Once again: the rules of grammar are observed, not ordained. Grammar isn't law, it's a natural science. If your birdbook tells you that X bird nests in hollow trees and you find some nesting in chimney pots, it's the book that's wrong, not the bird.

Your non-native speakers have been taught a 'rule' that isn't followed by a large number of native speakers, as you have cleverly observed. However, in grammar, abstract rules give way to observed reality. You're drawing the wrong inference: it's not the native speakers who are wrong. What you've been taught is a rule is much less so than you have been led to believe. In all things about a language it is the speakers, not the teachers, who have legislative authority.

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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

so it sounds like "avoid in trad sessions but otherwise do what you want" is the advice, and the cause is a mixture of it being the "free bird of irish music" and the song not being authentically irish despite being arguably the song most widely associated with ireland for people living outside ireland

sounds a bit complex

[Back on the OT point]

Well, I'm happy to take the advice of Merriam-Webster, The OED, the Fowlers, and any other authority I can think of, added to the common sense approach of, "It makes the meaning clearer".

I'm still waiting for any authority who might say otherwise - very happy to read them if you can find one, s1m0n.

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"Only connect!"

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I did indeed miss that. I also seem to have stirred a pot that should have been left to simmer...

O'Neill pretty much ignores polkas in his tune collections, despite being from a region known for them today, and Breathnach didn't include them in his first Ceol Rince book. And check out this quote from O'Neill's "Irish Folk Music:"



I want to make clear that I'm not saying O'Neill or anyone else is the arbiter of what is traditional. In fact, that's part of the point I'm making. The line between what is "traditional" and what is merely popular is largely a result of the first half of the 20th century. Rather than being the descriptive "what ordinary people are playing and singing," the definition of "folk music" took a prescriptive bent, with what is or isn't "folk" or "traditional" based primarily on aesthetic grounds. A lot of discussion of regional styles, for example, is centered around the playing of people recorded in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Fiddlers in 19th century Sligo almost certainly played very differently from Michael Coleman, and yet his playing has come to exemplify the "Sligo style."

The point I'm making is that the decision over whether something is "traditional" or not is really an arbitrary and not very useful one, based around ideas that are themselves not really "traditional" in any historical sense. Isn't it enough just to say that you don't like the song and don't want to sing it, rather than trying to ring fence what does or doesn't belong in a session or trad concert?

I kind of get where you're coming from now, bigsciota. I think I misinterpreted you before.

It's a funny thing about the polkas, isn't it? They had become firmly a part of popular musical culture in Ireland well within the first half of the 19th century. So it's strange that they were ignored by O'Neill. However, and I really think this is important, Roche, who was publishing from Ireland, and living in Ireland, at the same sort of time as O'Neill was publishing, did not ignore polkas. They may not be obvious, but there they are - in the quadrilles, for instance. Some of the marches and "Old dances" turn out to be polkas as well. They were such an integral part of the tradition by then, that nobody even noticed them.

But maybe you're right that the arbitration of that - deciding what was part of the tradition and what wasn't - happened in the first half of the 20th century. (In my personal opinion, nothing much happened in relation to trad in the first half of the 20c - it was more in the latter half of the 19c and the latter half of the 20c. But that's opinion, and not based on detailed research.)

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Although I'd much rather discuss Trad...


Your meaning is unclear, here. "Ordained" contrastively suggests to me that by "observed", you mean "noted". This speaks to the tension between descriptionism and presciptionism in language, and I can work with that. OTOH, "observed" also means "practiced", but the latter meaning carries with it an implication of hewing to standards, so if that's what you meant, it strikes me that you've acknowledged that since people follow rules, there are rules after all, contrary to what you like to say. It doesn't matter that rules are arbitrary and always in a state of flux; if there are no rules, how can we even speak of arbitrariness or flux? So there ARE rules. We simply have the standards of our time to contend with. That is not ordination; it is simply what we have before us, right here, right now. There is nothing else. When making mistakes, it is not enough to dismiss them by pointing out the past and living in an imagined future.

