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Re: [Alug] Language, Education, Religion and History
by MJ Ray 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

Sorry, folks. I think we're going to have to draw a line under this off-topic discussion of spelling and religion. People are unsubscribing from the list en masse, including some active participants, and there are more than enough other places to have this discussion, particularly in uk.* newsgroups. If someone wants to nominate an alternative place for it to continue, or bring the discussion back on-topic, that's OK, but otherwise expect the email-eater to be in use for the first time ever.

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Parental education was Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by Earl Brannigan 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

Hi guys, Really a point of order... sorry list, this has sod all to do with Linux. OK, Gotta have two penneth here, happen to be well versed in both Theology and Religious History, I have for 5 years also been involved in cult exit counselling so I have seen the extremes of religious practice. David Freeman wrote: > To: Jenny_Hopkins(a)toby-churchill.com, alug(a)stu.uea.ac.uk > --- Jenny_Hopkins(a)toby-churchill.com wrote: > > > > > > >The problem > > >is parenting ansd socail responsiblity aren't impressed upon people, > > >which as much as it hurts me to say it, because the lack of > > infleunce > > >of religion on people. The church had the role of teaching people on > > >moral issues and educating and supporting them through raising there > > >off spring. Because of enforcing bible in latin only and underpinning the snobbish practice of french being the de-facto language of the ruling classes the Church (ie the Catholic Church as-was) enforced ignorance on people. Thus the masses were not empowered by a moral code because they were unable to read it. Anyone translating the Bible into the common tongue was burned at the stake for it. After the reformation the bible ("the common Moral code") became available to all in the common tongue, however one still had to fall in line with the received interpretation of such else face a similar penalty. Thus rather than an morally uplifting mechanism for society religion has merely been a conformance-enforcement mechanism for a pre-determined 'moral, legal' code. > > Jen's soapbox of the day: > > Religion does not have a monopoly on morality. Religion is > > responsible > > for a lot of bad stuff. Religion was made to control, and the people > > in > > charge of it abuse their power. Morality through fear is not a > > solution. People have a monopoly on morality. People have chosen over the years to abdicate the responsibility that comes with morality to Religion. Morality is in effect conscience with laws. We know its wrong to commit murder, but without a common agreed law we would have nothing to train our consciences of that fact. Religion gives direction to our morality, validation and enforcement. Allowing us to trust our consciences by ensuring it complies with the moral code as interpreted by religion. The post-modernist world does away with the 'absolute truth' aspect of religious beleif ("Well, if it's true for you" is the mantra of the post-modernist). I think it is this aspect of society that is being highlighted in the comments leading up to this exchange. > > true, it is not an ideal situation, and I am in know way religious. But > they acted as a guide and the simple existance of a book of rules which > people read helps (bible , Torah etc...) The problem we have here is > one best described by Douglas adams "any person whos wants to be > presedent shouldn't be" and the same is true for the church, > unfortunatly like most big institutions it becam corrupt. > > > Intelligence and understanding should be the teachers of humanity. > > And how > > are people going to be intelligent or understanding without a fair > > chance > > in life? > > And in history who where the few literate people? the church, who would > then be able to guide people? the church. who had medical knowlegde? > the church. As mentioned above, corruption becomes possible through the concentration of such power (assertion : knowledge=power) in the hands of a select few. > > The church has been the corner stone of our society for so long and > although bits of it are corrupt it's overall effect has been a good > one. Good being a relative term, had the Church not survived beyond the 1st Century we cannot say whether the final result would have been good or bad. (ie better or worse than what actually happened) > > > There's nowt as strange as folks. > > So true. Hope this doesn't offend the religious persuasions of anyone on the list.. Regards Earl

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Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by MJ Ray 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > Also can people not reply to the poster and the list, just the list > will do. Now this is an age-old debate. Some people (including myself) actually quite like to get cc's, as it means that those actively involved in the discussion get responses to their messages quicker than if it's bounced via the list server first. However, others dislike the duplicate messages. There is no right answer to this one, I suspect.

