Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best?

[Buddy J]

im debating on whether i should get Avernum 4 or Blades of Avernum, i would like to hear your individual oppions of which is best.

[Ephesos]

Oddly enough, this could actually be a worthwhile discussion... so I'll list the better points of each (or at least how I perceive them).

 

Blades of Avernum:

-Variety in style

-Creative plotlines

-Not being bound to the main Avernum plot

-Better graphics

-Replay value (particularly if you become a designer)

 

Avernum 4:

-Far more to explore

-Good ol' Avernum, for better or worse

-More well-designed combat situations

-Longer

-More overall game to play (until Blades designers such as myself get more work out there)

[Kelandon]

With A4, you're getting one big game. With BoA, you're getting lots of tastes of little games (and the possibility of making your own).

[ArsonPerBuilding]

As someone who finished A4 today, I would hope my post isn't too biased.

 

A4 has going for it a continuity of the Avernum storyline, past with our classic Exile games have to offer us. I really enjoyed it, as the storyline was fun. I think I maximized almost all of the sidequests and goodies in a single run through it and had a lot of fun doing so (save at least 13 fine leathers. You'll thank me later).

 

Blades of Exile is a little different. It has the definate(I know I spelled that wrong) non-continuity going for it, but with that has differnt people (queue Stareye[sp?]) going with challenging, high level scenarios that really make you think how to defeat different situations. They aren't always easy, contrary to A4s (we're going to give you stuff and you have to figure it out) its more of the "there is unknown and you have to go from there" in some scenarios.

 

I really think it is unfair to compare the two, since they are both made to supplant two distinct interests. BoA is a remake of BoE, with an editor and what not (I'll never forget running around with a lvl 45 part in BoE demolishing things). A4 is a continuation of the Avernum/Exile storyline. I had alot of fun with both, and have spent the better part of my winter break on A4.

 

I'd like to apologize if this seems to be a long winded post, but its my honest opinion. Comparing the two games straight across is really unfair as there is no real yes or no on either two games.

[Slawbug]

In two words:

 

A4: depth.

 

BoA: breadth.

[*i]

So far at least. I would not be surprised if someday we have something epics like the Adventurer's Club series which definitely has length.

 

Anyway, to discuss this further:

 

A4: If you want to continue to Avernum plot and you don't mind it being very predictable, this would be a good choice. The combat mechanics are by far the best in any Spiderweb game and it is a good distraction. It does, however, have little reply value after a couple times.

 

BoA: Right now there are not a large number of scenarios to play. Indeed this is disappointing, but there are discussions going on to help combat this. However, with BoA you get potentially an endless variety of adventures to play. Blades of Exile has hundreds of them for better or worse. Hopefully BoA will get this many scenarios eventually, and if it is anything like BoE, in many ways they will exceed all the works of Jeff Vogel in my opinion.

 

If you don't mind going back on the graphics, Blades of Exile is probably the best investment in terms of the amount of playtime versus money spent.

[Thralni]

I haven't played alot of Avernum 4, but I can say that the graphics still bother me. however, knowing what is going to happen in the rest of the game is as intruiging as playing scenario's other people made, and see different styles of designing for once. As Stareye already said, I wouldn't be surprised to one day see the release of a long scenario with an interesting plot and the like. kelandon, with his Bahssikave (I hope I spelled it correctly now) already started an interesting plot which has potential. i heard rumors (for as far as it can be a rumor when you heard it from the designer himself) that he is making a sequel. this could be the start of a longer scenario with a more sophisticated plot.

 

I can't decide for you, but I would choose BoA.

[Student of Trinity]

About replay value: it's true your motivation to replay A4 will probably fade after 2 or 3 times through. But it's so doggone long, this still should count as an awful lot of playing. And you can actually get more motivated to try again than you expected, just because the thing is so long that by the time you finish it, you've probably forgotten most of the beginning stuff. I'm enjoying my second game because on Torment instead of Normal difficulty a lot of stuff is so much harder it ends up feeling quite different. And I have the idea of trying at least one more game, to see if I can make it with a singleton.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Thralni, chicken god prophet:
Bahssikave (I hope I spelled it correctly now)

Close.

[Aran]

I haven't played A4, but it has to be damn good (better than A3) to reach the quality of stuff like Canopy and Bahssikava. And those are just two of the best scenarios.

