Re: Quartz/Halogen incandescent bulbs

["P. O. Johnson" <pojhome@FLASH.NET>]

Zach speaks truth but with forked tongue. All languages, English foremost
among them, do indeed evolve. But the primary purpose of any language is to
communicate ideas. To do this with some degree of accuracy, both sender and
recipient must agree on the meaning of words and of particular combinations
of words. That's the whole reason for dictionaries and grammatical rules.

English has, by far, the largest vocabulary of any language, new or old. We
have many words that means basically the same thing but with slight
differences in shade of meaning. Thus, I believe English is the only
language that has a thesaurus.

All editors realize early in their careers that they will not be successful
if they try to halt the evolution of word meanings. Hence, they consider it
their contribution to be only a bit of a brake to moderate the headlong rush
of new words and new meanings of old words. To be sure, new words and
phrases enrich our language, allowing us to express different shades of
meaning or to express a concept in a joyous or memorable way.

But the price we pay for this flexibility is often unintended confusion. For
example, when a Californian (on the cutting edge of cool new phrases) uses a
set of words which, to him, express his intent perfectly, we Virginians are
liable to receive a totally different, yea, even opposite, meaning from
them.

It therefore behooves the more hip among us to maintain some awareness of
the evolution of words and to consider how our phrases might be interpreted
by the less hip readers. Think how you, as a scientist, would operate if the
rules of math evolved at even half the rate of our favorite language.

poj
Collin County College

----- Original Message -----
From: "Zach Wolff" <zachary_wolff@YAHOO.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 8:43 PM
Subject: Re: Quartz/Halogen incandescent bulbs


> Kudos to Mark for showing some linguistics knowledge
> on this physics list.  The flexibility of the English
> language is one of its greatest strengths.  English
> borrows from other languages at a rate greater than
> any other known modern languange.  English converts
> verbs to nouns and back to verbs with remarkable ease.
>  This may make it a bit hard for the elderly to keep
> up, but it expands our expressive power.  The
> grammarian view point is rapidly dying.  The rules
> quoted are generally ridiculous leftovers from Latin
> with little or no application to modern English.  A
> review of the history of the English language will
> show that many modern "rules" are only former "errors"
> that became the standard.  If native speakers of a
> lanuage understand an utterance it is correct.
> Language is about communication, not arbitrary
> standards.
>
> The real use of these rules is only to make
> distinctions regarding class and education.  What
> grammar books call "right" is only a prestige dialect.
>  Knowing this dialect is beneficial, as its use
> implies that the user is a member of the prestige
> class that speaks this dialect.  It is not more
> correct than other options.
>
> Zach
>
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