Garsh, that dollar sign is so tricky!

[Vort]

So what exactly is it with Millennials and the utter lack of ability to use a dollar sign correctly? I often see something like, "It was only 20$". Really?

Is this a failure of our pathetic public education system? A stunning lack of parental correction? Or are people today just stupid?

[/old_guy_rant]

[SilentOne]

Maybe people thinking, "I say dollars after I say twenty, so obviously the convention is wrong. I should write it the way I say it."

[Fether]

Well you don't say "I have dollars 20"... that sounds like a poem where the writer couldnt think of a way to rhyme "minty" so he had to mess with the sentence.

You old people are the ones with the strange ways, we are simplifying life and making it better.

40 years from now, us millenials will fix everything! Free school, healthcare, everything will be organic, Everyone will never making 100,000$ a year, no competition, no one will ever be offended, poverty will be gone, anyone will be able to marry anything and however many they want, no privilaged, white, straight male will ever go to college, and not even health concerns will be an acceptable reason to suggest someone loses weight

The future looks bright

Edited May 26, 2017 by Fether

[zil]

4 hours ago, Fether said:

..., Everyone will never making 100,000$ a year, ...

Huh!?

4 hours ago, Fether said:

40 years from now, us millenials will fix everything! Free school, healthcare, everything will be organic, Everyone will never making 100,000$ a year, no competition, no one will ever be offended, poverty will be gone, anyone will be able to marry anything and however many they want, no privilaged, white, straight male will ever go to college, and not even health concerns will be an acceptable reason to suggest someone loses weight

They'll fix everything.  Except grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

[MrShorty]

How much of it is computer literacy? It seems that I frequently see computer printouts/screenshots that format numbers like that, with the currency character after the number.

[zil]

4 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

How much of it is computer literacy? It seems that I frequently see computer printouts/screenshots that format numbers like that, with the currency character after the number.

None of it.  In countries other than the US, the monetary symbol is sometimes at the end and sometimes at the beginning.  In the US, the proper place is at the start.  If you see it at the end, it's because someone is being rebellious, whether that's the user or the programmer, it's still wrong.

[anatess2]

13 hours ago, Vort said:

So what exactly is it with Millennials and the utter lack of ability to use a dollar sign correctly? I often see something like, "It was only 20$". Really?

Is this a failure of our pathetic public education system? A stunning lack of parental correction? Or are people today just stupid?

[/old_guy_rant]

Well, there are millennials all over the planet.  Currency placement is not dependent on the currency symbol.  Currency placement is dependent on the noter's locale.  So, a French millennial noting twenty dollars in France would note 20$.  And the same millennial would note 24 500,68$.

But yeah, if that same French millennial comes to America and notes 20,00$ then yeah, he needs a lesson in other decimal notations outside of the continental one.  An American millennial noting 20$ in Seattle may think he's just being sophisticated with his French... an American millennial noting $20.00 in Paris needs a lesson on continental decimal notation, although, Europeans just tolerate the "arrogance" of the everyday American.  Well, maybe not in France.  Lots of everyday Frenchman don't like Americans who go to France and refuses to speak French.

Edited May 26, 2017 by anatess2

[dahlia]

On 5/25/2017 at 11:43 PM, Vort said:

So what exactly is it with Millennials and the utter lack of ability to use a dollar sign correctly? I often see something like, "It was only 20$". Really?

Is this a failure of our pathetic public education system? A stunning lack of parental correction? Or are people today just stupid?

[/old_guy_rant]

Guilty as charged. I think I write the amount 1st, because that's what I'm thinking of, and then the dollar sign. But I only do it informally, I wouldn't write it that way for work or an article. As I guess you know, I'm not a millennial. I didn't go to public school, and trust me, I had the benefit of much parental correction. Maybe I'm an outlier. 

My old lady rant is the inability of people to recognize the difference between 'lose' and 'loose.'  You did not loose 10 pounds. Good googa mooga. Where's the death penalty when you need it? 

[Sunday21]

Dudes! Chill. Maybe the language is evolving. English changes all the time. English is fluid.

https://www.english.com/blog/english-language-has-changed

[Sunday21]

Word order changes inEnglish

Old people and the evolving language

https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/english-changing

Why can't people just use correct English?

By 'correct English', people usually mean Standard English. Most languages have a standard form; it's the form of the language used in government, education, and other formal contexts. But Standard English is actually just one dialect of English.

What's important to realize is that there's no such thing as a 'sloppy' or 'lazy' dialect. Every dialect of every language has rules - not 'schoolroom' rules, like 'don't split your infinitives', but rather the sorts of rules that tell us that the cat slept is a sentence of English, but slept cat the isn't. These rules tell us what language is like rather than what it should be like.

Different dialects have different rules. For example:

(l) I didn't eat any dinner.

(2) I didn't eat no dinner.