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:

Quote:

Originally written by Thralni, chicken god prophet:
Bahssikave (I hope I spelled it correctly now)

Close.

Bahssikava then? I'll never learn, will I.

[Lilith]

Yes, it's spelled Bahssikava. I find it easy to remember how it's spelled, because it reminds me of baklava. Mmm, baklava.

[Synergy]

Quote:

Originally written by Buddy J:
im debating on whether i should get Avernum 4 or Blades of Avernum, i would like to hear your individual oppions of which is best.

For anyone who wishes to improve English skills, here is an example of one very common error many make: using the superlative "best" when comparing only two things. In this case, the question would be, "Which is better?" "Which is best" would apply to three or more choices.

Probably the most common grammar mistake in English is saying, "It's me." While, common misuse has made the correct form, "It is I" sound wrong, it is correct. Just like you would say, "I am it" and not "Me is it", which shows why this is the case just a bit better.

This has been uninvited grammar police interjection number 27b. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled deprogramming.

[Slawbug]

Quote:

While, common misuse has made the correct form... sound wrong, it is correct.

Sigh.

I spent the past two years studying linguistics, and this kind of prescriptivist attitude really irks me. Language is a dynamic entity, constantly changing, and you can only pin it down in a certain form so long as you freeze time at a certain moment. The correct form IS the form that is typically used.

The fact is that language is essentially arbitrary, and it isn't any better or any more "correct" to use one word or another, or one syntactic structure or another, to communicate something. The only time you could really make such an argument would be in a certain word or structure is confusing or hard to use to communicate -- but in such a case, its use would never become widespread anyway.

As for "It is I" versus "It's me" -- English is what syntacticians call an analytic language. Speakers of English rely heavily on word position to figure out how a word is being used. "I" and "me" and the rest of our personal pronouns are left over from the influence of other languages where inflection is used rather than word order. While "I" and "me" carry different syntactic information and are not exactly the same words, in the context of "It's __" they are pretty much identical in meaning. Therefore, it's not surprising that they have become somewhat interchangeable in that context.

Syntactically, the role taken on by the pronoun in "it's __" is not exactly the same as the roles taken by subjective (I) or objective (me) pronouns. You can see this looking at other languages. In French, for example, you do not see "C'est je" (It's I) or "C'est me" (It's me) but "C'est moi" where "moi" is the disjunctive pronoun, a modified form of "me" (me).

Quote:

In this case, the question would be, "Which is better?" "Which is best" would apply to three or more choices.

And I don't agree about this at all. When you say "which is better?" you're basically saying "which is better (than the others)?" And when you say 'which is best?" you're basically saying "which is (the) best (one)?" Both make sense, and there's absolutely no reason you can't use a superlative with a set of two. It communicates just as clearly as the comparative and it doesn't hurt the use of the superlative in any other situation. They are different logical structures, but there is no good reason (or, AFIAK, any historical justification) to restrict the use of one in a situation where they both fit.

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Synergy:

Probably the most common grammar mistake in English is saying, "It's me." While, common misuse has made the correct form, "It is I" sound wrong, it is correct.

Sorry, couldn't resist this: It is sounds, with an S.



And I really don't understand why English can't be modified a little. that's easier for me, you see.

[Synergy]

It bothers me that English really seems to be dumbing down due to "popular" useage. We are losing the meanings of more and more once perfectly useful words. Take for example the similar sorts of words, "fantastic", "wonderful", "awesome", "terrific". Fantastic once implied a fantastical/fantasy element to a thing. Wonderful once implied a sense of wonder. Awesome was spoken only of things which truly inspired awe. Terrific once spoke of things that induced terror. Now, through popular, sloppy, dumbed down useage, they all mean the exact same insipid, vague thing "great/cool". What word do I use now when I want to describe something that is truly awesome? What adjective do I use to discuss something that is laden with fantasy elements so as to make it unbelievable?

 

So, popular useage argument alone doesn't convince me we're making a step in a wise or ueful direction with meaning, semantics, or grammar. English was once much more precise than it is now, and that bothers me, if for no other reason than it makes for sloppier communication and greater possibility of miscommunication—probably the number one cause of conflict in the world in general.

 

It's me/It's I...I only pointed this out as a curiosity, since "It's I" sounds dreadfully awkward now, though still technically is the originally correct form, whatever it has become now. The Russians use it that way. The French don't. One could argue who is more correct, I suppose.

