Poll of the Day > Irregardless is officially a word!

(+) Yeah! (+)

adjl posted...

Why would that make it wrong?

Because it shouldn't have been added to the dictionary since it wasn't a good reason to.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I reverse image searched this photo. Thats not your wife its Taylor Swift. You phony

Revelation34 posted...

Because it shouldn't have been added to the dictionary since it wasn't a good reason to.

What constitutes a good reason to add a word to the dictionary?

adjl posted...

What constitutes a good reason to add a word to the dictionary?

A word naturally evolving into something else such as words that are no longer used so they lose their original meaning. Not stupid people being stupid people.

Revelation34 posted...

A word naturally evolving into something else such as words that are no longer used so they lose their original meaning. Not stupid people being stupid people.

Why would stupid people not be part of the natural evolution of words? Are stupid people not a natural phenomenon?

Am I the only one outraged that his wife is supposedly Taylor Swift?

Looks like it.

adjl posted...

Looks like it.

Buncha philistines in here!

adjl posted...

Why would stupid people not be part of the natural evolution of words? Are stupid people not a natural phenomenon?

No and there's no real reason to defend them other than to troll.

I do agree that language is fluid, but there's a level of prestige and legacy with a traditional language. Lawyers prefer the former as their livelihood depends on multiple interpretations (or misinterpretations). Archivists prefer something fixed that they can measure time passing by.

AI be like: IDK my BFF Jill?

ConfusedTorchic posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2e064db1.png
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/4feb30c1.png

aren't words fun

Good luck ever finding somebody getting charged with exciting a riot.

just like you can't find someone getting charged for 'planning' to do something, because the legal term used is 'conspiring'

cmon man

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Thats not your wife either!

Revelation34 posted...

No

Stupid people do not occur naturally? Where do they come from?

_Kaz posted...

I do agree that language is fluid, but there's a level of prestige and legacy with a traditional language. Lawyers prefer the former as their livelihood depends on multiple interpretations (or misinterpretations). Archivists prefer something fixed that they can measure time passing by.

Legalese is functionally its own language, which is formally governed and prevented from changing without good reason because long-term consistency is needed. That's getting into questions of professional jargon, though, which apply only to a relatively small subset of people and therefore comprises a more controlled environment than vernacular speech.

Archivists don't intrinsically have a preference, aside from the fact that it's a field that tends to attract people with obsessive compulsive tendencies, which in turn means they're more likely to be sticklers for whatever they've learned to be "correct" speech. Their job (along with the jobs of historians, archaeologists, and anyone else that reads old stuff for a living) would be made easier if languages never evolved and they could read every document from every era in the same dialect as everyone speaks today, but in practice what actually happens is that they need to learn the speech patterns of their era of study to be able to decipher it.

Revelation34 posted...

Good luck ever finding somebody getting charged with exciting a riot.

Attracting suspicion and drawing suspicion are functionally the same thing, but sexually attracting somebody is not what anyone's going to think of if you talk about sexually drawing them.

Again, synonyms often are not freely interchangeable in all contexts. English has no shortage of redundant, superfluous, and unnecessary words, but there are still a vast number of words that have their own specific niches in which they are a better choice than words that are otherwise synonymous, whether because of some nuance in their definitions or because they outright have an entirely separate definition.

It's also worth noting that the names of criminal charges are very rigidly defined. That you see people charged using one word but not with another indicates nothing about how synonymous those words are or are not. It just indicates that the legal system has chosen that word to represent the crime in question. Citing that is conceptually similar to legalistic morality, effectively saying "I'm right because the law says I am," and that's pretty flimsy logic.

adjl posted...

Stupid people do not occur naturally? Where do they come from?

No.

OhhhJa posted...

I really just find it funny how devoted you all are to defending the use of this butchered word lol.

I defend it because English itself is a silly language that breaks a lot of it's own rules. I don't see this one as any different.

We should all speak perfect English.

Hwt. We Gardena in geardagum, eodcyninga, rym gefrunon, hu a elingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaena reatum, monegum mgum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syan rest wear feasceaft funden, he s frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weormyndum ah, ot him ghwylc ara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. t ws god cyning.

josh posted...

I defend it because English itself is a silly language that breaks a lot of it's own rules. I don't see this one as any different.

Precisely. I don't particularly agree that "irregardless" should have become a word, but I'm not going to deny that it has and I'm not going to single it out as being any more stupid and morphologically inconsistent than half of the rest of the language. I'm also not going to act like there's any value on looking down on people that don't arbitrarily reject it.

Revelation34 posted...

No.

I'll call this your loss, then.

josh posted...

I defend it because English itself is a silly language that breaks a lot of it's own rules. I don't see this one as any different.

No you're defending it because of the part of my quote you cut out for no reason.

Revelation34 posted...

No you're defending it because of the part of my quote you cut out for no reason.

Butchered words are still words which we apparently agree on so there's no further argument from me.
I'm not making a distinction between "proper" words or it's "usage" or whatever else. We don't disagree.

Revelation34 posted...

No you're defending it because of the part of my quote you cut out for no reason.

I didn't know OhhhJa and Revelation34 were the same

Revelation34 posted...

No you're defending it because of the part of my quote you cut out for no reason.

what part did they cut out from not your post

SilentSeph posted...

