quote:Originally posted by ziggy: language doesn’t stay still so how can we expect ‘correct’ English all the time? We would all be speaking or writing some previous form of English otherwise.
Language doesn't stay still, but its change is pretty slow. At any one time, there is still a currently acceptable form of English. Just because it might have evolved by 2103 doesn't mean you can ignore the rules that currently govern it. That would be like saying "we no longer punish people for spitting on the Bible by branding their hands, so the law changes, so the law is fluid, so I can make up my own laws and I'll steal a hi-fi from this shop because in a century's time it might not even be illegal to do so."
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Language doesn't stay still, but its change is pretty slow. At any one time, there is still a currently acceptable form of English. Just because it might have evolved by 2103 doesn't mean you can ignore the rules that currently govern it. That would be like saying "we no longer punish people for spitting on the Bible by branding their hands, so the law changes, so the law is fluid, so I can make up my own laws and I'll steal a hi-fi from this shop because in a century's time it might not even be illegal to do so."
I don't know that I think the analogy between language and a legal system is that apt. I know what you mean and there has always been a common stock so that some basic words for domestic life would be almost recognisable to an Old English speaker, so to an extent I agree, but you seem to be talking of rules when I would talk of conventions.
Also the pace at which language changes varies depending on its context so that whilst some aspects ot usage stay pretty similar and some words barely change in a thousand years, some changes take a couple of hundred, other aspects move relatively fast, in a matter of decades. When the twentieth century's technological advances took off, so did the language to meet the changes in society. For instance the space race and modern war fare. Throughout history there are periods where the pace of change has speeded up such as after the Norman invasion; the Renaissance et al. I think the pace of change is very rapid at the moment. Even now that trend continues both colloquially such as perhaps in text messaging and the adoption of Americanism through the media and in the wider social sphere through continued technological advances.
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quote:Originally posted by ziggy: you seem to be talking of rules when I would talk of conventions.
I think that using "its" for the possessive and "it's" for it is, is as much a rule as these things ever are. Which is to say that all language "rules" are arbitrary "conventions". Of course there is no inherent link between signifier and signified. There is no reason why I shouldn't write "dat" for "that". I could write "yub" for "that" if I wanted, and it would be just as meaningful on an absolute level -- there's no reason why the collection of marks t-h-a-t should be linked to any concept. But just as I wouldn't be understood in the second case, so in the first case my choice has certain cultural connotations. It implies that I don't know, or reject, the dominant (really, the only) accepted convention for the spelling of "that" in English. OK, spelling "that" correctly, or using "its" correctly, or "Xmas" correctly (maybe the word itself is dubious anyway) isn't a rule in the same way as it's a rule that an object will fall to earth and the earth will rotate. But as a convention, it's on the same level as our convention that adults wear clothes outdoors. You can go out wearing nothing below the waist and there's nothing inherently wrong with it, and clothing conventions change over time, and we show a lot more flesh than we would have done 100 years ago, but you will give a certain sense of yourself as either deliberately unorthodox or as socially ignorant.
quote:Even now that trend continues both colloquially such as perhaps in text messaging and the adoption of Americanism through the media and in the wider social sphere through continued technological advances.
Text messaging has changed colloquial written language, but I don't think this is a case where conventions of "correct" language have changed. It isn't correct to write "u" for "you".
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Text messaging has changed colloquial written language, but I don't think this is a case where conventions of "correct" language have changed. It isn't correct to write "u" for "you".
Now I would argue it is 'correct' within that context.
Isn't the suggestion perhaps that the Standard English written form is the 'correct' version and other versions or usages are not?
Correctness has to be measured in some way though and I suggest approriatemness is the best way of measuring language. Since the Standard written English form is not always the most appropriate form in all circumstances, it cannot be deemed to be the 'correct' form per se. In other words, I argue that it is correct to spell <you> as <u> sometimes.
I agree though that some conventions make more sense than others and cut across different contexts. The apostrophe s in written language seems to have survived because it actually does stop confusion. It surely would have gone the way of many other inflections otherwise, which makes it more than just a social marker of some sort.
Great thread.
[ 03 May 2003: Message edited by: ziggy ]
-------------------- ..so long and thanks for all the fish...
