London bridges

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Re: London bridges

Post by Nanohedron »

Just so, s1m0n. But the difference between your observations and mine rest on the matter of meaning: "Catch fire" and "catch on fire" mean essentially the same thing. "London bridges" and "London Bridge is" do not. So long as meaning isn't at risk, change is smooth enough. We can say that "should have" and "should of" mean the same thing, but really, they don't. Popular usage like that will probably never catch hold in literature because in the end, "should of" can never make linguistic sense.
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Re: London bridges

Post by s1m0n »

Nanohedron wrote:Just so. The difference between your observations and mine rest on the matter of meaning: "Catch fire" and "catch on fire" mean essentially the same thing.
Well, one's active and the other passive, but more or less.
Nanohedron wrote:"London bridges" and "London Bridge is" do not.
To the person making the error they both mean "the name of that tune", and one's as good as the other. If you didn't grow up with Mother Goose and don't know the words, the former makes more sense than the latter.

They're now running mother-and-baby parenting classes in which a social worker teaches new moms nursery rhymes to sing and pat-a-cake games to play with their children, because huge swathes of society (of all classes, btw) grew up on TV and have no idea how to interact with their kids. If you didn't learn the rhyme as a child, you have little chance of picking up the full title of something you know only as a tune.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Re: London bridges

Post by awildman »

'Catch on fire' has been around longer than millennials. I grew up with it in the 80s.

My newest pet peeve is the 'is is is' tendency. It was bad enough when people just said 'the thing of it is, is that...'
Now I hear 'the thing of it is is, is that...'
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Re: London bridges

Post by s1m0n »

Yeah. Before, some people and some dialects used that construction. Now, everyone's using it, and it's something that experienced book and copy editors no longer correct. You can find it in print in the haughtiest of publications.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Re: London bridges

Post by AaronFW »

There is a tune London Bridge: http://208.66.208.12/~irishsession/PDF/328.pdf ; We play it with John Ryan’s Polka and Maggie in the Woods.
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Re: London bridges

Post by Peter Duggan »

AaronFW wrote:There is a tune London Bridge: http://208.66.208.12/~irishsession/PDF/328.pdf
Which apparently shares an opening with 'The Grand Old Duke of York'!
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Re: London bridges

Post by benhall.1 »

AaronFW wrote:There is a tune London Bridge: http://208.66.208.12/~irishsession/PDF/328.pdf ; We play it with John Ryan’s Polka and Maggie in the Woods.
... which as far as I know is known universally over here in the UK as "The Waves of Tory" and goes with the dance of the same name.

Just looked it up - apparently, according to some sources at least, it's called "Leather Away With the Wattle" and is one of several tunes used for the dance called "The Waves of Tory". Dunno. I just know it as "The Waves of Tory". Never heard of it being called "London Bridge" although I see that Nigel Gatherer gives that as an alternative title to "The Waves of Tory".

Oh, and btw, we play it a bit differently over here, in my experience. No time to transcribe now ...
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Re: London bridges

Post by Brus »

awildman wrote:'Catch on fire' has been around longer than millennials. I grew up with it in the 80s.
60s.

And I guess I had a good ear for language, because it always sounded a bit substandard to me, even though I used it.
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Re: London bridges

Post by AaronFW »

s1m0n wrote:
Nanohedron wrote:That is complacency. It is knowingly being in harness with the dumbing-down of a society, which only further jeopardizes our ability to make right sense of the world around us.
Or, it's one of the engines of linguistic change, which (you'll have heard me say before) all living languages do, constantly. Everything we now think of as correct English began as just such an error, and no doubt caused someone from an earlier generation to rail similarly about degeneration.

