[Magdalen] Like I Was Puzzled.

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

The french academy is purely advisory.  Hey, everybody's entitled to their
opinions...

>From what I hear, few pay that much attention anyway.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better
for people coming behind you, and you don’t do it, you're wasting your time
on this Earth.”  -- *Roberto Clemente

On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:

> The French are most opposed to adding new words and allowing popular usage
> to become the norm, ISTM. I'm always amused at the "edicts" about language
> coming from there. It happens anyway. Modern Hebrew, on the other hand, is
> very alive, and I'm kept up on that by my friend Yitzhak, who frequently
> relates to me some development brought about by this or that group of
> immigrants or travelers (Israeli young people are the most itchy-footed
> bunch of globe-trotters in the world....they'll go anywhere!).
>
> I am fascinated by language and languages and was a linguistics major in
> the dim past. I left that when I couldn't figure out how I would ever use
> it in the real world. Now I see that probably the semantics end would have
> been my niche and I could have specialized in translation issues...ah well.
>
> On Sun, Dec 21, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > In a message dated 12/21/2014 7:13:42 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> > jguthrie at pipeline.com writes:
> >
> > Some folk would like to make English a language like Latin -- No  one
> > better make
> > up new words nor allow popular usage to become the norm.  To that, I say
> > Phooey!>>>
> >
> > Oh, I'm all in favor of new words in English.  English is uniquely
> suited
> > to
> > such because English dumped gender and a lot of other endings  centuries
> > ago.  Words are imported wholesale into English, and that is proper
> > considering the status of English as the "lingua Franca".
> >
> > I mourn the loss of the objective case in pronouns and the loss of
> > perfectly good adverbs.  I think the clarity of expression also  loses
> > in this.  Whatever I prefer in this matter doesn't matter, however,  and
> > what
> > will be will be....and that is all right (not alright)  :-)
> >
> >
> > David S.
> >
>