 

If we dig a little deeper, I we will find that better is still technically to be used to compare two things, whereas best is a superlative which requires three or more comparisions. I learned this in no uncertain terms in college English, for whatever that is worth. Again, common useage with ignorance or disregard to this original rule has rendered it almost non-existent in everyday use. If this difference between better and best never existed, why do we have the two words instead of just one or the other in the first place. They are otherwise indistinguishable in meaning.

[Slawbug]

Quote:

It's me/It's I...I only pointed this out as a curiosity, since "It's I" sounds dreadfully awkward now, though still technically is the originally correct form, whatever it has become now.

But when you say "originally correct" you are defining "originally" rather arbitrarily. I am guessing "originally" can't mean, say, Middle English, and I don't think you'd hold up 17th century English as a proper model for us either. At what point in time did English magically reach its "originally correct form"?

Quote:

I learned this in no uncertain terms in college English, for whatever that is worth.

Aha, I see you have answered my question already.

Don't believe everything your teachers tell you. It's a romantic notion, and I daresay a wonderful one, to hold up a language at one particular moment and say "This is good. This I love. I want to use this as a standard." I think that's great. But it's still totally arbitrary, and if you expect all men to do the same thing, you're deluding yourself. And if you are going to nitpick language you certainly can't say "originally" to refer to such standards!

Yes, English is being "dumbed down." It is also being built up. All languages are constantly being dumbed down and built up as words cycle in and out of the lexicon and as their meanings change in subtle ways.

English still has a truly enormous vocabulary. I think awe-inspiring works for "truly awesome" although awesome itself still works, given proper context. As for something "so laden with fantasy elements as to make it unbelievable," what about chimerical? Phantasmagorical? There are other words with related meanings to both of those -- numinous, say.

Defining words is difficult, particularly words that don't refer to concrete objects. You can often triangulate on a meaning by asking yourself "would I describe this as __? what about that?" for many things... at first this is easy, but when you get to a very precise level of definition, you may start to be iffy about some answers; and you will eventually start to get different answers from different people, even from native speakers from the same area. And these fuzzy meanings will change over time in very subtle ways, even for a single speaker. For a language which is spoken by millions of people around the world, you can imagine all the changes it goes through. Many of these balance each other out, like myriad ripples on the world's oceans. But beneath the seas, there is always some tectonic activity, and eventually we see continental drift.

Quote:

English was once much more precise than it is now

What makes you say that? I'm interested, but looking back on the various texts I've read from Chaucer's day to ours, I can't say I've ever gotten that impression. Certainly Shakespeare is rich language, but that has as much to do with the author as the language, and I daresay he succeeds more at creating poetic multiplicity of meaning rather than at being "precise."

[Aran]

Quote:

Originally written by Synergy:
It bothers me that English really seems to be dumbing down due to "popular" useage. We are losing the meanings of more and more once perfectly useful words. Take for example the similar sorts of words, "fantastic", "wonderful", "awesome", "terrific". Fantastic once implied a fantastical/fantasy element to a thing. Wonderful once implied a sense of wonder. Awesome was spoken only of things which truly inspired awe. Terrific once spoke of things that induced terror. Now, through popular, sloppy, dumbed down useage, they all mean the exact same insipid, vague thing "great/cool". What word do I use now when I want to describe something that is truly awesome? What adjective do I use to discuss something that is laden with fantasy elements so as to make it unbelievable?

Why not continue to use awesome and fantastic for those purposes? I do on occasion.

Prepending a superfluous "truly" (as in "truly awesome") might be bad style, but it does seem to get the point across. Few who use awesome, fantastic and terrific to mean the same thing would utter the word "truly".

[Synergy]

Slartster, I'm in essential agreement with most of your points here about language evolution. I haven't studied linguistics as you have, so my comments come mostly from everyday observation and reading literature. When I look at the diversity and richness of language used in English in 18th and 19th century novels or whatnot, today's speech and much of its writing seems very base and colorless, here in America anyway. I understand how arbitrary and ever-evolving any language is. My greatest lament is the seeming lack of a rich vocabulary. Many concise and colorful English words are dying the death due to atrophy. I love words and what can be accomplished with them. I think the single biggest contributor to the situation is the fact that people don't read much anymore, and we watch TV and play video games instead. When I read, when I hit a word I don't know, I get the dictionary, and perhaps make a new friend.

