Will proper spelling and grammar die in the future?

Absolutely not.

People may become less strict about either, perhaps for a short time or perhaps for centuries, but there will always need to be a core of conventional conformity at least on the most basic level. Because otherwise people will not understand each other.

Everyday language use is a compromise between less effort and more clarity. If people can convey the same message with less effort, they will. If the clarity of the message suffers from their carelessness, people will put more effort into conveying it properly.

So there’s definitely a rock bottom to hit, and I don’t think it’s very deep down from where we are now.

Only if you fail with your children.

They’re already dead.

Between online shorthand becoming commonplace, homonyms used interchangeably for each other, and apostrophes being inserted seemingly at random, American English in correct form is dead.

R.I.P. baby…

I am afraid it might, I hope it doesn’t.

Without proper grammar and spelling, the best one can achieve is a minimum wage job.

@crunchaweezy
Not necessarily

My thoughts are this. Online communication allows us to harness the computer’s power in addition to our own. Google has made huge strides with language translation, you can often have it translate a page pretty fluently, but more important you can correct it and their engine will learn and get better. As well, many people on the internet do not speak English as their first language, thus my opinion is that for now, proper spelling and grammar help to facilitate interlingual (and even uni-lingual) communication. Eventually I think it’s highly probable that we will be able to take the next step and harness the computer’s ability to talk directly with someone who speaks a different language, having those messages translated with very little delay, thus bypassing written communication altogether.

At the same time, English is a language that is based on evolving and incorporating portions of other languages (I am watching an excellent documentary called The Story of English that delves into this). It can fully support the addition of new words (such as “to google”) as well as new dialects such as SMS.

So I think that proper spelling and grammar won’t die in the future, it will remain in existence for those who enjoy using it, such as myself. I also think that formal English will remain in use in the business world. It will be interesting to see how the dialect of SMS evolves, but I don’t think it will in any way harm the English language.

When I was in elementary school, we had spelling tests every week of every year. Spelling was drilled into our heads. We had lessons on homophones, apostrophes, everything there was to think of. What happens when these teenagers have to write essays? What about college? Are you saying Harvard and Stanford are going to allow “lolomg” in a thesis?

I do not think they will disappear. First of all, IM and the internet are not all of written language. What about newspapers and magazines? They use proper spelling and grammar conventions. What about novels? What about signs? What about advertisements?

Just because kids on the internet communicate with each other by saying “u” for “you” does not mean the language is coming to an end.

Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg. <—Old English. Not only is it not recognizable to the average person, it’s essentially an entirely different language altogether. The language is constantly evolving in terms of vocabulary and conventions. Personally, I think it will always change, but I do not think that rules of written English will disappear. They may change, and they may “degenerate” (depending on who’s viewing it), but there will always be rules.

@DominicX: This is Middle English, right?

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
9: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Old English is certainly a completely different language, but Middle English is fairly understandable by most literate people, right? I mean, we all basically had to learn it in high school to read the Canterbury Tales. I actually loved speaking like that. I still have that above intro memorized. ;)

@girlofscience

That’s Middle English, yeah. Most of it can be understood, though the meaning of line 14 is lost on me.

Personally, I love speaking in the Shakespearean style, with the “didst thou” and what not. I wish everyone still talked like that. :(

Of course not, and if it did, it would be a very sad event for the world. There will always be conventions for language and grammar—without them, there would be no standards to hold writing to. People would go around writing incomprehensible gibber (oh wait, they already do) and no one would understand anyone, or would have to guess at the meanings which could be bad. Can you imagine a President writing an address in netspeak?

Proper spelling and grammar can’t die, because proper spelling and grammar by definition is what is used by the majority of educated people. As has been shown above, English has undergone major transformations. It continues to change. Purists have always grumbled about how the language is being “corrupted.”

And can I imagine a President writing an address in netspeak? Sure, not now perhaps, but it may eventually happen. Presidential language has become steadily less formal. If everyone else speaks netspeak then so will the President.

