atw: Re: Change of collective noun use - why?

  • From: Rod Stuart <rod.stuart@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2012 07:22:09 +1100

One might suggest that it is evidence of a general "dumbing down" of the
population that started a couple of generations ago.
For instance a laxity in the concept that the foundation of an education is
the "three r's". An emphasis on "feeling" rather than "thinking" imposed on
the education system a generation or two ago. One might even suggest that
this was by design, in preparing the Sheeople for the New World Order.

On 18 March 2012 04:48, Bob Trussler <bob.trussler@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Lee,
>
> My guess is that is part of the general decline in grammar standards
> across the community.
> Many people just don’t seem to know, or just don’t care, or both.
>
>
>
> The occasional minor errors don’t worry me, but it is getting to the stage
> that I have to re-read a paragraph to workout what is really meant.
>
> This then leads to weighing up the various possibilities:
>
> -         do they mean what they wrote?
>
> -         does trying to correct the spelling help?  Or are they typos
>
> -         does correcting to all future tense, or all past tense, help?
>
> -         can I correct to all plurals, all singular, or what could be a
> plausible mix of the two and then make sense of it?
>
> -         can reading further and then trying to apply context help at
> all?
>
> I often give up and start a conversation on the topic, only to find that
> many people don’t understand a question as a question any more.  Instead,
> many people take a question to be an assertion.
>
> Nor do some people understand the word ‘if’ any more, so they remove it
> from the sentence, then start arguing about something that I did not say.
> This can become a silly argument where we are both on the same side
> arguing about something that was not said!
>
>
>
> Yes Lee, the crowd are strange these days.
>
>
> On 17 March 2012 21:47, Lee O'Mahoney <leeomahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Can someone please explain why collective nouns are increasingly being
>> treated as plural rather than singular? And how to stop it? :-)
>>
>> People used to say 'The crowd is yelling loudly', 'the team is working
>> hard', 'the community is...', 'Telstra is jerking me around', 'Connex has
>> advised that trains are running late' ie a group of things was treated as a
>> collective noun and had singular verbs.
>>
>> Now, most people, even on ABC and BBC radio, say 'The crowd are yelling
>> loudly', 'the community are...', 'the team are working hard, 'Telstra are
>> still jerking me around', 'Metro have advised that trains are still running
>> late'.
>>
>> Why the change?
>>
>> While I'm at it, what's with using 'If I were' instead of 'If I was...'?
>> I've only noticed people doing it recently, but read that 'If I were' is OK
>> if it's a hypothetical situation.
>>
>> eg This forum thread http://forum.wordreference.**
>> com/showthread.php?t=50929<http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=50929>
>>
>> If I were controlling the language, I wouldn't want people treating
>> collective nouns as plural cos it sounds all wrong. Ha.
>>
>> Lee
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Bob Trussler
>
>


-- 
Rod Stuart
6 Brickhill Drive
Dilston, TAS 7252, Australia
<rod.stuart@xxxxxxxxx>
M((040) 184 6575 V(03) 6328 1543

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