Today is just my day for losing friends...

[conuly]

1. I'm not a nice person. Nice seems to mean something like not saying what's true just because others disagree, or lying because other people have sensitive feelings and don't want the truth when they ask questions. I don't do that. I don't *like* doing that, I don't *want* to do that, and I'm not *going* to do that. So don't call me nice.
2.

I can't believe you are saying that standard English is a fancy dialect, and that most people consider it condescending to use it. That is just nonsense, not to mention the fact that you would look and sound like a total idiot changing the way you talk to fit every group and region you happen to find yourself in. Talk about condescending! I'd love to see how well that would go over with "most people."

A. Well, we weren't discussing English, if you're curious, and SAE *is* just another dialect. This isn't really the important part.

B. Nonsense? I don't know. It certainly fits in with my experience, where my manner of speech (standard english) was mocked behind my back (but where I could hear, don't you love it?) and where I got accused of being "snotty" for speaking the way I did. Well, not me usually. But other people who spoke the way I did, in real life and in books and on TV, I heard them all the time being called "snotty" and "show-offy" and "snobby" and, yes "condescending". I still hear that. I don't know what world you're living in that you don't hear this, but you're lucky. I hear it all the time. Did I say yet that I *hate* linguistic prejudice?

C. Well, *most* people change the way they talk to fit in with various groups. This is called code-switching. My mom, her coworker speaks Standard English at work, but Jamaican English on the phone talking to her family. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke a form of AAVE in some situations, and SAE in others. We've got recordings of this. My sister Lizziey, sometimes she speaks with a Southern accent, other times with a black accent, other times with a hispanic accent, other times with a Brooklyn accent, and sometimes like a Valley girl. This is all unconscious, but she's good at it. Most people don't speak the same way at home as they do at work. People *change* how they speak depending on the situation. It's all very interesting.

And then she said she's sure I'm very nice (gah!) and unfriended me. You'd think I'd insulted her religion! Well, in a way, maybe I did. But this is *important*.

Edit: And I'm still not nice. I answer questions truthfully, or not at all. You have been warned.

Comments

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

Blah, ah well. You've actually managed to get me thinking about things I don't normally think about. You would have to very much offend me by saying something VERY insulting, like calling me stupid for being a Christian or saying that the notion of a God is bullshit (which two 'net friends strongly implied once, and they were also otherwise difficult to associate with, so I "dropped" contact with them). I take your rantings on issues like this as a blunt philosophical debate, not as an attack on myself. I'm oversensitive, and some other people are too, but in different areas concerning different people.

When I visit my dad's family or my husband's family, I've noticed that I switch a little bit to blend in with their styles of speech. I tend to sound more "me" than "them," of course, but I come home realizing I've picked up some interesting drawls and contractions. I eventually lose those within a day or two.

Occasionally I find myself suddenly talking (in fun) like my dad's family does, but I make a point not to make it annoying for others to hear me. Usually if I "force" it, it sounds even "worse" than their drawl. If I hear my aunt Frances (or anyone in Dad's family) say "Lookit all those PUUUURTY FLAIRS!" I know what she means, but I think my ears would snap if I heard anyone else say it. *LOL*

[conuly]

I know better than to insult an actual religion, but this... I guess that's my blindness, isn't it? I can see why people believe in deities and follow religions, even if I couldn't ever attach that to myself, and so I see why it's not fair to just attack somebody's religion (though it's no holds barred if they're being hypocrites), but this... I can't see it. Why would somebody need to believe something that's not true when it comes to language? And I see it all the time.

One time, I was talking to this girl about ASL. And she's apparently a native speaker, and she said that English is better because you can write English, but you can't write ASL. That's not true. There's at least one writing system for sign languages, possibly two. So I pointed this out to her. I provided a link. And she got mad at me, even showing me her "attempt at writing ASL" (really just a crude gloss of ASL into English) to prove that ASL couldn't be written. And it's her own language, and she had to believe that you can't write it, that English is better in that respect. Very sad, really.

Whee, ramble!

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

I actually think you are a nice person.
Being nice doesn't mean you have to agree with people when they are wrong.
To me, nice means having manners and not being mean and you certainly fulfill those criteria.
Standing up for something you feel passionate about is not being 'not nice'(mind blank on the word I want there-- read my most recent post for clarification).

I admire you and think your morals, ethics & manners are very good.
Anyone that expects you to agree, simply to pander to them, on a subject you are obviously well-versed is simply illogical.


