RE: [tlug] [REMINDER] "Defending the Creative Commons"

["Brett Robson" <Brett.Robson@example.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Doughty [mailto:wyndigo@example.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 4:49 PM
> To: tlug@example.com
> Subject: Re: [tlug] [REMINDER] "Defending the Creative Commons"
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 09:48:48PM -0800, Brett Robson wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > I understand my girlfriend when she confuses 'a' and 'the', 
> and gets countable nouns completely screwed (she has many 
> money), but my mother doesn't understand her. We rely on a 
> commonality for understanding, you can just make stuff up.
> 

There was a negative missing from that, but I think you realised that. 
 
"you can'T just make stuff up"

> Not true at all.  That is how things get into the vernacular. 
> Language is adapted and changes with the times and the world 
> in which we live.  It adapts.  

Do you really think that people now are more expressive than 100 years ago? 

That's a fundamental difference we have that needs to be resolved over beer, (I can't make it tonight). Linguistists crave change and believe that languages evolve, it gives them something to study. I insist that language mutates and devolves. Latin did not die because it was useless, given a suitable vocabulary of (primarily) nouns it would be just as useful today.

I'll save my more extreme views on linguistics for a nomikai.


> I suspect he is using the term to represent process 
> of designing, and
> implementing. 

But we don't know.

> > Most modern developments are actually making English less useful rather than 
> more useful.
> You really need to be more particular about that.
...
> I have the feeling that what you mean by less useful is probably 
> more akin to less like what you grew up with.

The only thing that springs to mind is Japanese examples. Japanese in their 40s are barely able to understand 20 years olds. Most modern gairaigo are exactly the same as Japanese equivalents, eg sutansu (stance) and tachiba; miruku (milk) and gnunyu

In English the opposite is happening. As literacy levels drop people are having to press fewer words into service. 


ps  I know this is way off topic. 
pps It's become really quiet here in my 2 months absence.