From about 1000 to 1500, there was very little in the way of spelling conventions, and yet some of the best literature in English was produced during that period.

I think what you really have to look at is your definition of terms. In this case, the reference is to proper spelling and grammar. But how do you define proper?

As many people of described, the English language, and many languages, to varying degrees, is a constantly evolving language that shifts with usage, with technology, with cultural melding. It changes sometimes rapidly, and sometimes slowly.

So again, how do you define proper? I would suggest that proper spelling and grammar is nothing more than the set of conventions that we have developed as a culture to slow the process of linguistic change over time. @LostInParadise made reference to the purists that grumble about the corruption of language: these people are our guardians of change. The Oxford English Dictionary is but one example of the conventions we in the English speaking world have developed to help slow the process of linguistic change to the point where it was manageable. The French of a government agency that safeguards the French language, as another example.

What we’re seeing now, I believe, is a technological development that has yet again caused the rate of linguistic change to speed up beyond its normal rate of change. The development of the printing press did a similar thing.

So will proper spelling and grammar die in the future? It might be an impossible question to answer as is, since the nature of what is proper will continue to change. Will spelling and grammar someday be entirely different from what it is today? If history is any judge, then is most definitely will; someday our language and written form will be as strange and foreign as Old English is to us today. But it remains to be seen how long that shift might take…

@Evan I wouldn’t compare the OED witht the Academie Française. Dictionaries like the OED don’t dictate what the conventions are, they just document them.

@morphail – I certainly agree that there’s a conceptual difference between the task of documenting changes, and the task of imposing restrictions on change.

But conceptually, the function of both institutions is very similar, despite their differing approaches. Both institutions reduce the rate of linguistic change within their respective cultures.

The OED, and others documenters like them, don’t really have to impose restrictions in order to have that slowing effect. Those organizations in many ways become the arbiters of what is pure or correct within the language. This by itself has a major effect on maintaining a “status quo” per se, when it comes to linguistic change.

The Academie, on the other hand, directly chooses what is pure French, or unpure French, and tells people what is correct. This also maintains something of a “status quo” but certainly doesn’t stop people on the street from talking, or writing, as they choose in their own lives.

Thus I think that ultimately, both organizations fulfill a similar place within their respective cultures as the arbiters of linguistic purity to some degree. And while they are most certainly not identical, I would definitely hold them to be comparable.

haha, good one @Harp!
My English teacher last year in school was lecturing the class on this very thing. He said that spoken language definitely develops and changes much more quickly than the written, but the written will eventually follow. (I paraphrased.) He gave examples, such as: When the average American pronounces the word “running”, he/she does not usually fully pronounce the “ing” part of the word. Most people these days simply say “I’m runnin to the store.” “I’m goin up there right now.” So he says, how long before this crosses over to the official written language? It’s already being written in this manner all over the net, and pretty much anywhere outside a classroom.
Another point: The lazy spelling of things like “through” to become “thru” will change to become official. Who knows when is beyond me, but it’s bound to happen. Just take a look at your local restaurant/business and read their lit-up signs! “Drive-Thru open 24hrs.” “Tonite is Skate Nite.” It’s unfortunate, for sure; but it seems inevitable to me…the laziness has just spread too far.

“thru” for “through” was used in the Chicago Tribune from 1935 to 1975. It’s still available as a variant spelling, but not much in use nowadays.

It’s true that dictionaries, writing systems and language academies can slow language change, but it’s not necessarily always the case. Languages with writing systems, dictionaries, etc. can change just as quickly or just as slowly as languages without.

The reason why I tend to correct people and get upset whenever I notice a grammar/punctuation/spelling error is because I am afraid that proper grammar will soon die out. The new wave of text messaging and quick IMing is teaching this generation of people to use abbreviations and shortcuts for even the most common of words.

I’m always appalled when I see “their/they’re” or “were/where” used incorrectly. What can we expect of the future generations if our own cannot even spell very basic and simple words correctly?