I've learned a lot from you, Connie, don't ever change.

[conuly]

I'm not *changing*. I'm just not *nice* as a lot of people define it.

And that was the second friend lost over this, though the first one had other things going on, and didn't just storm off in a huff. Makes me feel better, though I was kinda irked, this was *right* after I wrote my essay on the history of the English language.

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

I know this seems pointless, but I strongly agree with this. :-)

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

Oh & just to prove your point, I came from a family that was uppermiddleclass australian & spoke almost flawless upperclassUKenglish with a little edinbugh scots thrown in thanks to my Nanna.

I moved to a rural town in Queensland, Australia & managed to learn localfamilyforgenerations Queenslander & to swear like a trooper to fit in because they all felt I was a snob before I did so.

[scarletdemon.livejournal.com]

People are crazy, I don't bother too much what they think/do unless they're really close to me.

Someone unfriended me on Christmas Eve, which I THINK was because I headed an entry "Merry Christmas". Fuck him, it's his loss. Or maybe he just got sick of me...Im which case I'm better off without him.

[conuly]

I'm not too upset. I actually friended this person because of an argument we had over prescriptivism, so it was fated. But... gah, the comment I got just annoyed me.

*blinks*

Unfriended for a holiday greeting. That's jsut *stupid*. Or he got sick of you, it happens. I mean. People get sick of other people, not people get sick of you. Usually.

Um. I'm going to go now... *hops off, foot in mouth*

[farraige.livejournal.com]

>>This is called code-switching.

Uh, no. 'Code-switching' describes lexical variation between two different languages; it is frequently heard in the speech of linguistic minorities as they pepper their sentences with English words (without altering the phonoloty or morphology, because that'd already be borrowing).

[conuly]

Both my sociolinguistics text and my sociolinguistics professor define it also as switching between two different dialects. A "code" is defined as "a language or a variety of a language". We were using Wardhaugh's "An Introduction to Sociolinguistics" (4th edition). The definition is first seen on page 87. Yes, I have the book in front of me.

[innerbrat]

I'm just really really confused.
Why is a debate over dialect important enough to unfriend someone over?

To me, language is a tool. The important thing is to make oneself understood (and if you can create aesthetically pleasing sounds and visuals while doing so, that's a plus).

Everything you've said here is true, but I don't see why anyoen would get worked up about it enough to unfriend you.

Oh, and you are nice. You're polite and don't lie. Lying is not nice.

[conuly]

1. I've never understood that myself, but I do know some things about it. To many people, what they learned about language is The Truth, just like whatever religion they ascribe to is The Truth. In this respect, I'm like the radical atheist with science on her side who just wants to convert the silly fundies. That's not a very *nice* thing to be, and I can see how it upsets those who disagree with me, because it puts them in the same position religious fundies are when people question them on their faith: trying to defend something that, deep down, they really don't understand. And, to be fair, I'm not an expert. So I really belong more in the role of "eager student who wants to help the poor people who are trapped within their religion", also not a very nice place to be.

So, growing up, people are taught "this is right, this is wrong". To some people, homosexuality is a moral issue. To others, split infinitives are a moral issue. Sliding on homosexuality is winking at sin, sliding on split infinitives is letting standards slip.

You try showing your average creationist proof of evolution. They'll either say wildly illogical things (my idea that the dinosaurs didn't go extinct completely disproves the entire foundation of the crazy evolutionists), go "back to the book" (it's in the bible/grammar books, so it must be true), or yell at you and storm off.

2. Ditto, ditto, but it's also a pretty living thing. Really. *nodnodnod* And it doesn't like being caged.

3. It's a matter of belief. Agreeing with what I say would mean confronting a lot of other beliefs which are more important to her, that's clear. People don't even *realize* how ingrained their ideas of language are until they're confronted on them, and then... *shrugs*.

4. And yet, people insist that it is, and wax poetic on the little white lie. Go figure.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Well, I thin you're cool. And being as I'm a professional writer, my agreement with your statement means... well, something. :-)

I found it amusing that your oh-so-proper "friend" rather mangled "standard English" throughout her post defending it.

Oh, and I wasn't aware that you're of African descent. Cool! Man, I know from several of my friends how much of an issue "proper speech" is with certain folks once skin color enters the issue. I had a friend in college whose family used to beat her during childhood for "talking white," while another (Black) friend goes off for minutes at a time whenever the word "Ebonics" is uttered in his presence. It's amazing how divisive the concept of language can be... but given that words (and communication) define reality, we really shouldn't be surprised.