I didn't know OhhhJa and Revelation34 were the same

Go back into hiding in momma's basement with your mmo little boy

OhhhJa posted...

Go back into hiding in momma's basement with your mmo little boy

But I don't play any MMOs

SilentSeph posted...

But I don't play any MMOs

Ah sorry, go back to FFVII Mr. Sephiroth

OhhhJa posted...

Ah sorry, go back to FFVII Mr. Sephiroth

I will when part 3 of the Remake trilogy releases

SilentSeph posted...

I will when part 3 of the Remake trilogy releases

You should play the original, irregardless of the remakes

I should really play FFVII one of these days. The fact that I haven't at all is kind of silly.

OhhhJa posted...

You should play the original, irregardless of the remakes

I love the original, the FMV scenes still get me incited

OhhhJa posted...

You should play the original, irregardless of the remakes

This is probably one of those rare cases where the original is better since they butchered the story in the remakes.

Stimpy posted...

In other grammar news, literally means both literally and figuratively now.

I hate that a lot by the way

FakeAccount3000 posted...

I hate that a lot by the way

I think it makes the English language unnecessarily confusing for foreigners

I don't give a shit, I will block anyone who uses this "word" on sight.

Splosh posted...

I don't give a shit, I will block anyone who uses this "word" on sight.

Shit distribution is pretty low these days. Pororin!

Splosh posted...

I don't give a shit, I will block anyone who uses this "word" on sight.

Oh. No. Blocked by you. However. Will. Anyone. Go. On. With. Their. Lives? </massive sarcasm>

Take that 'American Dad'!

And if I remember correctly, it was the episode when Steve got schooled about his vocabulary by a hairdresser named Beauregarde.

Stimpy posted...

I think it makes the English language unnecessarily confusing for foreigners

One of many things. "It already sucks" isn't necessarily justification for making it worse, but it does mean that it's kind of par for the course and therefore isn't something that can really be fixed, given the nature of language.

It could be fixed, if people would stop trying to defend things like "irregardless." But of course that would require some restraint and the ability to encourage others to do the same.

GanglyKhan posted...

It could be fixed, if people would stop trying to defend things like "irregardless."

It really couldn't. Again, life is not an English class. There isn't a clear governing body to tell people they're doing things wrong and correct mistakes.

Language is a living entity, comprised of everyday interactions between people whose only priority in those interactions is making sure that their intent is communicated clearly. To achieve what you're talking about, a significant majority of people would need to agree that there is some higher priority than simply communicating successfully, and apply that priority to their everyday interactions, and that's only ever going to be realistic if prioritizing that yields some tangible benefit beyond masturbating over English test scores.

The fact of the matter is that most people - yourself included - know what "irregardless" means. Even those that can't recall a definition off-hand are generally going to be able to decipher it from context. Acknowledging that fact is not "defending" it any more than one can "defend" water being wet (putting aside for a moment the deeper philosophy of getting really pedantic about whether water is itself wet). What you're proposing would require all of those people who know exactly what the word means to derail their conversations to reject the word whenever it comes up. The vast majority of people are never going to consider the "purity" of language (which anyone that's actually studied language will tell you has never been anything more than a pseudointellectual myth) important enough to justify acting like that in the middle of casual conversations.

It could only be fixed if people stopped acting like people. That's a pretty tall ask for something for which you haven't even been able to put forth a tangible benefit.

our 'rules' on language are just an observation, really

one fun rabbit hole to go down is loanwords, specifically the ones that mean the exact opposite thing they originally meant. did you know that (mansion) specifically refers to a tiny ass apartment? that's how it's used so it's correct, even though it's wrong. language is fucked up man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpEaFmK3lrY

agesboy posted...

our 'rules' on language are just an observation, really

Yeah, that's probably the best way to view it. Languages evolve on their own, then are later described by a set of rules that mostly amount to "this seems to be how it usually works." Nobody decided that English should work the way it does. Our understanding of grammar and phonics and whatnot is just the best we've been able to figure out by observing it. Those rules provide a bit of a guiding hand for the language's evolution moving forward, but changes and new words that end up working in spite of the rules are no less valid for that deviation.

Roachmeat posted...

Take that 'American Dad'!

And if I remember correctly, it was the episode when Steve got schooled about his vocabulary by a hairdresser named Beauregarde.

Love that episode

adjl posted...

It really couldn't.

Okay.

Stimpy posted...

I think it makes the English language unnecessarily confusing for foreigners

When you say it like that I can imagine its deliberate.

It's not really that the rules are suggestions, it's that we're dealing with three different sets of phonological rules, two natural and one artificial -- one for words inherited from French, one for the native English vocabulary, and the other because folks like John Dryden didn't think English at his time was Latin enough already.

As an example for the latter, definition is pronounced as such because it is based on definicioun (English tacnung) and that is how it was pronounced and spelt in early/middle Middle English, such as in Wycliffe's bible -- which, side note, is one of the earliest English texts entirely understandable for modern speakers. Early prescriptivists like Dryden wanted it to conform with Latin spelling (despite its pronunciation never having been that way) and here we are with -tion instead of -cion among the other silly things they imposed.

Some changes just boggle the mind, though. Cwic > quick. Why? WHY?

definition >>> definicioun