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: This fits your slightly warped, Littlejohnian view of the world, but I don't believe it entirely holds water.
Littlejohnian. Hah.
quote:For a start, I doubt you have any direct experience of the current education system.
Being the unscrupulous, thoroughgoing individual that I am, I do try and keep up to speed with developments. Direct experience, no. But then to do so I would have to be either have to be a pupil (illogical) or a teacher (no thanks). I have friends who are teachers, however, which is a good direct source of information as any.
quote:I also doubt that primary schools are full, as you seem to imply, of young men wearing one earring and capri pants deciding the syllabus according to this season's whimsical style, and black earth mothers encouraging kids to write in Ebonics to express their inner voice.
I never said primary schools were "full" of these people. I merely suggested that the powers that be are getting increasing enthusiastic in their leaning towards new, more "fashionable" methods rather than the straightforward rules of punctuation and grammar. I don't know if it was mentioned here on these forums, but there was even a case of a girl who had managed to get through years of schooling, even being called a success, without being able to read properly. This is intolerable, IMO.
Its not only about "black earth mothers" writing in Ebonics.
quote:I obviously went to primary school before you, quite a few decades ago, and I wasn't taught grammatical rules in English. I don't know when your golden age of grammatical teaching was, before the fashionable trendies got into our comprehensive schools and stopped educating kids the old way, but you would have to date it back to the 1950s or 60s at the latest to match with my experience.
It was never really a "golden age" per se, more a golden age for individual schools, and the pupils who were lucky enough to have gone there. In the days before all of these silly regulations and crackpot schemes like the National Curriculum. Of course, the right-on educationalistas were there, but were for the most part plying their trade in the inner cities.
OK, so you were never taught grammatical rules in English. I was - in a state school in Uxbridge. St. Andrews, a C of E school across the road from the RAF base. At the age of five, I knew what a comma was. I knew where to place an apostrophe. We were taught cursive script techniques in the first year at infant school. This was in the mid 1970s, which instantly blows your theory out of the water.
Didn't you ever watch Words and Pictures at school, or Look and Read, with that silly orange thing called Wordy, who would sing little ditties about the exclamation mark?
Wordy is with good grace described in the article above as a "slightly arrogant puppet" - which is probably the reason why he was removed from our screens in 1992. Too harsh for children today, who according to those people who know better should be brought up on a diet of inane rubbish like the Teletubbies.
[ 03 May 2003: Message edited by: Samuelnorton ]
-------------------- "You ate the baby Jesus and his mother Mary!" "I thought they were animal cookies..."
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I hope I don’t get flamed for joining in but I have a smashing sister who teaches primary school kids in Year 6. She has talked long and hard about some of the expectations the “crackpot scheme”, the National Curriculum has on her kiddies.
It took some finding because it’s a Government site, but here are the National Curriculum strategies’ Literacy scheme objectives in English for pupils in term 3 of year 5, which is aged 10, I think:
Sentence level work: Grammar and punctuation Pupils should be taught:
Grammatical awareness 1 to secure the basic conventions of standard English: • agreement between nouns and verbs; • consistency of tense and subject; • avoidance of double negatives; • avoidance of non-standard dialect words; 2 to understand how writing can be adapted for different audiences and purposes, e.g. by changing vocabulary and sentence structures; 3 to search for, identify and classify a range of prepositions: back, up, down, across, through, on, etc.; experiment with substituting different prepositions and their effect on meaning. Understand and use the term preposition;
Sentence construction and punctuation 4 to use punctuation marks accurately in complex sentences; 5 to revise use of apostrophes for possession (from Y4 term 1); 6 to investigate clauses through: • identifying the main clause in a long sentence; • investigating sentences which contain more than one clause; • understanding how clauses are connected (e.g. by combining three short sentences into one); 7 to use connectives to link clauses within sentences and to link sentences in longer texts.
So statements like this are not all that accurate:
[Q]Teaching children the basics of punctuation and "grammer" (the continual misspelling of which is unbelievable in itself) is no longer fashionable.[/Q]
Teaching the ‘basics’ is actually a legal requirement.
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quote:Originally posted by ziggy: Teaching the ‘basics’ is actually a legal requirement.
