Re: Common Errors in English

["Mark Baker" <listsub -at- analecta -dot- com>]

Dick Margulis wrote:

> It is fair to ask whether this is a type of linguistic change that is
> either worth preserving, worth resisting, or even worth noticing. One
> argument is that by democratically accepting everything anyone utters as
> being part of the language, we promote the rapid proliferation of
> mutually incomprehensible new dialects that will evolve into new
> languages.

The drift into mutual incomprehensibility is not a matter of language but a
matter of culture. Vocabulary is lost when the distinctions it expresses
cease to be of value. If the distinctions remained important, we would
retain the means of expressing them. We may well decry the loss of
distinctions that we think are important, but we didn't lose the distinction
because we lost the vocabulary -- we lost the vocabulary because we lost the
distinction.

> A counterargument is that promoting mutual
> comprehensibility helps unify a culture around some core set of shared
> values.

An again the shoe is in the other foot. A culture can always express the
values it shares, and has the greatest difficulty expressing and
understanding those it does not share. This is not for want of vocabulary
but for want of experience, for want, dare we say, of culture. Language is a
reflection of our language and our values. It is subtle where our values are
subtle, and course where our values are course. Language does not drift -- 
it is swept back and forth by the tide of culture.

The decline of language has been bemoaned in every generation. If the fault
lay in language, we would be reduced to grunts and screams by now. Yet our
language remains a lively and subtle instrument. In each generation we see a
decline in one set of values and the rise of another. Old distinctions are
lost and new ones made plain. The pattern of change is broadly circular but,
in every age, half the world sees progress and the other half decay.

Ob-la-di Ob-la-da

Mark Baker