4 ms·

English hyphens are kind of one of the world's worst language features of all time. They're supposed to indicate when two words are being joined together, until

by bane 10y ago

English hyphens are kind of one of the world's worst language features of all time. They're supposed to indicate when two words are being joined together, until people get tired of using the extra symbol and then just drop it altogether and mush the words together into a proper Germanic compound word. This can happen incredibly fast in linguistic terms -- anybody remember "e-mail"? Since compounding words happens naturally in English grammar, hyphenation is some weirdo vestigial hangover from the times before English was written with spaces and the "rules" are entirely arbitrary and up to whatever style guide you happened to have studied in school. In some bizarre twist of fate, hyphenation is on the decline and instead of just compounding two words together like any decent Germanic language, some style guides are encouraging people to keep the words separated with spaces, coming a full 180 degrees from the original use of a mark to compound words for clarity in texts made without spaces. Is it "on-line", "on line", "online", how about "log-in", "log in", "login"? It shouldn't go beyond notice that the hyphen seems to exist as a way to prevent compounding in the proper Germanic way, but isn't needed at all for Latin or Greek based compounds or neologisms. Language prescriptivists can make a real mess of things and really screw the languages up for the rest of us. Trying to Romanize English was a terrible idea.

ghurtado 10y ago
I agree with much of what you said, but this: > "log in", "login"? Is a bad example, because these two have taken on two slightly different meanings: the spaced version is the verb, and the single word version is the noun.
- bane 10y ago
  It also turns out that English tolerates noun/verb homophones just fine, the orthography doesn't change the pronunciation at all and it doesn't really matter in this case.
  - ademarre 10y ago
    You sound like you know more about this than I do, but I find login as a verb distasteful and believe such usage should be avoided. What would you do for the past tense? You'll decompose the word to its natural verb, log, and write logged in. Also, I, for one, still favor e-mail, but I'm definitely in the minority there.
    - bane 10y ago
      I think the problem I have more is that most of this business hinders communication by trying to establish rules that are orthogonal to the language -- usually with some kind of prestige agenda towards Romanticizing English. Hyphens to compound words were simply a convenience and clarification mark for a time before we used spaces. We use spaces now, hence we don't need hyphens anymore to compound words. What we do need is a more reasonable set of conventions that are well harmonized with the mechanics of the language. e.g. Shall we use "login" as a verb? Then we're going to get verb tenses like "logined" and "logining". Are we, collectively, okay with that? Then fine, we'll use that. If we don't like that then we won't compound the words in the verb usage and continue on with "logged in" and "logging in". But then we'll have this weird case where the verb "log" almost always means "to keep a record of", except when followed by "in" or "out". But languages tend to not like this kind of exceptionalism and we'll probably be in a state where we keep evaluating just compounding them and applying the existing tensing rules.
      - ademarre 10y ago
        Personally I prefer sign in over log in. Partially because to sign seems to carry a stronger connection to the intended meaning, to authenticate, than to log does.
        evincarofautumn 10y ago
        It’s the same metaphor—you’re signing the (virtual) logbook to get in.
        ademarre 10y ago
  - evincarofautumn 10y ago
    But they are pronounced differently—they have different stress. (In English, stressed syllables are generally louder, longer, and higher-pitched than unstressed syllables.) In “log in”, both syllables are stressed, while in “login”, only the first is. Compare “every day” and “everyday”.
mc32 10y ago
There are some exceptions, for example: Back up, back-up and backup all have legitimate differences to me. Back up, something has returned to a prior state. (to) Back-up, verb. Backup, noun, copies of files.
- bane 10y ago
  If I were to say those to you, would you be able to tell the difference? Since the answer is probably no (I say all three of them the same), and you can understand the difference in speech when words are flying at you at a 150 words per minute, why is it necessary to have three distinct ways of writing homophone when you have all the time in the world to figure out the context?
  - colechristensen 10y ago
    Yes. If you think you say them the same either you are unaware of the subtleties of your own speech or you speak very strangely. There are very obvious differences in tone, spacing, and emphasis between "back up" and "backup". "up" gets the emphasis on the former, "back" gets emphasis on the latter which is much shorter without a pause between syllables. I don't know that I agree with the parent about back-up. There are significant differences communicating through writing, communicating by voice only (phone), and communicating face to face. Both writing and in-person communicating add quite a lot of bandwidth for information compared to voice-only. Face to face there is a dynamic conscious and unconscious physical communicating going on, and writing – similarly – adds nuance with language features that are either very subtle in speech or not present at all. Speech isn't the language standard that writing aims to copy – they're separate and there's no requirement that each have every feature of the other.
  - mc32 10y ago
    Very likely, but then again, most people filter out mistakes/diffrences due to accents, etc. automatically when people speak, so it proves little. b'ak 'up. b'ak'up. b'akup. difference is slight, but present. Just like writer and rider, there is a very slight but perceptible difference, the d/t not withstading [though, admittedly, for some people they are indeed homophones.]

