Friday, January 21, 2005
eye Liquid Language
Reference:
brainhell
Post Date: Friday, January 21, 2005 - 7:10 a.m.
Post Name: Effect vs. Affect, round two
In the evolution of language, common use trumps standard use every time. Common usage is why, for instance, we no longer speak the old English in which Beowulf was written; common usage is why a junior high student finds her first dalliance with Shakespeare confounding. Thus, what's important about language is not what a dictionary says about the use of a particular word or set of words. Dictionaries contain a degree of obsolescence the moment they are published, which is why they are republished at regular intervals. The importance lies in how words are used and understood as people swap them about.
In the art of language (aside from the evolution of language) the most important skill is the ability to play: Allowing nouns, verbs and adjectives to mix themselves into verbals, adjectivals and nominals; paying close attention to onomatopoeia; luring conjunctions and articles out of hiding; a willingness to consider the semantic extension of turning any word into an exclamation; remembering that accepted English grammar was stolen from Latin, which had little to do with English usage and, as time goes by, has less and less to do with it; in general, rolling up one's oral and intellectual sleeves and getting one's tongue and mind dirty with language.
Thus, when an argument arises about "correct usage", the "exceptional" language player knows that the importance of the argument doesn't lie in which side is "right", nor, even, which side "makes sense" from a standard usage perspective, but what side reflects and furthers the inevitable evolution of language. As well, in the example of weather and tomatoes, it does, indeed, make sense to a gardener, for instance, that weather cultivates and even frequents the availability of tomatoes, depending on which semantic sense of "cultivate" and "frequent" one decides to understand.
Take it from the French intellectuals who decided, some years ago, to officially close French in an effort to keep it pure: Such an endeavor is always frustrating and inevitably doomed.
brainhell
Post Date: Friday, January 21, 2005 - 7:10 a.m.
Post Name: Effect vs. Affect, round two
In the evolution of language, common use trumps standard use every time. Common usage is why, for instance, we no longer speak the old English in which Beowulf was written; common usage is why a junior high student finds her first dalliance with Shakespeare confounding. Thus, what's important about language is not what a dictionary says about the use of a particular word or set of words. Dictionaries contain a degree of obsolescence the moment they are published, which is why they are republished at regular intervals. The importance lies in how words are used and understood as people swap them about.
In the art of language (aside from the evolution of language) the most important skill is the ability to play: Allowing nouns, verbs and adjectives to mix themselves into verbals, adjectivals and nominals; paying close attention to onomatopoeia; luring conjunctions and articles out of hiding; a willingness to consider the semantic extension of turning any word into an exclamation; remembering that accepted English grammar was stolen from Latin, which had little to do with English usage and, as time goes by, has less and less to do with it; in general, rolling up one's oral and intellectual sleeves and getting one's tongue and mind dirty with language.
Thus, when an argument arises about "correct usage", the "exceptional" language player knows that the importance of the argument doesn't lie in which side is "right", nor, even, which side "makes sense" from a standard usage perspective, but what side reflects and furthers the inevitable evolution of language. As well, in the example of weather and tomatoes, it does, indeed, make sense to a gardener, for instance, that weather cultivates and even frequents the availability of tomatoes, depending on which semantic sense of "cultivate" and "frequent" one decides to understand.
Take it from the French intellectuals who decided, some years ago, to officially close French in an effort to keep it pure: Such an endeavor is always frustrating and inevitably doomed.
