[Gllug] [OT] speaking French in France

[Nix]

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, dylan at dylan.me.uk mused:
> a.u.e, however, seems to be populated by the sort of pedants who write 
> to the Times (or should that be The Times?) complaining that they can 
> no longer use the word "gay", or that there was a split infinitive in 
> the editorial. IMOSVHO, it is a forum for stylistic opinionism.

i.e., it's on the USENET.

>                                                                 In 
> principle it is no better than the MS Word "Grammar Checker" - which 
> is, in reality, no more than a style checker, and a bad one at that.

`Ask not a question of USENET, for it will answer both `Yea', and `Nay',
and `Ask in another group'.' --- Simon Slavin

i.e., unmoderated USENET is a great place to get a lot of opinions. It's
not a great place to get accuracy, or a place where you can be sure
the opinions you get are informed, or even sane...

> To a significant extent, it is the influence of such opinions, and 
> others, which has led to the dire state of literacy in the English 
> speaking world -

The absence of *any* training in linguistics (even the tiny subset that
used to be called `grammar') outside of a specialized academic field, so
that people don't even know the words for the parts of their own
language, is another reason.

>                  an adherence to out-dated and completely discredited 
> ideas that some languages can be superior to others, and that the form 

Surely not! I've not heard *that* one except in many-decades-old sources:
nobody believes that any more...


... or do they? (I really hope not!)

> of a language can be actively codified and 'improved'. This is not just 

Ah yes, .de language revision. We know how well the latest attempt at
*that* went.


... I think I'll shut up now. This is way off-topic.

-- 
`The copyright file is for everyone.  That we make it available in
 plain-text, uncompressed form rather than in spinning, throbbing
 OpenGL-rendered 3D text over a thumping dance music soundtrack is a
 feature, not a bug.' --- Branden Robinson

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