I’ve heard it explained that “hey” used to be more of an urgent way to get someone’s attention, rather than a casual “hello” like it is now, so it sounded rude to some older folks.
someone on reddit got pissed at me for not writing a ‘coherent’ comment, ie because i didn’t use enough capital letters. so anachronistic, don’t you know the style now old man?
None of what we speak today is “proper English.” Languages are constantly evolving.
…or it makes you bad at communicating, which is the entire purpose of your comment, and language in general.
Maybe you shouldn’t ride on such high linguistic horses?
Also, the kids they were telling off in the early nineties are pushing fifty now and won’t take any shit from an octogenarian.
A few years ago a very boomer gen-xer tried this on me and got very enraged when I would say “hey” instead of “hello {his name}”. At one point even threatened me.
They’re saying the Gen X’er was acting like a Boomer. Which a lot of the older ones kind of are, from what I’ve noticed. They’re almost like “Boomer-lite” in their entitlement and other nasty attitudes.
hAy is for horses, hEy means hello, they’re literally different words.
I’m glad that the attitude that if you don’t speak “correctly,” then you are not worth engaging with is dying out.
Well, on the grammar front, anyway.
It should of died out long ago and on the side of academic linguistics did, but on the internet sadly not so much
There’s descriptive and there’s prescriptive linguistics. The first is the scientific endeavor of finding out and explaining how a language works. The second is the realm of anal politicians from the colonialist era who used language as an oppression tool to suppress local cultures and force the hegemonic culture upon indigenous people to make it easier to dominate, eradicate and subjugate them. Currently regarded as one of the defining elements of Genocides. For examples see, Spanish, French, English, Russian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin … well you get the idea.
I’m glad the “not worth engaging with” attitude is dying out, but I do still think it’s important to push for people to communicate accurately and effectively, which includes understanding and following grammatical rules when needed.
Language and vocabulary are essential to how we think and collectively problem-solve.
Yep, I get the “Language is constantly evolving” argument, but if I have to read your sentence three times just to parse it because you were too lazy to press a few keys, I’d consider that disrespectful to whomever is reading your comments
But you make that decision based on social status not based on what the person is saying. If your manager wrote emails badly you would put in the effort to understand them. Not trying to pick on you, we all do this. My point it isn’t really about correct vs incorrect it is our tolerance for the how much effort we are willing to put in to understand.
Fr fr that hot take be so skibidi you real g are goated with the sauce no cap
The point of language is to communicate information.
If the information was successfully relayed, the language exchange was successful.
If the person knows you MEAN “hello, I would like two of these items here, thank you good sir. hands cash and cashier says thank you You’re welcome. Have a pleasant day, sir” when you SAY “Sup, two please. Thanks man. No problem have a good one.” then you have successfully languaged.
So when my wife with a plethora of issues involving word recall says some insane thing because she can’t remember the right words, as long as I understand what she means, her language did it’s job.
The modern day version of this is the response to “Thank You”.
You’re welcome?
No problem?
I’ve been told no problem is bad to say to customers, as if saying it meant they usually are a problem, but not so much this time. Since I work in IT support though, every client I speak to is either a problem or has a problem by definition.
