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Legal Drinking Age in the United States
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Post by
Hyperspacerebel
My point is that someone who doesn't know what the phrase means (to you) will be able to infer a meaning from it regardless. This wouldn't actually work with most colloquialisms. If I ask you to give me a fair shake of the sauce bottle in this argument, taken literally, it wouldn't make any sense. You could read into it and try to derive the colloquial meaning, but on its own, there's no sauce bottle here, so why am I asking you to give me a fair shake of it?
...So?
"Most cars are front-wheel-drive. This car is rear-wheel-drive. Therefore it shouldn't be a car." Colloquialisms are not defined by how much meaning you can derive out of them in a vacuum, just like cars are not defined by if their front-wheel-drive or not.
It's the same idea that many parents don't understand the language kids use generally. If they're being asked to 'get down with it', a first instinct is to take it literally, until they attempt to read into it. Do colloquialisms hinder the communication of concepts? Possibly, if your target audience doesn't know them. Would colloquialisms hinder the communication of concepts to an international community? Absolutely.
So then people who speak internationally need to be aware of the informal language developments within a country, just like someone who goes to Spain needs to be aware that they all speak Spanish! They only hinder communication if you don't know them....just like not knowing the language will hinder you in Spain.
I gave you a standard of measurement - as comparable to English, with no colloquialisms or jargon included. What other standard can there be? If a colloquialism was that accepted, it would be English.
And as I've already said, that's
formal
English. Informal English can be whatever the ^&*! you want it to be, as long as A) it's linguistically still English and B) a certain group of people use and understand it.
Post by
Murrdurr
Seems like this thread got derailed into a grammar debate /yawn. On topic, the drinking age in America is fine. Kids never bothered to prove why it should be reduced anyways, and their inability to handle drinks like Four Loko is another reason why 21yrs old is just fine where its at.
Post by
Gnub
Seems like this thread got derailed into a grammar debate /yawn.
Indeed. Seems the subject has been discussed well enough. Shutting it down.
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