@Hatsumiko

How do you know it’s not simply a careless error? I mistake the two sometimes while typing as well, but it’s not like I don’t know the difference. It’s simply a matter of typing too quickly.

I think there are just a lot of careless errors online. My worry lately is people seem to not be using adverbs. I ran quick. I take it personal. Please drive safe. It bothers me because I think people really don’t know you are supposed to add an ly.

@JLeslie “quick” and “safe” have been used as adverbs for a long time – in the case of “quick”, since 1300. Not all adverbs end in ”-ly”.

@Hatsumiko I think you’re giving spelling more importance than it deserves. I don’t think there’s any correlation between intelligence and the ability to remember all the complex “rules” of English spelling. Many great writers are bad spellers.

Thank you all for your answers. I cannot respond to all your points, but I will address some key points.

@Fyrius, you raise a very good point, and I tend to agree. Where I live, there is a distinct lack of proper English, because most people come from a non-Anglo background. I sometimes wonder how many different dialects there will be in the future from my suburb alone. Already people in rural Australia have trouble communicating with people in metropolitan Australia because of racial differences, education levels and the rarity of colloquialisms in the city.

@dynamicduo I sincerely hope that SMS language dies. It is sad to think that in the future people may require a computer in order to communicate simply because they are not prepared to put in the effort to learn their own language. Thanks for your answer.

@DominicX Newspapers and magazines stick more closely to the rules of language than casual communication, but some are still quite bad. Newspaper headlines are typified by a lack of conjunctions, which gives them an ‘English Second Language’ feel. Some can take a good while to decipher because of the lack of conjunctions. Advertisements are similarly bad. Real estate advertisers tend to love writing “comprising of”.

@morphail Good point!

@Chongalicious I would contend that American English is a corrupted form in the first place. Those are good examples though.

@morphail It seems they are both acceptable from what I can tell, quick and safe, but I have a feeling quickly and safely are the better choices in these sentences. I know not all adverbs end in ly, but I think in these sentences they should. It is what we are talking about here, that language changes and evolves over time, that short cuts get accepted, I have a feeling that is the case here, but I am not expert.

The worst is irregardless, if that can be accepted as synonomous to regardless then anything can happen, but I have mentioned that annoyance before.

@JLeslie It’s actually the other way around. The opinion that adverbs “should” end in ”-ly” arose in the 18th century. It was a made-up rule, in spite of the facts. Flat adverbs (adverbs that don’t end in ”-ly”) were normal (for instance “The weather was so violent hot” – Defoe, Robinson Crusoe).

So for whatever reason, flat adverbs are much less common now than they used to be.

@morphail Interesting.

(blatantly ignores rest of the thread)

@FireMadeFlesh
Part of my point is that “proper English” doesn’t really exist. There is standard English and there are other variants of the language. The other variants are not in any way inferior to the standard variant. The only difference is that standard English is designated as the “official” version of the language.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

@Fyrius I use the term loosely – I use the term ‘proper’ English to mean English by which people in general may understand the intent of the speaker. Where I live this is often not possible.

Okay.

@girlofscience:

12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

I don’t remember the precise meaning of “ferne halwes” but the gist of these lines is that people long to gone on pilgrimage during the spring season, to seek strange shores and holy places in various lands… at least, I’m pretty sure that that’s the idea – but any of you are welcome to correct me if I’m wrong/my memory has failed me…

@LostInParadise: forget a President using netspeak: Just compare the speaking abilities of the previous fearless leader of the western world, with those of the current fearless leader of the western world, and you’ll see that there is hope for the English language, no less than for Presidential rhetoric…

1) It is insulting to see people’s ignorance lead to mistakes like their/they’re, to/too, etc.

2) Survival of the fittest. That which adapts, survives. Language is NOT MEANT to stay the same over large periods of time. New words are created because new ideas, mindsets, technologies, and discoveries come about. It is impossible to explain the guts of a computer with the terms of Middle English. Some created words are “proper”, some are “convenient”.

No.