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#120658 01/21/04 01:23 PM
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old hand
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old hand
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Yes, there are always some rocks that take longer to grind down to sand


#120659 01/21/04 01:23 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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'Ere, you little twerp, bring that dining room chair in off the beach this instant! You'll get it all wet an' mucky. You just wait 'til your father gets 'ome!
-- Knutty's Mum


#120660 01/21/04 01:27 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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darn, yuh got ahead by 30 seconds! Not my fault that you were too long coming! (See Dunlendings.)


#120661 01/21/04 01:27 PM
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French underwent a storm of elisions, and survived it very
well.
I doubt that an accumulations of elisions would improve English. Perhaps we can blow the whistle on them, and
keep the consonants, and avoid confusion.


#120662 01/21/04 01:34 PM
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Knutty sez: But if a word appears to be changing in a way that seems (to me) ugly, then I don't have to be a passive observer, I reserve the right to resist the change.

Many of the definitional changes in Modern English tend toward imprecision. A term which has a narrow usage is used sloppily. The definition broadens, following the poor usage. The language, capable of great precision, becomes less precise ... as does the thinking of those who damaged it. (When you're my age, you can say curmudgeonly things like this and get away with it.)



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When I saw this subject line, I immediately thought of the French (and Portuguese, and maybe Spanish) term contretemps/contratempo. [/aside]


#120664 01/21/04 01:41 PM
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dxb Offline
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Ed.:

Forget it - this was far too late to be relevant! Comes from trying to answer the 'phone while (whilst?) posting.


#120665 01/21/04 01:43 PM
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Many of the definitional changes in Modern English tend toward imprecision

Then other words crop up to fill in the void and y'all complain about those.


#120666 01/21/04 01:52 PM
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dxb Offline
Pooh-Bah
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Only the ugly sounding ones!


#120667 01/21/04 02:24 PM
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A term which has a narrow usage is used sloppily. The definition broadens, following the poor usage. The language, capable of great precision, becomes less precise ... as does the thinking of those who damaged it.

Sorry, Padre, I just don't buy it. Seems there was a thread hereabouts recently about how the Golden Age of Yore (tm) wasn't always what it was cracked up to be. Same with language. Take Latin. Is it more or less precise than French or Italian? Did Neanderthals speak a precise language of utter purity? Why aren't we grunting out monosyllables all meaning the same thing? Is English any worse off now that silly means 'foolish' rather than 'happy, innocent, pitiable, feeble' as it did in Middle English? The problem is this: languages change. Always have, alweays will. The only known way of stopping a language from changing is to set the number of its speakers to zero. I am reminded of Canute on the beach.

I think that people with poor critical thinking skills and poor verbal skills use a language in an inprecise manner. The same could be said of somebody using a hammer sideways to hammer in a screw. Is the hammer any less of a hammer. Oh, now I feel like Canute. (Sorry, Father Steve, just a pet peeve of mine.)


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