What is a legal requirement and what is actually taught are, in many cases, two distinct things.
I am sure your sister is doing a top job. Many teachers, including those friends of mine who are in the profession, are also doing a top job.
But the fact remains that more and more children are being churned out of our schools with poor reading and writing skills. For crying out loud, we have some university applicants writing that they had taken their A-levels at a "collage".*
*This was in 1992, when I worked for a local authority, and had the distinct pleasure of reading through the thousands of grant application forms. Back in the days when there was a grant, ahem.
Good post though Ziggy - why should anyone flame you?
-------------------- "You ate the baby Jesus and his mother Mary!" "I thought they were animal cookies..."
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No! I am too new to kill a great thread. Someone rescue it!
Oops. Edited because someone said something else whilst I was panicking. I thank you for your kind words.
I am sure though that people were complaining about the lack of education among modern 'yooth' back in the age of Shakespeare. I expect he was one of the ones they complained about seeing as he coined, or stole, so many new words. Wasn't Ben Johnson particularly scathing about him?
[ 03 May 2003: Message edited by: ziggy ]
-------------------- ..so long and thanks for all the fish...
quote:Originally posted by Samuelnorton: Of course, the right-on educationalistas were there, but were for the most part plying their trade in the inner cities.
Again, I think you weaken your argument through this obvious caricature. Not only is "educationalistas" an unbelievably awkward and clumsy coinage -- so unfortunate when you're trying to argue for elegant language -- but I don't see what basis it has in truth -- also unfortunate when you're arguing for accuracy in language. This really does sound like Littlejohn's novel, which I believe is called Hell in a Handbasket (I shan't look it up as I don't want to dirty my browser) and is apparently equally fuelled by these absurd, frankly paranoid ideas about liberals spreading their agenda as if they were a network of undercover spies dedicated to the fall of Britain as we know it.
I find it quite ludicrous that you, a historian of sorts, are prepared to daub these cartoonish versions of the past as if they were fact. The idea that "educationalistas" were skulking about the inner cities (by which you surely mean working-class areas populated largely by ethnic minorities, which no doubt has its own connotations for you) "plying their trade" -- doing what, exactly, giving out little red books? inviting kids to secret meetings? -- cannot be offered blithely as an accurate portrait of the teaching situation in the 1970s.
quote:At the age of five, I knew what a comma was. I knew where to place an apostrophe.
I wasn't counting this as grammar. I was taught such things as where to place a comma, but I wasn't taught anything like the accusative case until I did German at age 14 or so.
quote:
We were taught cursive script techniques in the first year at infant school.
Please explain how this has anything whatsoever to do with grammar.
quote: This was in the mid 1970s, which instantly blows your theory out of the water.
Of course it doesn't -- any more than my anecdotal evidence actually blew yours out of the water. You sunk my battleship! what it does suggest is that your school, and other schools of a similar type, did teach grammar. If that's what you mean, of course, because you are being very unclear by claiming you learned grammar and then boasting about cursive writing and what a comma is. I'm sure commas are technically grammar, but I meant actually seeing tables of verb declensions (I hope I've got that word right; I am being lazy with looking things up), knowing the rules for the subjunctive, knowing what the vocative meant. Being an intelligent child with a poor but educated farver and muvver, I learned such things from reading a lot of books and being helped at home. If I'm not mistaken, I learned about the vocative from Alice in Wonderland -- "O mouse!" And again, I hope that actually is the vocative, for the sake of my example. I probably did pick up some stuff from Words and Pictures and Sesame Street.
posted
Would anybody mind if I were momentarily to stray from the current argument over various grammatical niceties? (Trying to structure that sentence correctly wore me out! )
Going back to the idea of grammatical language as a class distinctor, which was touched on a few pages back, strikes me as a little more interesting than where the apostrophe should go.
When I lived in Brazil - which was, admittedly, ten years ago - I was amazed to discover that people of high social/political status used the language in a very different way from ornery folks.
Brazilian Portuguese has a lot of widely differing dialects anyway. It's a vast country, with complex ethnic influences. (I agree with what somebody said about it being one of the purer Latin languages, btw. And incredibly expressive.) In a plane full of ministers going to Brazilia (for example), though, the language would change all over again - to become extremely formal, using some archaic words & structures and very much more flowery.