So anyway, back to "observed": either meaning can work, but they're not interchangeable; the difference very much counts in the end. If you intended both at once, I would caution that in argument, one best errs in foregoing the byzantine.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

I was at a session where we had a trio of punter ladies in their crystals and tie-dye, rather importantly sitting as close as they could, grooving to it all with wise looks to their faces. The box player cranked out a set of polkas, and one of the ladies asked what sort of category that might be, but she must have been expecting spirituality and Celtic spirals when we told her because she darkened, drew herself up, and sniffed, "There ARE no Irish polkas." At that announcement, the box player and I just looked at each other, and moved on to more tunes.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

I mean A, not B. The 'rules' of grammar we all got taught at school and read in in stylebooks were arrived at by people observing how people actually spoke (and wrote) and attempting to generalize principles out of the data. They retain validity only in so far as they accurately reflect the data.

This view contrasts with how students are taught language. Teachers and stylebook authors present rules as if they have objective reality beyond the corpus of present-day language use, but grammar rules have no legislative authority, and it is not the task of the body of native speakers of a language to conform to them. It is the reverse.

Because the target is in constant motion. A rule that existed when your grade school teachers went to school may no longer be valid today, because a substantial body of the population has moved on and no longer conforms to it.

Note, too, that by substantial body, I don't mean majority.

As examples, I'll present rule changes that have happened over the course of my lifetime in the UK and in North America:

In the UK, recent generations have abandoned the venerable Subjunctive Mood, a grammatic structure that has been with English since it was proto indo-european. This is a change in the form of the verb that marks a statement that is contrary to fact, usually but not always because it's future and hasn't come into being, yet. In NA, it is still correct to write, "it is imperitive that the test be conducted in secret". In recent decades in the UK, that's no longer considered correct. They'd write: "it is imperitive that the test is conducted in secret".

Over the same period in North American, in contrast, the made-up restriction on splitting infinitives has hit critical mass. I once posted here about the Dylan song Tombstone Blues, which contains the following verse:



In late 60s, this is what Dylan wrote and recorded, and no one thought it was incorrect in any way. I collected up clips of covers by American artists from the 80s and 90s, however, and without exception they all altered the last line to ... "My advice is not to let the boys in". They'd likely have learned the song either from Dylan's recording, or from published lyrics, so the change had to have been made unconsciously. The singers had internalized a brand new rule that didn't exist when Bob Dylan went to school and learned to speak english. Are they wrong? Well, emotionally I think so, because I learned it like Bob, but they're the future, and future grammarians will have to keep up.

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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

Certainly. But the substantial body you cite in this case signals not so much an organic change, but merely a knuckling under, when one doesn't have to, to the fashionable cultural pressure to dumb down. Whether that pressure will mark a permanent change remains yet to be seen, so I wouldn't be so quick to give dumbing-down the same status as dropping the subjunctive mood. I can't be as breezy as you seem to be about it. I for one care about how my culture is seen. The world won't care if we lose the subjunctive mood or not, but it will care if our best can only prove marginally literate in their own language, and I see this as the direction you seem to be anticipating in such a blasé fashion. One shudders to think.

One thing that I think is sensible in English letters is that style may be invoked when breaking rules. I'm not referring to artistic necessities such as conveying idiosyncratic speech, but to just plain, basic writing. As an example, I'll split or not split infinitives myself, but the choice has to do with how I believe the result reads better, and being easy to read is very important. Since the meaning is the same, no harm done, so why should it matter? But I still don't make those decisions lightly (just ask Ben about how much I edit ) precisely because the rules are there in the first place. It may sound contradictory, but that's why I too would have written "My advice is to not let the boys in". "My advice is not to let the boys in" here sounds topheavy; for me it demands to be followed by something like "but rather to let them fend for themselves." I'll capitalize after a colon, or not, depending on what I conclude works best. I see the rules as a strongly suggested, but not immovable, framework that helps me be able to make coherent decisions. Rules need not be merely a cage that quashes creativity with conformative "correctness". That is a misunderstanding, and it takes a dark road.