 

Maybe, instead of "originally," I should say "previously." I don't know when many such things actually originated. American English, as it is commonly spoken, is at present rife with slang and vagueity. If I want to use more precise words, I run the risk of communicating less clearly, because few people know the meanings of many such words any longer. The words are still in the dictionary, but they are not in the lingo, and so will soon for all practical purposes, cease to exist.

 

I know one thing. I don't intend to replace "fantastic" with "phat".

[Slawbug]

*nods*

 

I'm not sure the situation with more specialized words (I'm going to use that rather than "precise" which seems imprecise to me) is as bleak as you suggest. At least not compared to the way it was "previously." The language relics we have from, say, the 1800s, are the things that people wrote down. Who wrote these things down? Writers, poets, newspaper reporters, editors, academics... in short, the most literate segments of the population.

 

The most literate segments of the population today know that "awesome" can have something to do with "awe." They have a rich and a dynamic vocabulary. As a recent refugee from the scholarly life I can assure you that sesquipedalianism is alive and well. But do you really think the vernacular, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, whenever, was any LESS full of slang, or of vague words? Do you really think the vernacular had any more access to specialized vocabulary?

 

I wish people read more, too. But if you take a little historical or geographical perspective, people in our society STILL read WAY more than they did 200 years ago... maybe even 100. And they read way more than people in many parts of the world do. I'm not supporting TV and video games over books, believe me, but I don't think you can blame the vagueness of our vernacular on them.

[Glafna]

Ummm guys, this is a topic about A4 and BoA, and which is better, not English and Grammer. I have 3 more courses of it in Highschool, and I assume the majority of the people here are either in College/University or Highschool, so we don't really need to know about it.

 

As for which is better. I haven't played A4 yet(waiting for windows), but if it's anything like the Geneforge series, then it will have a extremley indepth storyline, with a varying plot, where BoA is more you being able to suck more fun out of the game, because of all of the new scenarios being made/released.

Overall I would have to say BoA, because even if you beat all the scenarios already out, there will definatley be more, or maybe BoA2(hint, hint)

[Kelandon]

English was never correctly spoken. No language was. The rules of English exist based on spoken usage (at any period of time) only in broad outlines. They do not come from freezing a language in any moment in time — this is a myth, no more true for being common. People used to learn the rules better than they do now, but they still had to learn them. So where do they come from? A few rules exist from comparison with Latin and the Romance languages. But the main source of grammatical rules is the attempt to make the language make sense.

 

I study Latin and Greek, so I have to compare to them. Latin was heavily standardized from an early point in its literary history, whereas Greek was not. There was a "correct" way of speaking Latin almost as long ago as there were any literary texts (1st century B.C.). Greek had grammarians back as far as the glory days of Athens, but it wasn't really standardized until after the golden age of its literature.

 

The end result is that Latin grammar books are small and make a lot of sense; the usage is rational. Greek grammar books are huge, and they contain an absurd number of exceptions, mostly involving "assimilation" and "vividness" and "asyndeton" and a variety of other words that basically mean "grammatical incorrectness."

 

The Greek books probably better reflect actual usage at the time, but would you rather read 700 pages of small type or 200 pages of big type? My grammar books for Greek and Latin are the former and the latter, respectively — the results of standardization.

 

The reason that English now seems less linguistically precise to readers of older works is that high style died over the course of the past hundred years. It is not that contemporary English is a less expressive idiom with fewer words — far from it! We have many more words than we once did. It is that we don't use high style anymore. Until fairly recently, people loved to hear other people be more eloquent than they could be (from Abe Lincoln to Cicero and Demosthenes). They flocked to speeches to hear masterful language. For whatever reason (and I haven't ever investigated this), people don't like this anymore.

 

I do think that there has been a shift over the course of the past century or so in the register of diction that normal people can understand — not that they speak, but that they can understand. This is evident in the way in which our political speakers speak now compared to the way they spoke in the mid-19th century, even though both expected everyone in the audience to understand what they were saying.

 

And Glafna, there will not be a BoA2.

[John S]

Quote:

Originally written by Thralni, chicken god prophet:

Quote:

Originally written by Synergy:

Probably the most common grammar mistake in English is saying, "It's me." While, common misuse has made the correct form, "It is I" sound wrong, it is correct.