I don't know whether other languages & cultures use this kind of elitism, too, but I'm confident that English doesn't. Was there a time in English when the ruling classes did actually use a different form of the language, does anyone know? (I'm not talking about a posh accent, because that is only an accent. I mean a variant form of the language?
Going back to the idea of grammatical language as a class distinctor, which was touched on a few pages back, strikes me as a little more interesting than where the apostrophe should go.
Surely correct or incorrect placement of an apostrophe is some indication of class and education. I don't think anyone here was debating anything so basic as where the apostrophe goes -- it was more like whether grammar is, was or should be taught as a subject, whether incorrect grammar is acceptable given the changing nature of language and what the apostrophe in "kovacs's" actually replaces.
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Again, I think you weaken your argument through this obvious caricature. Not only is "educationalistas" an unbelievably awkward and clumsy coinage -- so unfortunate when you're trying to argue for elegant language -- but I don't see what basis it has in truth -- also unfortunate when you're arguing for accuracy in language. This really does sound like Littlejohn's novel, which I believe is called Hell in a Handbasket (I shan't look it up as I don't want to dirty my browser) and is apparently equally fuelled by these absurd, frankly paranoid ideas about liberals spreading their agenda as if they were a network of undercover spies dedicated to the fall of Britain as we know it.
You cannot deny that these people exist, and that they have a large degree of influence, particularly with local councils where fellow travellers may be present.
You seem to have some morbid obsession with Richard Littlejohn - simply accusing me of being a clone is both insulting and inaccurate. I use the term "educationalista" because it provided information on the political background of these individuals; I cannot believe that you have sunk to the point where you would pick me up on my usage of this term.
quote:I find it quite ludicrous that you, a historian of sorts, are prepared to daub these cartoonish versions of the past as if they were fact.
Cartoonish? lol. Where have I offered such fare, save my honest recollections from my own days at school?
quote:The idea that "educationalistas" were skulking about the inner cities (by which you surely mean working-class areas populated largely by ethnic minorities, which no doubt has its own connotations for you) "plying their trade" -- doing what, exactly, giving out little red books? inviting kids to secret meetings? -- cannot be offered blithely as an accurate portrait of the teaching situation in the 1970s.
This assumption was made when looking at what I was taught at school, and making the observation that it seemed to be light years away from the image you are trying to paint. As for handing out red books and the crack about ethnic minorites - silly. And cheap, to boot. I wouldn't expect you of all people to pull out the old bugbears to bolster your argument.
quote:I wasn't counting this as grammar. I was taught such things as where to place a comma, but I wasn't taught anything like the accusative case until I did German at age 14 or so.
"I wasn't counting this as grammar..." Don't try and wriggle out of this one. I was placing emphasis on these elements, simply because the fact remains that even this is not being taught properly. I challenge you to take ten state-educated teenagers from your average inner-city establishment and ask them to put the commas, full stops and apostrophes in the right places in a sentence. Better still, give them a sentence in the present tense and have them put it in past tense. I can offer a cast-iron guarantee that the results would not be encouraging.
It would indeed be fantastic if your average teenager was able to inform us about the finer points of grammar. But today we have a situation where a significant number cannot even read and write properly.
quote:Please explain how this has anything whatsoever to do with grammar.
Cheap shot. Of course it doesn't have anything to do with grammar. It has, however, plenty to do with the finer points of writing. I'd be interested to know, for example, what percentage of thirteen year olds are able to use cursive script. Just an aside, if you would be so kind as to allow it.
quote:Of course it doesn't -- any more than my anecdotal evidence actually blew yours out of the water. You sunk my battleship!
Foolish, especially when you not so long ago had enough confidence in your own argument to offer this little gem:
quote:...you would have to date it back to the 1950s or 60s at the latest to match with my experience.
What the hell are you trying to say? First it was, then it wasn't?
quote:I'm sure commas are technically grammar, but I meant actually seeing tables of verb declensions (I hope I've got that word right; I am being lazy with looking things up), knowing the rules for the subjunctive, knowing what the vocative meant.