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Language, Education, Religion and History
by John Seago 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

Interestingly the grammer/spelling discussion has now reached the point where it touches upon religion. It is (probably mistakenly) my understanding that European Christianity owes its current position to the decision taken by the Roman Empire to use it as an extension of its political influence. However if one looks at the other institution used to extend the political influence of the Roman Empire, the Roman Army, the latter is currently older than the Church. John Seago

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Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by MJ Ray 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > EUROPEAN STANDARD ENGLISH Forwarded ancient mass-forwarded xenophobic "joke". > which as much as it hurts me to say it, because the lack of infleunce > of religion on people. The church had the role of teaching people on > moral issues and educating and supporting them through raising there > off spring. Irrelevant introduction of religion into the discussion of morals. Yep, this should start a small flame-war. Can people take this off-list, or at least trim quotes very heavily when replying, please? Thanks.

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Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

David Freeman wrote: >ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU! I like that. Have you read that Ray Bradbury story where a guy goes back in time and steps on a butterfly and when he returns to the present the language has changed just like this? >The problem >is parenting ansd socail responsiblity aren't impressed upon people, >which as much as it hurts me to say it, because the lack of infleunce >of religion on people. The church had the role of teaching people on >moral issues and educating and supporting them through raising there >off spring. Jen's soapbox of the day: Religion does not have a monopoly on morality. Religion is responsible for a lot of bad stuff. Religion was made to control, and the people in charge of it abuse their power. Morality through fear is not a solution. Intelligence and understanding should be the teachers of humanity. And how are people going to be intelligent or understanding without a fair chance in life? There's nowt as strange as folks. Jenny.

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Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by David Freeman 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

--- Laurie Brown <laurie(a)brownowl.com> wrote: > David Freeman wrote: > > > > All, > > > > My web site has now gone alpha. So could I ask for people to take a > > look and let me know of any bugs, speiling misstakes etc... Also > > constructive criticism would be nice. > > > > http://freemadi.alug.org.uk/ > > Before I get flamed for daring to speak the unspeakable, to whit: > grammar and > spelling *are* important, and that the results of trendy education > methods and > piss-poor teaching are a serious disservice to our young people, > note: I agree completely and admit that my english is crap. As for the education system, just don't get me started. > IMO, written English is no more difficult to master than any > programming > langauge, except that one doesn't need to compile English... Clear > communication is no less important, however, and going public on a > web site > *requires* that it be at least close to correct. The sole reason so > many > youngsters can't spell or write, is down to the education system and > crappy > teachers, abetted by the acceptance of poor standards by the world at > large. I > wonder, for instance, how so many people get through tertiary > education when > they can't write to save their lives (we all know examples). Again, I agree to the point I would say that a programming lnaguages and human lnaguages are very much the same sort of things but on different levels. Each has the sma e general constructs but under different terms, compare syntax and Grammer. Then add in correct spelling and a wide vocabulary, we have language. The problem comes from so much redundency which we add into the interpretation and thus make poor compilers. Take for example. Chocolate me need. me need chocolate I require a cocoa based product with added milk and sucrose sumplement. as you can see english has a lot of syntatic sugar, which isn't required for understanding to be had, this si where natural language processing comes in. Each sentence has verbs, adjectives etc... and the processor just processes the sentence for such words and treats them as objects. foe example the sentence "chocolcate me need" has the objects of me and chololate with the relation ship of "need" thrown in as "me" needing it. The problem we have is in our compilers or lexical analysis. We will parse the sentence a number of times in attempts to make sense of it, if after an arbitary number of passes we decide it doesn't make sense we barf an error. Where Computer languages come into there own is that the language is very strict in the constructs which are allowed and the lexical analysis is somewhat poor (compared to a human). As such Programmers and hackers tend to command a better than average use of their native language through this need for above average levels of accuracy. So to summerise, language has too much syntatic sugar which allows for interpretation from mal formed sentences where a Parse error whould be through. but through years of use we have go lasy and our interpreters have "improved" to the point that we no longer require such sytatic sugar and can use the language in a much reduced way. To summerise, english is a robust language to sumerise the summery of the summary: people are a problem. > Anyway, David, my initial comments: the site is so full of > grammatical and > spelling errors that it shouldn't be considered anything near ready > for > release. I'd suggest that if you have a problem with spelling, > grammar and > syntax, you get someone who hasn't to proof-read and correct it for > you before > you publish. This is what I thought which is why it is alpha not beta. It may now be apparent why I use Bascule as a nick at times. Also the purpose of sending it to the list was for it to be proof read, and I am greatfull of your input on this. > I picked up the following on a quick read-through, certainly there > are some I > missed. Please don't ask me to do this again! Thank you, I will get it into a high beta stage with as many mistakes as possible removed. > First para could do with a sprinkling of commas and/or > colons/semi-colons as it > has too many fragmented sentences: actually, this applies throughout > the site. > Additionally, there is a lot of random capitalisation of words, and > many words > uncapitalised when they should be. I stopped picking this up after a > while. Does any one know of a good site which explains the correct use of colons, semi colons and comas? Also what exactly is meant by fragmentation, word sometimes brings it up by I never knew what that means. Thanks for the input, it is very helpful Thanks D <snip my appaling spelling> > > Cheers, Laurie. > -- > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Laurie Brown > laurie(a)brownowl.com > PGP key at http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371 > --------------------------------------------------------------------- ===== -------------------- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." Linus Torvalds __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