Happy New Year!

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

>Well, I thin you're cool. And being as I'm a professional writer, my agreement with your statement means... well, something

And I THINK that part of that "something" means I ought to proofread my posts more thoroughly before I put them up. :-)

Where were you educated?

[ratmist.livejournal.com]

I am curious, because I have never seen such mangled descriptions of linguistics in my entire life.

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

Where were you?

[frogmajick.livejournal.com]

I still think you're charming.

Code-switching? Yay! You're the first person outside of my classes who even knows what this is!

[adiva_calandia]

Having read through the many comments, and ignoring the linguistics aspect (I'm not well-enough educated on that, ironically enough). . .

There's a difference between nice (which I would define as caring about others and their feeling) and being tactful. You can be one and not the other, but most peole equate them. Tact is, well, lying sometimes to spare someone's feelings -- or not exactly lying. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says "Tell the truth that is pleasing."

Nice seems to mean something like not saying what's true just because others disagree, or lying because other people have sensitive feelings and don't want the truth when they ask questions. The thing is, a lot of people don't want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. When a friend of mine used to get negative feedback on her stories, she complained that it was the reader's fault for not reading carefully, or not understanding, or what have you. The truth that is pleasing to her was, "This is a great story, it's perfect." Obviously that isn't the whole truth, but it's what she wanted to hear, and since she equated tact and nice, she thought they were mean.

But I think I'm starting to talk myself in circles and disprove my point, and I could go into a whooole digression on criticism and how it's taken and how it relates to tact, but I won't. Bottom line is -- you're nice. You're just brutally honest :) and people have trouble dealing with that.

(BTW, there's also this problem of the Internet and how difficult it is to convey emotions through straight text, so people use emoticons and *gestures*. "Maybe if people started writing in the third person," adiva_calandia typed with a wry smile, "we'd have less trouble. Then we could pick up body cues and tones of voice.")

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*wry grin* Awell, I'm not a nice person either, if "nice" means "would rather lie than say something someone might not want to hear." I'd a whole lot rather have people be straight with me, say what they really think, than beat around the bush and play sideways little guessing-games. I also don't trust people who fly off the handle for slight cause - they're "loose cannons", IMHO, likely to screw one over without warning - so no matter how pleasant, interesting or helpful they may be, I'd rather not have them in my life.

Yes, of course standard American English is a dialect - what else could it be? And yes, it's perceived as "uppper class", which is not acceptable among the lower classes of this purportedly-classless society. I grew up speaking standard English myself, and during my school days I had to deliberately modify my speech in order not to be mocked for it.

I've gotten called "condescending" a lot of times - also "arrogant", "elitist", "pompous", "pontifical" - sometimes unfairly, because all I was trying to do was explain something as clearly as I could, but sometimes with justification. After all, if people feel "put down" by my using standard English even when I don't mean to put them down, obviously it's a very useful weapon against someone I want to put down. I'm not an elitist - most people who use the word apparently don't know what it means - but yes, I'm arrogant as hell, and can be extremely condescending, pompous and pontifical toward people who piss me off.

*shrugs* I'm also kind, loyal, generous, amusing, resourceful, generally patient and good-humored, and have quite of both knowledge and experience about a lot of different things... so my actual friends tend to stick around for life. But just because Livejournal calls it a "friends list" rather than a "readers list" doesn't mean that everybody on it is actually my friend.

Something to keep in mind, perhaps, not to let it bug you too much when you get un-friended

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

Blah, ah well. You've actually managed to get me thinking about things I don't normally think about. You would have to very much offend me by saying something VERY insulting, like calling me stupid for being a Christian or saying that the notion of a God is bullshit (which two 'net friends strongly implied once, and they were also otherwise difficult to associate with, so I "dropped" contact with them). I take your rantings on issues like this as a blunt philosophical debate, not as an attack on myself. I'm oversensitive, and some other people are too, but in different areas concerning different people.

When I visit my dad's family or my husband's family, I've noticed that I switch a little bit to blend in with their styles of speech. I tend to sound more "me" than "them," of course, but I come home realizing I've picked up some interesting drawls and contractions. I eventually lose those within a day or two.