by bane 10y ago

ghurtado 10y ago

I agree with much of what you said, but this: > "log in", "login"? Is a bad example, because these two have taken on two slightly different meanings: the spaced version is the verb, and the single word version is the noun.

bane 10y ago
It also turns out that English tolerates noun/verb homophones just fine, the orthography doesn't change the pronunciation at all and it doesn't really matter in this case.
- ademarre 10y ago
  You sound like you know more about this than I do, but I find login as a verb distasteful and believe such usage should be avoided. What would you do for the past tense? You'll decompose the word to its natural verb, log, and write logged in. Also, I, for one, still favor e-mail, but I'm definitely in the minority there.
  - bane 10y ago
    I think the problem I have more is that most of this business hinders communication by trying to establish rules that are orthogonal to the language -- usually with some kind of prestige agenda towards Romanticizing English. Hyphens to compound words were simply a convenience and clarification mark for a time before we used spaces. We use spaces now, hence we don't need hyphens anymore to compound words. What we do need is a more reasonable set of conventions that are well harmonized with the mechanics of the language. e.g. Shall we use "login" as a verb? Then we're going to get verb tenses like "logined" and "logining". Are we, collectively, okay with that? Then fine, we'll use that. If we don't like that then we won't compound the words in the verb usage and continue on with "logged in" and "logging in". But then we'll have this weird case where the verb "log" almost always means "to keep a record of", except when followed by "in" or "out". But languages tend to not like this kind of exceptionalism and we'll probably be in a state where we keep evaluating just compounding them and applying the existing tensing rules.
    - ademarre 10y ago
      Personally I prefer sign in over log in. Partially because to sign seems to carry a stronger connection to the intended meaning, to authenticate, than to log does.
      - evincarofautumn 10y ago
        It’s the same metaphor—you’re signing the (virtual) logbook to get in.
        ademarre 10y ago
- evincarofautumn 10y ago
  But they are pronounced differently—they have different stress. (In English, stressed syllables are generally louder, longer, and higher-pitched than unstressed syllables.) In “log in”, both syllables are stressed, while in “login”, only the first is. Compare “every day” and “everyday”.

mc32 10y ago

There are some exceptions, for example: Back up, back-up and backup all have legitimate differences to me. Back up, something has returned to a prior state. (to) Back-up, verb. Backup, noun, copies of files.

bane 10y ago
If I were to say those to you, would you be able to tell the difference? Since the answer is probably no (I say all three of them the same), and you can understand the difference in speech when words are flying at you at a 150 words per minute, why is it necessary to have three distinct ways of writing homophone when you have all the time in the world to figure out the context?
- colechristensen 10y ago
  Yes. If you think you say them the same either you are unaware of the subtleties of your own speech or you speak very strangely. There are very obvious differences in tone, spacing, and emphasis between "back up" and "backup". "up" gets the emphasis on the former, "back" gets emphasis on the latter which is much shorter without a pause between syllables. I don't know that I agree with the parent about back-up. There are significant differences communicating through writing, communicating by voice only (phone), and communicating face to face. Both writing and in-person communicating add quite a lot of bandwidth for information compared to voice-only. Face to face there is a dynamic conscious and unconscious physical communicating going on, and writing – similarly – adds nuance with language features that are either very subtle in speech or not present at all. Speech isn't the language standard that writing aims to copy – they're separate and there's no requirement that each have every feature of the other.
- mc32 10y ago
  Very likely, but then again, most people filter out mistakes/diffrences due to accents, etc. automatically when people speak, so it proves little. b'ak 'up. b'ak'up. b'akup. difference is slight, but present. Just like writer and rider, there is a very slight but perceptible difference, the d/t not withstading [though, admittedly, for some people they are indeed homophones.]