Now you are being pissy. I can see from where you are coming, but there is no way anyone can learn the finer points of the English language without first being aware of the fundamentals. Spelling, punctuation. This was my point in the first place - that increasing numbers of children are being churned out of British schools with little or no grasp of the fundamentals.
quote:Being an intelligent child with a poor but educated farver and muvver, I learned such things from reading a lot of books and being helped at home. If I'm not mistaken, I learned about the vocative from Alice in Wonderland -- "O mouse!" And again, I hope that actually is the vocative, for the sake of my example. I probably did pick up some stuff from Words and Pictures and Sesame Street.
Well bully for you.
[ 03 May 2003: Message edited by: Samuelnorton ]
-------------------- "You ate the baby Jesus and his mother Mary!" "I thought they were animal cookies..."
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Surely correct or incorrect placement of an apostrophe is some indication of class and education. I don't think anyone here was debating anything so basic as where the apostrophe goes -- it was more like whether grammar is, was or should be taught as a subject, whether incorrect grammar is acceptable given the changing nature of language and what the apostrophe in "kovacs's" actually replaces.
Yes, but it does keep getting bogged down in debates about the correct way to do it. Maybe everyone's just trying to prove their social superiority and I missed that point?
IMO, it can't really be an indicator of class & education any more. "Mis"uses of punctuation, as well as common spellos and word confusions such as "Discreet" for "Discrete", appear in Governmnent documents, the Economist, the Times, Telegraph and FT (I'm leaving out the Grauniad, for obvious reasons!), poster advertisements and all sorts of authoritative written matter.
Although that wasn't what my last post was about ...
Looking at that last sentence, I think I'm quite happy with the grammatical deterioration of English. It's so much easier!
quote:Originally posted by AgeingGrace: Was there a time in English when the ruling classes did actually use a different form of the language, does anyone know? (I'm not talking about a posh accent, because that is only an accent. I mean a variant form of the language?
This is a really interesting question. To an extent the 'ruling classes' do use a slightly different variety of English even now. More latinate expressions and more classical references. (Public school and all that.) What is funny is that once their version of English was closer to the working class's version with features such as slang and dropped aspirants, whereas the middle-classes are vulnerable to hyper-correction and over-compensation in their use of the language. Supposedly because their social position is less secure and they fight for what they perceive to be prestige.
There was a very clear period where the ruling classes used an entirely different language; the period following the Norman invasion when, until the connection with the continent was severed, Norman French was spoken by the ruling classes and Latin was the written language of State, Church and Law. This resulted in Old English as it was, largely dying out. When the English Normans were cut off from the continent, the high prestige form was the language they spoke and so the serfs' Old English was largely lost, or at least became a secondary feature of what was to become the new English, so to speak.
At least that is how I understood it from that superb programme by Melvin Bragg. I am willing to stand corrected.
Edited to say I don't mean to sound pompous if I do. I really do find this interesting. This social status and using language to indicate it is not a new thing and you may be right about it being a feature of part of this discussion, including from me. Oops.
[ 03 May 2003: Message edited by: ziggy ]
-------------------- ..so long and thanks for all the fish...
quote:Originally posted by ziggy: This is a really interesting question. To an extent the 'ruling classes' do use a slightly different variety of English even now. More latinate expressions and more classical references. (Public school and all that.) What is funny is that once their version of English was closer to the working class's version with features such as slang and dropped aspirants, whereas the middle-classes are vulnerable to hyper-correction and over-compensation in their use of the language. Supposedly because their social position is less secure and they fight for what they perceive to be prestige.
Thank you, Ziggy!
That's a good point, and it kind of applies to social mores governing humour & rowdy behaviour, too, doesn't it? You're more likely to find an "upper" and a "lower" class person laughing at the same dodgy jokes, and showing the same lack of inhibition at a party, than either of those with a middle-class bod.
Your comments made me think of Hyacinth Bucket - now I can't get her out of my mind (aarrgghh!).
I'd forgotten about the ruling classes speaking French. I guess more educated brits do still use more French and Latin terms than the less educated. As a (fairly) well educated Brit of humble origins, though, I don't see that as an indicator of class: only of knowledge.
quote:Originally posted by AgeingGrace: As a (fairly) well educated Brit of humble origins, though, I don't see that as an indicator of class: only of knowledge.
