A dumb English rant
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,648
"You design. We tech"
That's the new slogan on the front page of DAZ? Jeez, when are we going to stop using nouns as verbs? The first one in recent memory that I noticed was Red Robin's "Let's Burger". Then came "Vitamin better" and "Brain better". Man..."brain better" makes mine hurt. There's a ton more that I can't recall at the moment, but this sort of thing just makes me think we're all getting dumber and that in thirty years, we'll be communicating entirely either in grunts or emojis.
Of course this won't affect my shopping here or my opinion of DAZ, I guess it's just something we could discuss rather than finding endless things to complain about whatever bundle we got this week. ;)
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Comments
See thats what I love about language, and english is particularly good at it. Did you understand the information that was trying to be conveyed? Then its all good. If we can stll convey the same information entirely through grunts and emojis then, well, thats possibly the more efficient way to go
Any ways, I think folk will still complain about bundles disirregardless of this thread ;)
...ah, and here I thought it was a rant about not enough vehicles with right hand drive.
Though yeah, not very fond of improper usage. Back in school it would get the ire of the teacher.
Tech me big boy
Verbing is perfectly cromulent.
Well that is a reasonable rant. From here.
As a lifelong anal retentive and grammarian, I also detested this trend, but many of the conventions that were taught as rules when I was a lad were once debatable or just plain wrong in earlier times. Having lived in a few former colonies of the Empire, I've come to enjoy and respect the verbal miscegenation that occurs in these locales, and quite a few of them made it back to the mother isle.
I remember Matt Damon's character in "The Martian" saying, "I'm gonna have to science the %#$@ out of this," which I found an interesting usage. And a character in the TV series "Glitch" said, "I'm gonna carpe diem the #@&% out of the petrol you gave me." Poetry plays with language in a similar way, and I no longer mind what I once considered degeneration of the language. Ending sentences with a preposition, the disappearance of "whom," the conflation of "your" and "you're"---now make me think of a time when contractions were discouraged. English is a living language, and it's going to keep changing.
'We design, they tech'. Hmm. They fail not to grate with their Marketing ..err.. trying to be polite... Balderdash... er.. Speak.
English is nice and flexible, but compliance with norms of grammar and useage improve speed & precision of communications. Marketing Speak has always been intended to be used instead of a complex and complete language, because then it can be used to obfuscate and reduce precision. If that was intended with the new slogan, it's suceeded admirably. Trouble is, most people see through it, like they did 'NewSpeak' in Orwell's '1984'.
In this case, I'd have to say I actually don't understand what 'We tech' means, precisely because 'tech' is not a verb with an established meaning. You mght as well say 'We wibble'. What do you think 'We tech' means?
That's the problem for me. When sentences (or phrases) aren't grammatically correct, I need to re-read them several times to get what is actually being said.
With "You design. We tech" I'm thinking did they mean "teach" and leave out the "a"? That would make more sense. Bad spelling or bad grammar? Not an efficient use of language.
That's a big ask.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, tech
I see something like that though, I don't think clever; what I actually think is marketting are at their crap again - let's move on.
It puts me off.
@OP
Nothing dumb about it; it is too easy to misunderstand or for us to wonder about spelling, presuming we just don't think more marketing crap and ignore it.
Using a nonsensical word for describing what you say you're going to do, in this case "tech" you, might be intentionally vague. You can't come back later to complain about not being "teched" as the term is meaningless.
From an outsider's standpoint - because I'm german - this sounds even more funny.
Of course it's kinda easy to understand what (probably) is meant: "You design. We give you the technics to build it"
Of ourse it also could end up as "You design. We don't have the tech to help You build it. But we can offer You lots of other stuff.."
I guess when german advertisement reaches the new low point of doing stuff like that to the german language - "Sie entwerfen. Wir Technik" - I can only hope to be old enough to already have caught some mental damage, keeping me from noticing it.
Ha! The recent conversion of 'ask' to a noun (in the UK anyway) irritates me no end. I'm not exactly a purist when it comes to the English language - it's the sheer pretentiousness of it that irks me. Suddenly, it becomes trendy to throw idiotic words or phrases into conversation (face-time with your kids, etc), just to be considered 'hip'. (Tom Lehrer once described the folk music craze in the 1960s as "The currently fashionable form of idiocy among the self-styled intellectuals" - A phrase that still applies to half-witted behaviour today)
My solution is usually to pick up a book by Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells or Conan Doyle and forget certain people live on the same planet as me.
When "disrespect" was first used as a verb, I thought, and still do, that particular one was quite useful and I use it myself. But in general I can't stand people, marketing or not, making nouns into verbs.
"Brain better" ???