Sorry, couldn't resist this: It is sounds, with an S.

Sorry, couldn't resist this. It is "sound", without an "s". There is no popular or grammatical justification for changing that verb.

[Student of Trinity]

On the whole I doubt the Whorf-Sapir thesis that language constrains thought. If people have good ideas, they will find ways to express them. It may be that people are becoming sloppier in their thinking, but if so, poor use of language is surely a symptom rather than a cause.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Notty:

Quote:

Originally written by Thralni, chicken god prophet:

Quote:

Originally written by Synergy:

Probably the most common grammar mistake in English is saying, "It's me." While, common misuse has made the correct form, "It is I" sound wrong, it is correct.

Sorry, couldn't resist this: It is sounds, with an S.

Sorry, couldn't resist this. It is "sound", without an "s". There is no popular or grammatical justification for changing that verb.

To be fair, the punctuation is so badly off that it's hard to tell, on first glance, what Synergy intended. The sentence should read: "While common misuse has made the correct form, 'It is I,' sound wrong, it is correct."

SoT: I don't think so much that we've lost the ability to express thing as that we've chosen not to express them anymore. I just read Fahrenheit 451 a couple of days ago, and the most striking thing about that book is that it wasn't the government that began the censorship — it was that people (by and large, not universally) stopped reading good writing. This seems extremely realistic to me.

Well, and more to the point, people today are often choosing to say things in the most simplistic ways possible. It's hard to explain why it's nice to be able to use an elevated register of diction, but I can't shake the feeling that it is nice.

[Slawbug]

I almost brought up Fahrenheit 451 in my own post. God, what an overly relevant book.

 

I have mixed feelings about that thesis, SoT. I don't know that language constrains thought, per se, but it certainly affects and interacts with it.

 

Kel: Classics, eh? Good man. Say, you don't know David Crane, do you?

[Kelandon]

David Crane? The name doesn't ring a bell.

 

One other thing: English spelling, unlike English grammar, was fossilized to reflect elite pronunciation at one point in time. That much is definitely true, and I'd be in favor of shifting our spelling to a more properly phonetic system (and marking accents, darn it, the way the modern Greeks do).

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
I don't think so much that we've lost the ability to express things as that we've chosen not to express them anymore.

For want of things to express, or by self-censorship?

Quote:

[P]eople ... stopped reading good writing.

One thing language change definitely can do is cut people off from past ideas. That's a shame, but on the other hand, translation can save most of the content. And although the poetry does get lost, language change generates new poetry. If Latin had never died, we would all still quote Virgil, but we'd have no Shakespeare.

Quote:

[T]hey're choosing to say things in the most simplistic ways possible.

Well, simplistic is bad, but simple is good. I'm actually a fan of saying things as simply as possible. I think this makes for the best, most classic English prose style. (How do you like Hemingway? Or Conrad?) And it is necessary for English's new role as the global lingua franca.

Quote:

It's hard to explain why it's nice to be able to use an elevated register of diction, but I can't shake the feeling that it is nice.

Here I'm afraid I have to agree, but I'm not sure why either. It is good that you introduce the concept of register, because the original topic was not really language change but register loss. ("Register" means style of speaking: "Four score and seven years ago" and "a good while back" differ in register.) I keep wanting to say that mastery of archaic or 'elevated' registers shouldn't matter, but then, I happen to have it. If I didn't, I bet I would feel its lack; if it were taken away, I'd feel maimed. The fact is that from an educated audience you can command attention, and even a fair amount of respect, just by executing a few linguistic triple-lutzes in your prose. Doing this always feels like a bug exploit, but it sure comes in handy at times.

[Slawbug]

Friend of mine from Chicago, he's a grad student there now. *shrug* Worth a shot.

 

There have been several attempts made to phoneticize English spelling in this country. They all died out pretty quickly, though we can still see the results of one in the White Sox and Red Sox baseball team names. (YEAH sox!)

 

Personally, I think it would be fun to force all languages to transliterate into IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), but then, I'm crazy.

 

-- [slar'tUkr]

[Student of Trinity]

The strongest argument I've seen against English spelling reform is a paragraph explaining the 20-year scheme proposed by G.B. Shaw. As soon as it has explained an orthographic change, the explanation implements it from then on. The result is that the paragraph appears to degenerate steadily into gross illiteracy.