Occasionally I find myself suddenly talking (in fun) like my dad's family does, but I make a point not to make it annoying for others to hear me. Usually if I "force" it, it sounds even "worse" than their drawl. If I hear my aunt Frances (or anyone in Dad's family) say "Lookit all those PUUUURTY FLAIRS!" I know what she means, but I think my ears would snap if I heard anyone else say it. *LOL*

[conuly]

I know better than to insult an actual religion, but this... I guess that's my blindness, isn't it? I can see why people believe in deities and follow religions, even if I couldn't ever attach that to myself, and so I see why it's not fair to just attack somebody's religion (though it's no holds barred if they're being hypocrites), but this... I can't see it. Why would somebody need to believe something that's not true when it comes to language? And I see it all the time.

One time, I was talking to this girl about ASL. And she's apparently a native speaker, and she said that English is better because you can write English, but you can't write ASL. That's not true. There's at least one writing system for sign languages, possibly two. So I pointed this out to her. I provided a link. And she got mad at me, even showing me her "attempt at writing ASL" (really just a crude gloss of ASL into English) to prove that ASL couldn't be written. And it's her own language, and she had to believe that you can't write it, that English is better in that respect. Very sad, really.

Whee, ramble!

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

I actually think you are a nice person.
Being nice doesn't mean you have to agree with people when they are wrong.
To me, nice means having manners and not being mean and you certainly fulfill those criteria.
Standing up for something you feel passionate about is not being 'not nice'(mind blank on the word I want there-- read my most recent post for clarification).

I admire you and think your morals, ethics & manners are very good.
Anyone that expects you to agree, simply to pander to them, on a subject you are obviously well-versed is simply illogical.


I've learned a lot from you, Connie, don't ever change.

[conuly]

I'm not *changing*. I'm just not *nice* as a lot of people define it.

And that was the second friend lost over this, though the first one had other things going on, and didn't just storm off in a huff. Makes me feel better, though I was kinda irked, this was *right* after I wrote my essay on the history of the English language.

[scarletdemon.livejournal.com]

People are crazy, I don't bother too much what they think/do unless they're really close to me.

Someone unfriended me on Christmas Eve, which I THINK was because I headed an entry "Merry Christmas". Fuck him, it's his loss. Or maybe he just got sick of me...Im which case I'm better off without him.

[conuly]

I'm not too upset. I actually friended this person because of an argument we had over prescriptivism, so it was fated. But... gah, the comment I got just annoyed me.

*blinks*

Unfriended for a holiday greeting. That's jsut *stupid*. Or he got sick of you, it happens. I mean. People get sick of other people, not people get sick of you. Usually.

Um. I'm going to go now... *hops off, foot in mouth*

[farraige.livejournal.com]

>>This is called code-switching.

Uh, no. 'Code-switching' describes lexical variation between two different languages; it is frequently heard in the speech of linguistic minorities as they pepper their sentences with English words (without altering the phonoloty or morphology, because that'd already be borrowing).

[conuly]

Both my sociolinguistics text and my sociolinguistics professor define it also as switching between two different dialects. A "code" is defined as "a language or a variety of a language". We were using Wardhaugh's "An Introduction to Sociolinguistics" (4th edition). The definition is first seen on page 87. Yes, I have the book in front of me.

[innerbrat]

I'm just really really confused.
Why is a debate over dialect important enough to unfriend someone over?

To me, language is a tool. The important thing is to make oneself understood (and if you can create aesthetically pleasing sounds and visuals while doing so, that's a plus).

Everything you've said here is true, but I don't see why anyoen would get worked up about it enough to unfriend you.

Oh, and you are nice. You're polite and don't lie. Lying is not nice.

[conuly]

1. I've never understood that myself, but I do know some things about it. To many people, what they learned about language is The Truth, just like whatever religion they ascribe to is The Truth. In this respect, I'm like the radical atheist with science on her side who just wants to convert the silly fundies. That's not a very *nice* thing to be, and I can see how it upsets those who disagree with me, because it puts them in the same position religious fundies are when people question them on their faith: trying to defend something that, deep down, they really don't understand. And, to be fair, I'm not an expert. So I really belong more in the role of "eager student who wants to help the poor people who are trapped within their religion", also not a very nice place to be.

So, growing up, people are taught "this is right, this is wrong". To some people, homosexuality is a moral issue. To others, split infinitives are a moral issue. Sliding on homosexuality is winking at sin, sliding on split infinitives is letting standards slip.

You try showing your average creationist proof of evolution. They'll either say wildly illogical things (my idea that the dinosaurs didn't go extinct completely disproves the entire foundation of the crazy evolutionists), go "back to the book" (it's in the bible/grammar books, so it must be true), or yell at you and storm off.

