it doesn't bother me as much.

Does phobia always mean fear however? I think it can also mean aversion and in this case homophobia kind of makes sense.

@Zarutaku At least in Greek it only means fear, and even in English before these words became popular I never saw it refer to anything other than the medical defintion of phobia.

But even then, its not like aversion is what these words are about either, I'll just quote what I wrote earlier.