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Subject:Re: Common Errors in English From:"Michael West" <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- com> To:techwr-l Date:Sun, 22 Feb 2004 15:47:01 +1100
Mark Baker wrote:
> 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 lot depends, though, on what "we" you're talking
about. There those to whom a distinction matters,
and those to whom it doesn't matter. If the language
is blurred and made indistinct by the latter, it is
not because the distinction didn't matter to anybody.
Clarity and precision are worth struggling for, even with
the understanding that over the long term, the language
will change in spite of our small, local holding actions.
--
Michael West