2. Ditto, ditto, but it's also a pretty living thing. Really. *nodnodnod* And it doesn't like being caged.

3. It's a matter of belief. Agreeing with what I say would mean confronting a lot of other beliefs which are more important to her, that's clear. People don't even *realize* how ingrained their ideas of language are until they're confronted on them, and then... *shrugs*.

4. And yet, people insist that it is, and wax poetic on the little white lie. Go figure.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Well, I thin you're cool. And being as I'm a professional writer, my agreement with your statement means... well, something. :-)

I found it amusing that your oh-so-proper "friend" rather mangled "standard English" throughout her post defending it.

Oh, and I wasn't aware that you're of African descent. Cool! Man, I know from several of my friends how much of an issue "proper speech" is with certain folks once skin color enters the issue. I had a friend in college whose family used to beat her during childhood for "talking white," while another (Black) friend goes off for minutes at a time whenever the word "Ebonics" is uttered in his presence. It's amazing how divisive the concept of language can be... but given that words (and communication) define reality, we really shouldn't be surprised.

Happy New Year!

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

>Well, I thin you're cool. And being as I'm a professional writer, my agreement with your statement means... well, something

And I THINK that part of that "something" means I ought to proofread my posts more thoroughly before I put them up. :-)

Where were you educated?

[ratmist.livejournal.com]

I am curious, because I have never seen such mangled descriptions of linguistics in my entire life.

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

Where were you?

[frogmajick.livejournal.com]

I still think you're charming.

Code-switching? Yay! You're the first person outside of my classes who even knows what this is!

[adiva_calandia]

Having read through the many comments, and ignoring the linguistics aspect (I'm not well-enough educated on that, ironically enough). . .

There's a difference between nice (which I would define as caring about others and their feeling) and being tactful. You can be one and not the other, but most peole equate them. Tact is, well, lying sometimes to spare someone's feelings -- or not exactly lying. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says "Tell the truth that is pleasing."

Nice seems to mean something like not saying what's true just because others disagree, or lying because other people have sensitive feelings and don't want the truth when they ask questions. The thing is, a lot of people don't want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. When a friend of mine used to get negative feedback on her stories, she complained that it was the reader's fault for not reading carefully, or not understanding, or what have you. The truth that is pleasing to her was, "This is a great story, it's perfect." Obviously that isn't the whole truth, but it's what she wanted to hear, and since she equated tact and nice, she thought they were mean.

But I think I'm starting to talk myself in circles and disprove my point, and I could go into a whooole digression on criticism and how it's taken and how it relates to tact, but I won't. Bottom line is -- you're nice. You're just brutally honest :) and people have trouble dealing with that.

(BTW, there's also this problem of the Internet and how difficult it is to convey emotions through straight text, so people use emoticons and *gestures*. "Maybe if people started writing in the third person," adiva_calandia typed with a wry smile, "we'd have less trouble. Then we could pick up body cues and tones of voice.")

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*wry grin* Awell, I'm not a nice person either, if "nice" means "would rather lie than say something someone might not want to hear." I'd a whole lot rather have people be straight with me, say what they really think, than beat around the bush and play sideways little guessing-games. I also don't trust people who fly off the handle for slight cause - they're "loose cannons", IMHO, likely to screw one over without warning - so no matter how pleasant, interesting or helpful they may be, I'd rather not have them in my life.

Yes, of course standard American English is a dialect - what else could it be? And yes, it's perceived as "uppper class", which is not acceptable among the lower classes of this purportedly-classless society. I grew up speaking standard English myself, and during my school days I had to deliberately modify my speech in order not to be mocked for it.

I've gotten called "condescending" a lot of times - also "arrogant", "elitist", "pompous", "pontifical" - sometimes unfairly, because all I was trying to do was explain something as clearly as I could, but sometimes with justification. After all, if people feel "put down" by my using standard English even when I don't mean to put them down, obviously it's a very useful weapon against someone I want to put down. I'm not an elitist - most people who use the word apparently don't know what it means - but yes, I'm arrogant as hell, and can be extremely condescending, pompous and pontifical toward people who piss me off.

*shrugs* I'm also kind, loyal, generous, amusing, resourceful, generally patient and good-humored, and have quite of both knowledge and experience about a lot of different things... so my actual friends tend to stick around for life. But just because Livejournal calls it a "friends list" rather than a "readers list" doesn't mean that everybody on it is actually my friend.

Something to keep in mind, perhaps, not to let it bug you too much when you get un-friended