Welcome aBoard, Dgeigh. Stick around. I always enjoy a battle of the wits with an opponent who is armed. You and Father Steve should make quite a team.


Quite the essay, Dgeigh. Please forgive me if I misrepresent your meaning in any way; it'll be a while before I can give it the attention it deserves, but I want to make a few points in response to it.

You seem to be claiming a one to one correspondence between written and formal language, on the one hand and spoken and informal language on the other. I think this is an oversimplification, but it isn't the main thrust of your argument so I'll not mention it further.

My point in mentioning silly, nice, and (dis/un)interested is that while the shift in meaning in these words happened long ago, in the case of nice more than once (and we have no reason to believe that it is not still going on) it is a normal linguistic process. There's no reason for it to stop now just because some folks bewail its happening on their watch.

As far as bad grammar's obscuring meaning, I would say that the vast majority of cases of prescriptivists' complaints do not address this issue and, further, that it is quite possible, and I would even say common, for misunderstood usages to be perfectly grammatical, or that the root of the misunderstanding to be in elements other than the grammar.

toOrulz thee abb.anndonne vigINht woodk-osS ,

I'm not sure if this was just a case of lax proofing, but if it was intended to illustrate some point, I am at a loss to understand what point that was. Please enlighten me.