Grammar

Grammar is like etiquette
I think before mass communication technology, grammar was vital in order to communicate effectively.
Grammar is essentially the rules of engagement
Grammar mattered more the broader your influence
Because you had to engage with a wider variety of people
If you have poor grammar, I think you become unintelligible to those outside your tribe
“Why does it matter how I say it if you know what I mean?” I can imagine these towny folk saying
But when they get outside their town, no one knows what the fuck their saying. It’s almost unintelligible to others who have good grammar, who know how to speak.
I read great thinkers of past and their grammar and syntax has an impeccable universality to it, so long as you are comfortable with their formal grammar.
Many layman are not, and thus knowledge is hidden from them, from others
Grammar is etiquette. It’s rules of speak. How to communicate effectively in the arena of speech.
When you enter, and you don’t know the rules, you suddenly don’t know how to communicate.
I doubt anyone with a solid understanding and training of grammar has problems speaking with anyone using their language
Just like knowing legal jargon gives the power of the law to you
I ask myself how mass communications technology has influenced grammar, and changed the expectations for the rules of communication, and proper speech etiquette
It appears that the interconnectedness makes communicating easier than ever
Our communication doesn’t suffer from temporal constraints. We can speak to people effortlessly in real time.
I think our grammar and the rules of speech etiquette have been diluted in the process
No one needs to learn grammar.
It’s as if culture more broadly is developing a folk speech
Towny speech
I’m not sure this is a good thing or not.

On one hand, everything seems more accessible. We can engage with more people and more ideas.
But I wonder as a whole, if this organism of society is reaping the rewards of this?
Will people read the words of this generation and feel their wisdom, as we do when we read texts from the past?

Will there be idiosyncratic universality ensconced in nuanced prose that transcends time?
Or will it be unintelligible, simple, and flat?
Does this make sense?
I think of why grammar was important. Why did people study it?

Because you’d be a grunting, muttering animal without it.

You’d be able to communicate to those in closest proximity, because there are non verbal understandings that develop over time through conditioning, but everyone else would be beyond ability to communicate.

It’d be frustrating.

Grammar trains the speech to speak syntactically, with language that follows a logic that is universally accessible to anyone who also knows the grammatical rules

It’s not enough to know words.

Words are noises indexed to perceptions about the world. The more nuanced the words, the more familiar you are with a set of perceptions.

There is nothing intelligent about possessing a host of words. You can simply make noises and point. Change the inflection and point again.

Grammar is the relationship between words. It is the logic that reveals the order in our experience.
Reading naturally impresses syntax into the mind, and trains the mind to grasp and internalize grammar
But the quality of the reading will determine the quality of the syntax that’s impressed upon you and acquired

It’s like social media and the language of mass communication culture has removed any need to reflect and implement grammar.

We text and tweet and post and blog it’s bits and pieces— and it’s just like noises. Everyone is in close proximity. We hear it all and communicate in urges.

There is no proper speech.
What are the consequences of this?
Does it matter?
If a social breakdown occurs, if the mass communication begins to collapse, will we be equipped to communicate with one another as a society?
Sounds stupid I know.
I’m imagining what would happen if an atomic attack melted all electronics infrastructure, wiping all software and communication ability away.

What would we do?