 

I'm not saying this argument is strong enough to convince. Only that it's a real factor, which has to be taken seriously in spelling reform, that mastery of English's bizarre spelling is currently used as a cue to the education level, and even the intelligence, of the writer.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
Only that it's a real factor, which has to be taken seriously in spelling reform, that mastery of English's bizarre spelling is currently used as a cue to the education level, and even the intelligence, of the writer.

People still mishear sounds, though. Even if English were perfectly phonetic, with a one-to-one correspondence between a phoneme and a letter, uneducated people would still mis-spell things because they pronounce them incorrectly (because they've misheard them from youth).

Even if one were to assume that spelling is useful in this way, which I think is probably a flawed assumption, I don't think this argument works.

[Glafna]

Why is it, that no matter what board or forum, the people posting on it alwayse go off topic and usually ignore the one that tells them to stay on topic?

[Lilith]

Because there comes a point at which there isn't really anything much more to be said about the original topic, and the new topic is more interesting.

[Slawbug]

Digression is a natural part of conversation, especially in group conversations. It's something that many people appreciate and there's no reason why you wouldn't expect to find it on a message board.

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
Only that it's a real factor, which has to be taken seriously in spelling reform, that mastery of English's bizarre spelling is currently used as a cue to the education level, and even the intelligence, of the writer.

People still mishear sounds, though. Even if English were perfectly phonetic, with a one-to-one correspondence between a phoneme and a letter, uneducated people would still mis-spell things because they pronounce them incorrectly (because they've misheard them from youth).

Even if one were to assume that spelling is useful in this way, which I think is probably a flawed assumption, I don't think this argument works.

Mai point izn't that it shud bee this wae if wee wur criaeting an aidial languidge, onlee that it kurintlee iz this wae with Inglish.

Okay, that's enough of that. Reform the spelling, and people who adopt the reformed spelling will initially look stupid in print. The effect is quite real, even when you know full well that the bizarre spelling is supposed to be the new correct spelling. This is a serious barrier to adoption.

It might be possible to overcome this barrier by implementing the reform with glacial slowness, so that the degree of apparent stupidity was always small. But folks who want to fix spelling generally want to do so within one lifetime, and that might not be slow enough.

Perhaps the global community of second-language English speakers might gang up to impose spelling reform on international English. Then native speakers might eventually switch over to the international forms.

[Alorael at Large]

English spelling is absurd. We borrow, butcher, change at random, and do weird things to our written language. It doesn't bother me too much as a native speaker, but I can see see why a change would be good. It even worked for German, although the situation isn't exactly the same.

 

On the other hand, I can't imagine puzzling through the grotesque transformation of English as someone raised reading it the way it is now. If we could all switch at once, it might work, but I think the overwhelming pressure of actually having to communicate dictates the known evil .

 

I'm not enough of a linguist to opine on the decline and fall of the English language, except that I think that what seems to be the suppression of intelligent-sounding speech is a shame. The loss of standardization is something I don't like on principle, although I don't see any great doom coming from it. Some contend otherwise , and while I don't agree, I do like English with all of its (not it's) P's and Q's and subjects and objects in the right places.

 

—Alorael, who is an unabashed linguistic snob except for the incorrect gender-neutral singular they. Saying only "he" or "she" seems wrong, saying "he or she" seems long-winded and pretentious, and saying "they" doesn't really hurt anyone except those who might be patiently waiting at the bottom of the slippery slope, their (plural) faces screwed up in horror at the split infinitive.

[Dikiyoba]

I think there's a difference between slang that is useful and slang that is "cool." For instance, the word skyscraper was once considered slang, but it was usful slang. Using "like" or "homie" every three words isn't usful in the slightest.

 

Dikiyoba is glad we don't have to talk the way we write or write the way we talk.

[Lilith]

"Like", in some contexts, is practically a non-lexical utterance by now.

[Contra]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:

I just read Fahrenheit 451 a couple of days ago, and the most striking thing about that book is that it wasn't the government that began the censorship — it was that people (by and large, not universally) stopped reading good writing. This seems extremely realistic to me.