I can't believe anyone is special or out-of-date because they internalized the difference between "its" and "it's", or "their", "there" and "they're", and the like. It's not that hard. It makes my meaning clear, and I insist on making myself understood. I may not always succeed, but my chances are far and away better than the other way. But if being understood is now commonly held to be less important than the act of blathering itself, then you can say I'm left behind all you want, but in reality chaos is chaos, and shaking my head doesn't merely make me a grumpy old coot when a good argument applicable to the current times, and possibly to the future as well, can be made for me shaking it. Consider this: Rather than being stuck in the past, I see myself as being a hopeful idealist, still looking to the future. But then, I always did find myself swimming against the tide. Nothing new there.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

See, that's just it: I completely reject the notion that the English language is getting "dumbed down". Living languages - particularly vibrant, globally-spoken languages with billions of speakers - are in a constant state of change, but they never, ever, get dumber, unquote. English is as complex, or more likely on aggregate more so, as it ever was. But human brains can only hold so much complexity, so to accommodate complex distinctions on the cutting edge of change, previously important distinctions on the trailing edge get deprecated or abandoned. This does not mean becoming dumber or less literate. It means becoming different.

Everyone who lives to middle age or beyond gets to a point where they discover that linguistic skills they invested effort in mastering are no longer valued by the next generation. To them, showing off your hard-won knowledge just proves you're old. You and I did this to our parents' or grandparents' generations, and ensuing gens are doing it unto us. You can read heartfelt plaints about whatever are the young folks coming to these days they know nothing! all the way, literally, back to Plato. And every century and decade since. Our culture is a whole lot more complex than it was in Plato's day, so a moment's hindsight will tell you that Plato's view is the precise opposite of the truth.

All the "dumbing down" plaint says is that you're now middle aged, and the broad current of cultural and linguistic development has begun to pass you by.

~~

Style and language change are independent axes. Some of the people who adopt new forms are brilliant stylists. Others are semi-literate clunks. Most are in the middle. What matters when it comes to change isn't their competence, but their numbers.

_________________
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

I can agree with that, but not so broadly. Understand that I never said people were becoming dumber; never would I say that. I know better. We're at least as intelligent as our cave-painting forebears, and their smarts would hardly be less than ours. Not a lot has changed, there. The difference is technology and information, really. OTOH, dumbing-down is different, and a matter of social pressure. You have a hard time convincing me that reduced literacy is not an actual "thing". Note, by the way, that I am perfectly fine with current vernacular, without any irony. As you say, that's style, and I happily adopt it if it suits me. I prefer to save the formality for funeral notices, so this not about flowery speech. I first noticed the trend away from even bedrock-basic literacy in the 1970s when I was a youth, and I ain't talking about spelling, either. When people become so incurious about their own language and lore as to not know the meaning of commonplace words like "addiction" and "lame", or that "savage" is thought obsolete, or to not know who Henry VIII was (or, even though it has less to do with literacy than critical thinking: that because it's said on Facebook it must be true) - these are actual cases I've encountered in grown adults - then I think it's entirely fair to say that there might, in fact, be something to be concerned about.


Come, now; there you go again with the age thing. Not to say there's no truth to it, but you give it more weight than it deserves. When we come to such a turn, it's times like these when I think we're talking past each other.