In short, it's only an error if it doesn't catch on. If it does, it's change.
Keep saying it, s1m0n. :thumbsup:

One difficulty is that language is a lot more fluid than people think. Words don't have a meaning within themselves, but only get meaning from their context. Whether or not it is "proper" never really matters; but what is important is that it communicates. We run into the same thing with tune names. As David Speers, a researcher of Manx music, says "The names of session or instrumental tunes are purely a reminder for the musician and in themselves are not important." Thus whether we call the tune "The Waves of Tory", "Leather Away with the Wattle", "London Bridge" or "London Bridges", it doesn't matter as long as the musicians understand from the context what song is being played. I'd call the song "London Bridge" for my local session, but I'd call it "The Waves of Tory" if I were to play with Ben. The important thing is being able to communicate and not the form or the linguistic elements of the communication.
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Re: London bridges

Post by Nanohedron »

All very well and good, but so long as people use "peek", "peak" and "pique" interchangeably (and they do) meaning IS compromised, so in light of that, the argument that meaning is in the end more important than standards strikes me as rather astray at some point. Yes, standards may rightly said to be only a convention of the day, but consensus is required for there to be standards, just as it is required for those standards to change. Can anyone point out some consensus for the interchangeability of "pique", "peek" and "peak", other than not knowing or caring what each really means? Given that English has finally arrived at a standard orthography, I still say spelling (and orthography in general) counts for meaning's sake, most particularly when it comes to publication. Outside of publication it is another matter, of course, and one should make allowances.
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Re: London bridges

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As I said, it's not change until consensus occurs*. Before then, it's error, but sometimes that error is the leading edge of what'll become change, only you can only tell in hindsight.

Linguistic change is driven by the young; 15 yo girls are the most linguisticly productive demographic in society, according to one study. That's the age of 'pique slang' generation. This means that the older we get, the more we see as error and the less as fresh, ie change. Every generation annoys it's elders in this fashion, but each new generation in turns wins, because they own the future.

*But consensus gels first in the youngest educated generation, so that's where you see the new normal forming.

Pique: oK, I did that deliberately.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

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Re: London bridges

Post by Peter Duggan »

AaronFW wrote:As David Speers, a researcher of Manx music, says "The names of session or instrumental tunes are purely a reminder for the musician and in themselves are not important."
I disagree. Sometimes they cleverly reference the musical content and/or story behind the tune, in which case they're very important.
Nanohedron wrote:Given that English has finally arrived at a standard orthography, I still say spelling counts for meaning's sake, most particularly when it comes to publication. Outside of publication it is another matter, of course, and one should make allowances.
Despite an occasional desire to cast aside my pathological fussiness and ask why not revert to some pre-standardisation 'anything goes' acceptance, I'm inclined to agree.

Incidentally, I've long wanted to name some rock or ice climbing route 'virgin pique'. Mountaineering wordsmiths should get it!

Oh, and I can't ever recall hearing 'catch on fire'. Except here. Now.
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Re: London bridges

Post by Nanohedron »

s1m0n wrote:This means that the older we get, the more we see as error and the less as fresh, ie change.
Not in my case. I had a grasp of this when I was young, and I know young folks now who are sticklers too, so the age argument doesn't apply.

TBH, when someone writes "Have a peak at this!", it strikes me not as fresh, but stale. I think you over-lionize youth in ascribing "freshness" to everything it does, and certainly make an error in assuming age is necessarily blinkered. Being in step with the whims of the times is not a requisite for knowing which end's up.
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Re: London bridges

Post by awildman »

Imagine how fast language must have changed before literacy was a thing. Somebody would know better than I, but it is conceivable that a couple hundred years difference could result in the same language being almost unintelligible. Almost every time travel show/book ignores this fact.
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Re: London bridges

Post by s1m0n »

Have a peak is bog-standard spelling checker error, in which people raised on spell-check fail to spot homophone errors because their word processor doesn't underline them. It happens at every level of society; likely more among the young, and more in less heavily edited documents, ie fast inet posts. When I went to school we got a fair bit of instruction about homophones, along with spelling. I suspect that post spell check there's less, just as I suspect there's less instruction in long division, post calculators.

In recent years there's been an explosion in what could be termed english vocubulary. New words, slang, acronyms, ikons, emotikons & emojis all have to be learned and remembered by kids. I suspect that there's something of a law of conservation of vocabulary capacity, in which space for these new terms is found by discarding or deprecating the importance of less common old distinctions. Again, your generation did the same, or you'd still be using "whom" in your everyday speech.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis
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