Where Does Dialect Stop and Grammar Begin?

Examining dialect and grammar in emails.

Here's the scenario. You work with someone who is from the south, where the spoken dialect includes words such as ya'll and ain't. You are trying to sell something to this person, so in order to appear friendly, you adopt their lingo. The usage of these dialectal words shows up in emails as well. If words such as ya'll and ain't are used in an email, is it poor grammar (in this scenario, you are someone who is a prescriptionist) or is it an extension of dialect?

My argument is that it is an extension of dialect. Even within a business setting, many people write emails as if they were talking to the recipient - more informal than "professional." And if they write as if they were holding a conversation, then it makes more sense that using dialectal words is an extension of dialect rather than poor grammar.

What do you think?

Technology and Language: Spell Check

First, a poem from "Candidate for a Pullet Surprise," The Journal of Irreproducible Results:

I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles to reed,
And aides me when aye rime.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.


What really is spell check? That spell check actually checks your spelling is a misnomer, because when you run spell check on your computer, you are asking it to compare the words you have typed to the computer's internal dictionary. That means if a word is not in the computer's dictionary, such as places, last names, and unique first names (like our own Miyaunna) the computer will consider it misspelled, even though it is correct. My last name is considered spelled incorrectly on OpenOffice.org (running on my Linux computer). Suggestions for correct spelling include Shortener, Softener, Schooner, and my favorite, Shotgunner. However, as I am just noticing, on Windows XP/Mozilla Firefox/Blogger, Shortener and Shotgunner are spelled "incorrectly."

As with the poem above, it is apparent that spell check does not check content. Using an incorrect word (due for do, sew for so, knot for not and so on), will escape the notice of a spell checker - like when I meant to type ganging up and typed gaining up instead, and didn't realize it until Kyle so "graciously" pointed it out. Being able to check grammar in a word processing document may be one way to make sure that your grammar is correct, but it is not fail-proof, just as spell check is not. Computers do not think for themselves - they have been programmed to process information in a specific way. Grammar and spelling are not always cut and dry - consider Kyle's post about a vs an, and how under different circumstances, both an historic and a historic can be correct. Grammar evolves, new words are born, and computers may not have this updated knowledge. There is no substitute for human proof-reading - whether we realize it or not, we instinctively know more about own language than a computer does.

With all the negatives of spell check out of the way, I will say that used with the correct frame of mind, spell check can be very beneficial. As Miyaunna said in her comment about the poll results for what kind of influence you think spell check has had on our knowledge of language, spell check keeps her on her toes. When you are already a decent speller, spell check serves more as a time saver to clue you in if you have misspelled a word, or if, as it happens to me often, typing too fast causes you to mix up letters within a word. And spell check also allows you to see how a word should be spelled, which can help you with spelling in the future as long as you learn from your mistakes (as opposed to just letting the spell check correct your spelling without bothering to learn the correct spelling).

Spell check has had an influence on language - whether it is perceived as negative or positive is debatable depending on how you view the situation. Could you imagine a world without spell check? How would it affect you?

Poll Number 5 Results

What kind of influence has spell check had on our knowledge of language?

4 people said positive influence.
1 person said neutral or no influence.
1 person said negative influence.

I was the lone dissenter who chose negative influence. Even though spell-check has made our lives easier, I think it has actually decreased our knowledge of language. With spell-checker, we don't have to bother with learning how to spell words and we spend less time reflecting on our word choice, because we think that the spell-checker will catch our errors. I believe this is negatively influencing our knowledge of language.

Which influence did you choose, and why?

The Clbuttic Mistake

Are you confused with the breastle of this post? It's an example of what happens when profanity filters go awry.

I was recently doing some research for my upcoming post about the effects of spell-check on language when I came across something called The Clbuttic Mistake. Unless you happen to be familiar with technology and this particular phenomenon, you may be asking yourself, what the make love is Clbuttic? Clbuttic should be Classic, but as you can see, there is a word contained within the word classic that some may find offensive.

Now, the idea of profanity filters is to get rid of offensive words by selecting a word that is less offensive. For example, ass becomes butt and tit becomes breast (and I changed the "f" word to read make love). It is like parental controls for web surfing, I am guessing. The Clbuttic Mistake, therefore, happens when an offensive word is contained within another perfectly acceptable and unoffensive word, such as classic, and rather than leaving the word the way it is, the profanity filter automatically replaces the offensive section of the word with something it considers less offensive and ultimately produces a nonsense word (classic --> clbuttic). Admittedly, I do not know much about computer programming, but I would say that this perhaps represents a lack of foresight and poor development by the creators of these profanity filters.

The sentence that is featured by the article that I read is: "President Abraham Lincoln was buttbuttinated by an armed buttailant after a life devoted to the reform of the US consbreastution." Am I the only one who finds this sentence hilarious?

There were also some articles/comments that mentioned that some words have been changed into "politically correct" terms. A couple clbuttics here include the sprinter Tyson Gay becoming the sprinter Tyson Homosexual, and some places have [financially] gone from in the red to in the African-American.

And what do you think would happen to Dick Cheney? Or Dick van Dyke? What other words can you turn into a clbuttic? I challenge you to come up with the best clbuttic word or sentence!