As far as I can recall, it was both. The people simply decided to do, read and watch the things that gave their brains instant stimuli (like drugs), instead of things that forced them into deep thoughts about philosophy, moral values, life, etc. This made the people dull in mind and body, addicted to that "quick fix". The government simply went along with it, and banned books, seeing that people were much happier (or more "content") with watching mindless television and performing nervstimulating activites than reading books, and so they banned them.

People that don't read books don't question society, and if you don't question society, the government is free to do as it pleases.

You are right that it seems realistic, I agree fully. This new "reality TV" addiction that has spread across my nation, and many others..It scares me. people would actually watch other people have fun (and gossip about these people, and their plots) than to go out and interact (and do the same things as these people do) themselves.
Why do something when you can experience "the same thing", from the comfortable seat of your favorit armchair?

Man, and I shouldn't even get started on such barbarism as "Fear Factory". Is this what we pay our TV licence for, to watch other people eat dog feces?
Something is very wrong with our society.

[Alorael at Large]

We have many meaningless conversational insertions, and I overuse all of them. I mean, you know, like, well, something like this.

 

Pick someone you know well. Someone at least moderately articulate. Strike up a conversation, and then in the middle start counting instances of the word "like." I'm often surprised. It's not only a non-lexical word, it's no longer even a consciously processed word. When I replay speech in my head, the likes are edited out.

 

—Alorael, who wonders if this is part of the reason scripted conversations sound off even when they're well written. They're got all the content but the blank noise is missing. Could there be a reason that conversation has introns along with exons, and what exactly is communicated by non-coding words?

[Dikiyoba]

I hate trying to write dialogue because it doesn't sound "natural" with the extras taken out but the sentences are hard to follow with all the extras in.

 

Dikiyoba thinks that perhaps "non-coding words" signify acceptance and honesty between peers and nervousness when around superiors. Just a thought.

[Alorael at Large]

What do they signify around inferiors? I certainly haven't noticed any drop in meaningless insertions on the part of any superiors I've had to listen to.

 

[Edit: Half a pair of errors. It could be worst.]

 

—Alorael, who also can't say that all of his superiors have been prone to insertions. Perhaps there is a causal link. If you, like, pare down you language, you could, like, become the boss!

[Lilith]

Someone's actually written a paper about how people tend to use different kinds of non-lexical sound in different social situations. It's quite interesting, although most of its findings aren't altogether surprising.

[Lattan]

Quote:

Originally written by If Alorael and not Alorael...:
If you, like, pair down you language, you could, like, become the boss!

It's "pare."
And I'm surprised to hear that "like" is such a popular insertion; I thought it was all cool-city-girl talk. "So," "okay", "and," and "cool" seem much more common to me.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
Mai point izn't that it shud bee this wae if wee wur criaeting an aidial languidge, onlee that it kurintlee iz this wae with Inglish.

Okay, that's enough of that. Reform the spelling, and people who adopt the reformed spelling will initially look stupid in print.

The solution, of course, is to adopt a mildly different alphabet at the same time. English has too many sounds for the Latin alphabet anyway (something like forty-plus sounds for twenty-six letters), so we need a bunch of new letters for the sake of one-to-one letter-to-phoneme and phoneme-to-letter correspondence.

It looks less silly when it looks like a different writing system altogether.

[Alorael at Large]

Stringing together separate sentences with "and" is a common sign of a nervous and inexperienced speaker, especially in public. Otherwise, I've usually heard and used as a conjuction.

 

"So" gets used as an all-purpose announcement that words are about to be spoken. I like to think of it as a sort of hwæt according to Seamus Heaney's translation of the first word of Beowulf. "So! I'm talking. Pay attention."

 

"Okay" and "cool" are often noncommittal but rarely non-lexical. I suppose the former is occasionally a semi-lexical prompt to continue.

 

—Alorael, who has heard minimal "like" insertion from people of all ages, genders (all two!) and walks of life. Well, not all walks of life, because he can't really claim to have listened to people of all walks of life, but many. "Well" is an insertion used similarly to but less emphatically than so. Maybe both "well" and "so" should be replaced by "hwæt" altogether.

[genexile]

I got the answer to all your problems: speak another language, then.

You know that you guys (sorry, girls too) are getting REALLY off-topic there?

[Lilith]

This has been pointed out already. We don't care.

[Slawbug]

At this point I think the people pointing out the off-topicality are rather more off-topic.

[genexile]

So you are, because you pointed me that pointed that it was off-topic.