And please don't accuse me of showing off. I always try to reach the broadest audience I can by being as dead-natural as I know how, and still be me - so it's not true at all. And in this matter, "hard-won" doesn't apply to my thinking one bit; it just is what it is - a toolbox that accrued naturally - so there's nothing to show off on that account. I do try to be entertaining and I enjoy that, yes, and I love language because you can paint vivid pictures even in the simplest of brush strokes with it, and there's its potential for musicality, too; but if you think that enjoying playing with language is nothing more than showing off, well, I'm afraid I can't help you there. Was that flowery? I don't think so. I'd go so far as to say there was some light composition to it, but that's about all. And by the way, calling it showing off is akin to saying I should dumb down! - but for what, and toward what? So now I should avoid words like "akin" because people might not know it, and using it means I'm showing off? I call rubbish on that. Kinda makes my point about the prevalence of dumbing down, wouldn't you say? The mentality's so insidious that even you seem to have unconsciously fallen for it.

"Heartfelt plaints" - the very idea. Too thin for my blood. Gimme an axe.

Usually I'm pretty easygoing over it, but when I use a word like "commonplace" and even people my own age say, "Speak English!", that raises my blood pressure, and it makes me despair, because I am speaking English. Basic English. Trust me, it has nothing to do with having gotten older. I've been a crank about that attitude for as long as I can remember.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Just be aware of your surroundings, keep your head above water, and you'll be fine.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

What possible reason could you have for believing that?

Because what I see is that literacy has never been more important to a culture than it is to ours. If you look at net natives, practically all they do all day is send messages to each other. Where once the primary mode of communication was face-to-face speech, or at worst synchronous conversations by phone, now the predominant mode is asynchronous communication. Messages. Which are by nature a matter of literacy.

Yes, the norms have changed, but norms always change. A century ago the literate middle and upper classes all had to be proficient in cablese, a condensed form of english for communicating by telegram. It had its 75 or so year run, and has now died out, but the culture as a whole didn't become more (or less) literate when it was adopted, and likewise did neither when the tech (telephones) moved on and it was abandoned. I'm sure at the time of its peak, there were cries, like yours, that cablese represented an assault on literacy or the dumbing down of society, but this is the precise opposite of the truth. Over that same span, literacy rates spiked.

At school we both were taught the literary and linguistic norms of the movable type era. That era is dead, and we're the last generation who got that training. I was 20 years old and working for an antiquarian bookseller when he came up to my desk and announced, sadly, that the Clarenden Press (printers of the Oxford University Press) had just published the last book they were ever going to set in metal type. Nearly all the commercial publishers had already moved on. All the instincts I'd been trained in about what constitutes literacy or fine style belong to that era.

But my 19 yo niece and 17 yo nephew don't. They're digital natives, and plenty of the norms we were trained in don't mean much to them. Literacy to them means communicating via data, in all its forms: the web, texts, emojis, emoticons (poss already dying out), memes, hashtags and a ton of other stuff I ignore. This stuff is all language, and they have to learn it to be literate in their culture. They may not be as literate as you or I in ours, but they don't live in a world in which movable type is the pinnacle of literacy, and neither any longer do we.

Similarly, all the norms of what constituted a book got tossed out when print came in to replace hand-written manuscripts. Brand new standards of spelling, of punctuation, of abbreviation and pagination all had to devised, because the old ones no longer served. Did all this change mean that society was becoming less literate? No, of course not: the arrival of print was the dawn of the era of mass literacy.

Those standards have had a good long run, but we're now at another inflection point, and just as happened when print displaced manuscripts, the standards that constitute literacy are once again ripe for redefinition. In fact, it's necessary.

Because literacy has never been more important, and our culture has never been more literate.

_________________
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

"My advice is to not let the boys in" vs "My advice is not to let the boys in"

It's not just a matter of grammar. If you are thinking of doing it then conceptually "to not let in" is an action in itself ("to keep out", "to debar from entry") in a way that, say,"to not run" isn't. And rhythmically having five syllables each for "my advice is to" and "not let the boys in" divides the line neatly but maybe that is less obvious when sung.

I wouldn't be surprised if some languages have a verb meaning "to boldly go".