Zombies ... ???
LOL!
Apart from that, I thought "We tech" is a spelling error for "We teach".
I'm in the "we're getting dumber" crowd. I do not understand the "It's all good" crowd. No, it isn't all good! That type of thinking is simply an excuse for laziness, selfishness, and ignorance.
And yes, I myself use emoticons prolifically, but I ONLY use the ones defined here in this forum and I only use the most basic three or four of them. And yes, I sometimes use slang or dialect of regional people to "set the stage". But not outside of interpersonal conversations or informal forums. Unfortunately, about the only exposure that too many people have to language these days, are informal forums, interpersonal conversations, and advertisements. And when even the advertisement devolve, we've proceeded a bit more down the slippery slope. One of the best sources of experience with good language skills, and especially writing skills, such as good punctuation, and accepted spelling, is by reading good books. You even get to see the evolvement of language between the old classic and modern novels, but in a healthy organized way. Again unfortunately, people don't read enough books these days. Listening to a good book is NOT the same as reading it. We're saturated with video and informality. We're getting dumber.
...
It may or may not work for you (I'm not a fan) but the decision to use a noun as a verb - especially in a slogan - is not inherently "dumb". By all means demur, and stick to the previously established norms, but don't simply assume that those who pursue another path are doing so because their command of English is lacking.
My particular rant is the rise of the term "healthing".
It has even infected newspapers which have sections such as politics, sports, and now "healthing". Yuck. I'm starting to feel sick.
Well, I must weigh in on the "It is *wrong*" side of the argument!
It is not (by definition - look it up) communication. The people using it are not using a 'shared method of conveying thoughts, ideas, queries, or commands' (or however you want to phrase it), even though using words of the same language which *have* definitions. Can people *guess* what you mean - maybe, but they do not *know* what you mean. This, as well as improper usage of a type of word, makes it NOT language, and a sign of ignorance (however popular, ignorance does not make 'wrong' into 'right' or 'false' into 'true' - and is half the reason you cannot believe anything you read in social media; trolls being the other half).
Some of you may be old enough to remember "fo shizzle" - a term which Snoop Dogg used back in the '80s (I think) that was enthusiastically adopted by most of the public - and if so you probably also remember how a person was ridiculed for NOT accepting someone else's using it! For those who don't remember (and be so thankful of your ignorance in this matter), it was basically something he said when he was too stoned to respond to an interviewer's question and could not remember the words he wanted to use/say. It was used to mean whatever you wanted or implied it to mean - any noun, verb, adverb, adjective; anything. It was a bunch of adults(?) running around substituting the equivalent of "Smurfy" for words and thinking they were cool - and the same type of people were defending it as a 'legitmate' part of language.
The topic in question falls into the same set of problems and issues - it is not communication; it is assumption (even if you are not hung up on 'rules' - which are there for a reason). And for those who would still defend it as 'harmless': I will always remember the day I was walking into the hospital (a friend had just given birth and I was going to visit/congratulate) and I passed a group of upset and angry people speaking extremely thick/broken 'street-lingo' - so thick it took me a moment to understand them. As I waited to cross the street, I overheard what was wrong: their friend (and one of them's brother) had just *died* because they could not communicate with the doctor or nurses! Yes, his problem was serious, but not THAT serious - but they didn't understand what was being asked of them and the staff couldn't understand their responses - and so, from what I could put together, the wrong medicine was administered and the guy died. I asked around a bit inside, and while no actual answers were given (for obvious reasons), that is what had happened. A man/boy *died* because 'good enough' actually wasn't and after a lifetime of speaking in that manner, the people couldn't understand.
If you are not communicating, it is not language - it is just 'grunting' and pointing to a rock (or equivalent).
I grind my teeth every time I hear "I said" replaced with "I'm like". And I hear it everywhere, from almost everyone under the age of around 50. WHY?
Language is so useful in how we communicate. There are so many forms we use: Professional, Literature, Poetry, Marketing, and now that short form of Texting.
Each form has its own standards. Understanding and accepting those will keep you from tearing your hair out.
For what it's worth, the language of 'texting' that has grown is almost illegible to me. Emojis, I have used a few, but honestly they are annoying as all get out in Skype.
And then there is e.e. cummings.
Possibly Marketing is taking a page from that poet's book?
Well, it IS dumb, it IS in English, and it IS a rant (obtw, is a nominalized verb) so your are correct: it IS a dumb English rant.
All y'all descriptivist purists need to get over yourselves.
i take exception to the 'you design' aspect moreso. How or what are we even designing. We just press the make art button.
I'll see your whatever blogger and raise you George Orwell.
Maybe somebody in here can idea them something better.