Andrew Savory wrote: >Sorry, but I don't agree. Written English is a heck of a lot harder to >master than programming. Most programming languages have a right and a >wrong way: ie, black and white, works or doesn't. They have a very limited >syntax and often there are many easily accessible books written on how to >program in a given language. >English, on the other hand, has too many shades of grey to make it easy to >master. Syntax, grammatical rules, spelling: all these things change based >not just on what country you're in but often depending on the region of a >country. In English, it's very difficult to pin down 'write' and wrong, >once you get beyond the basics of spelling and grammar. It becomes much >more subjective and more difficult to define. I agree. Teaching a small child to read and write brings it home just how erratic the english language can be. I think a few hundred years ago it may have made more sense, when "when" was spoken aloud with the "h" being audible, and the "k" in "knee" or "knight" also was heard. But look at bough, cough, through. As a small child, language is learnt first by ear then by reading. So any input at that age is more likely to result in proper spelling and grammer if the parents of a small child talk to them properly, and later if they are encouraged to read the written word. >Hmmm... again, I think it's easy to blame the education system and "trendy >methods" for falling standards, but I think a portion of the blame should >also be directed at the parents and society. TV doesn't encourage reading >and writing; the fast food disposable lifestyles we live also prohibit >attention to detail and focus on results over accuracy. Well, that one starts off a whole new debate on responsibility - who is responsible in this society and for what. Can you point a finger at a parent who sits their kid in front of the telly stuffing hamburgers when it is the way they were brought up themselves? At what point does someone have to face the fact that each person is ultimately responsible for themselves? (I don't know what I think the answer to this one is, it all makes me a bit confused). Laurie Brown wrote: >I've learnt that my views on grammar and written >English differ a little from most other people's... Oh yes, how is that? Jenny

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Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by MJ Ray 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

Adam Bower <abower(a)thebowery.co.uk> writes: > I disagree :-) I have seen how perl scripts can be (and are) written, I > find english is far easier for me than programming. Of course I am crap at > both though.... Perl was designed to reflect the richness and idiom of natural languages in a programming language, hence the "there's more than one way to do it" banner. Whether or not that is a good thing is a long argument which has been had many times before and I believe certain people here can testify to the fact that perl scripts from speakers of different languages have different styles. What is also sure is that a number of languages now pride themselves on the fact that "there's one best way to do it" in their language. > Anyway I don't want to get drawn further into this debate, as I know that > you will hear me start to rant about education! I always think that I was lucky to get such a traditional education in the time when "trendy teaching" was at its peak. I feel really sorry for the people who, for example, never had their spelling corrected because it would demoralise them and have had to put in lots of work to turn it around. I don't have much sympathy for those who don't put in the work and just blame education for the bad spelling, though ;-)

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Re: [Alug] Going Alpha
by Jenny_Hopkins＠toby-churchill.com 16 Jul '01

16 Jul '01

Ha ha! Just realised that I spelt "grammar" wrong in the last thread! What a gaffe!

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