Sentence (l) follows the rules of Standard English; sentence (2) follows a set of rules present in several other dialects. Neither is sloppier than the other, they just differ in the rule for making a negative sentence. In (l), dinner is marked as negative with any; in (2), it's marked as negative with no. The rules are different, but neither is more logical or elegant than the other. In fact, Old English regularly used 'double negatives', parallel to what we see in (2). Many modern languages, including Italian and Spanish, either allow or require more than one negative word in a sentence. Sentences like (2) only sound 'bad' if you didn't happen to grow up speaking a dialect that uses them.

You may have been taught to avoid 'split infinitives', as in (3):

(3) I was asked to thoroughly water the garden.

This is said to be 'ungrammatical' because thoroughly splits the infinitive to water. Why are split infinitives so bad? Here's why: seventeenth-century grammarians believed Latin was the ideal language, so they thought English should be as much like Latin as possible. In Latin, an infinitive like to water is a single word; it's impossible to split it up. So today, 300 years later, we're still being taught that sentences like (3) are wrong, all because someone in the 1600's thought English should be more like Latin.

Here's one last example. Over the past few decades, three new ways of reporting speech have appeared:

(4) So Karen goes, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

(5) So Karen is like, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

(6) So Karen is all, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

In (4), goes means pretty much the same thing as said; it's used for reporting Karen's actual words. In (5), is like means the speaker is telling us more or less what Karen said. If Karen had used different words for the same basic idea, (5) would be appropriate, but (4) would not. Finally, is all in (6) is a fairly new construction. In most of the areas where it's used, it means something similar to is like, but with extra emotion. If Karen had simply been reporting the time, it would be okay to say She's like, "It's five o'clock,” but odd to say She's all, "It's five o'clock” unless there was something exciting about it being five o'clock.

Is it a lazy way of talking? Not at all; the younger generation has made a useful three-way distinction where we previously only had the word said. Language will never stop changing; it will continue to respond to the needs of the people who use it. So the next time you hear a new phrase that grates on your ears, remember that like everything else in nature, the English language is a work in progress.

 

Edited May 28, 2017 by Sunday21

[Guest MormonGator]

On 5/26/2017 at 0:43 AM, Vort said:

\Is this a failure of our pathetic public education system? A stunning lack of parental correction? Or are people today just stupid?

 

It's a cranky old man complaining about totally insignificant things who might just need a nap. 

[Sunday21]

Edited May 28, 2017 by Sunday21

[Vort]

5 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

Word order changes inEnglish

Old people and the evolving language

My rant was mostly a joke -- truth in jest, as they say. But you have obviously misconstrued my meaning. I said nothing about dialects, nor disputed the Chomskian view you uphold. (Though Sister Vort would dispute the point, and would more than hold her own, I  guarantee. ) Rather, I pointed out a blatant misuse of a symbol. Arguing against my point is like saying that someone who uses periods in the middle of his sentence or who starts each sentence with a comma and an exclamation point is right to do so, because, you know, he's a native speaker and therefore can do no wrong. It's Chomskian thought taken to its absurd extreme.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Vort

[Vort]

5 hours ago, MormonGator said:

It's a cranky old man complaining about totally insignificant things who might just need a nap. 

At the very least, you're right about the nap.

[Guest]

On 5/27/2017 at 0:40 AM, dahlia said:

Good googa mooga.

I'm going to start using this expression 

[Guest]

15 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

Dudes! Chill. Maybe the language is evolving. English changes all the time. English is fluid.

https://www.english.com/blog/english-language-has-changed

There's no doubting that it changes.  That isn't the point.  The point is communication.  When on becomes sloppy a some very basic points of English, it is easy to become sloppy in all point of the language.  As we get sloppy in grammar, usage, vocabulary, etc.  we can no longer communicate.

If you cannot say what you mean, you cannot mean what you say.

While the usage of $ may seem trivial, think of this:  The pack of gum at the checkout line is 0.75ȼ.  While anyone with sense would chalk that up to someone not knowing how to write.  I know someone who used this mis-marking as a bargaining tool to get the gum for much less than the intended price.

Another point is that even while language changes, it is dangerous to a society for language to evolve too quickly.  We always allow for new inventions to add things to our lexicon.  But to change the meanings of words where things mean their polar opposites in just one month, then change to something completely unrelated the next month is too fast.  This causes miscommunication.  Malapropisms require us to judge just how educated a person is.  Did they just make a mistake?  Did they really mean it?  Was it a malapropism?  Are they just joking?  It is these questions that make learning how to speak "American Standard English" very important -- especially in formal settings or when you're meeting someone new.

When I'm reviewing a resume, I'll make allowance for what I consider a typo.  But it there is improper grammar or syntax in any way, I place that resume in the circular file.

Societies fall apart when they can't communicate.  Look at Afghanistan.  Even with aid from the West, they cannot get a unified country together simply because there is no unified language.  There are, I believe three or four major languages that make up about 50% of the population.  But that is no way to run a country.  In fact, they have no country.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Guest