Hmmm ....?
We probably come from the same sort of place then. I find the whole class thing confusing in our society anyway because we also have the intelligentsia which has high prestige and can be the working class but well educated person. To be honest, after a while my brain just gives up and goes to sleep on this issue. I like to keep it to specifics like the apostrophe because then I can hide my real lack of understanding of the whole British class system!
-------------------- ..so long and thanks for all the fish...
quote:Originally posted by ziggy: More latinate expressions and more classical references. (Public school and all that.)
Exactly. Compare the Germanic `Hearty welcome' with a Anglo-Norman `Cordial greeting'.
(Tangent: The problem also with the English/Germanic side of things is the association with all things Nazi. Himmler in particular misappropriated large amounts of the culture shared by the Germanic countries of Europe).
Incidentally, there have been calls for a `purifying' of the English language, to rid it of Latinate terms and leave it without normal influence. This was particularly popular in the eighteenth century and whole new words were invented to replace Latin-derived ones. Some are actually used - birdlore as opposed to ornithology. Others though, inwit (consciousness) being one which failed to grab popular opinion.
quote:Originally posted by AgeingGrace: Yes, but it does keep getting bogged down in debates about the correct way to do it. Maybe everyone's just trying to prove their social superiority and I missed that point?
Not at all. I think you missed the point if you think the discussion above has been about people trying to prove their superiority through showing they know where an apostrophe goes.
quote: IMO, it can't really be an indicator of class & education any more. "Mis"uses of punctuation, as well as common spellos and word confusions such as "Discreet" for "Discrete", appear in Governmnent documents, the Economist, the Times, Telegraph and FT (I'm leaving out the Grauniad, for obvious reasons!), poster advertisements and all sorts of authoritative written matter.
I would still say they would be more likely to be used by someone with less education in English. As a broad example, I would think you'd find more spelling and grammatical mistakes in an article by, say, a market trader who had left school at 15 with a C in English, than you would in any of the sources you mention above. And I also, by the way, think it's a canard that the Guardian has a lot of spelling mistakes. Maybe up until the 1980s.
quote:You're more likely to find an "upper" and a "lower" class person laughing at the same dodgy jokes, and showing the same lack of inhibition at a party, than either of those with a middle-class bod.
I admit that I've just used a made-up example above, but I don't see how you'd support this theory and I find it baffling. It seems to be pulled entirely out of the air and based on stereotype.
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The OED has inwit down as coming from Middle English. Though maybe that's Stefanos's (or indeed, Stefanos') point, that an attempt was made to rescue it from oblivion and replace the Latinate version.
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Post wise like, this here thread is gettin' a bit bleedin' long.
Now, meself I'm lovin' every last wordy bit of it, but as it 'appens the forum software don't like it up 'em and at plus two 'undred posts it's a bastard that could soon be lost..
You want to start a part deux ? Then I can see if the new and bleedin' improved software will let me archive it sharp like..
D'ya follow ?
-------------------- my own brother a god dam shit sucking vampire!!! you wait till mum finds out buddy!
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Surely correct or incorrect placement of an apostrophe is some indication of class and education. I don't think anyone here was debating anything so basic as where the apostrophe goes -- it was more like whether grammar is, was or should be taught as a subject, whether incorrect grammar is acceptable
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Not at all. I think you missed the point if you think the discussion above has been about people trying to prove their superiority through showing they know where an apostrophe goes. [QUOTE][b]
Which point did I miss?
[QUOTE]Originally posted by kovacs: [QB]I don't see how you'd support this theory and I find it baffling. It seems to be pulled entirely out of the air and based on stereotype.
No, it's based on experience and observation. Sometimes, Kovacs, the fact that you find something baffling doesn't mean it's been made up especially to annoy you. If you want to challenge a comment, why not challenge the comment itself instead of dismissing it?
It does occur to me that we might be discussing different things. I was more interested in class in traditional terms of social status, heritage and so forth.
Are you, perhaps, coming from the point of view that intellectual superiority is an indicator of class?
If so, that would explain why we don't seem to be hearing each other.