Posts by Steve Barnes
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Gosh, that was fun. Wasn't it?
I'm still giggling about Waitaki day from our Maori corespondent. (damn it, where's the macron when you need it?) -
Right now, languages are dying out at a scarily high rate - one every two weeks. It's estimated that almost half of the 7000 languages spoken today are in danger of extinction.
So, in 270 years we will wake up and say "mmmm mm mmm nn m mm nn"
Ok, I deliberately misunderstood. Or did I? -
we some time fulfill the roles of 'pron gal' and 'Italian gastronomy guy'.
And I nominate Ben for "Knowledge Bro"
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"I am being deliberately pedantic" in correcting my own spelling.
;-) -
And only 18 IANALs, would you believe.
For a while I thought IANAL meant "I am being delberately pedantic"
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I disagree with your point about 'dropping rules that are essential to disambiguation' being a no-no
Ben, this just don't seem right, you seem to be conradicting yourself and that is not your style at all. Are you feeling a bit flustered with all this hot weather?
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really hard to learn the intricacies of arbitrary grammar
Yeah, its so random whod think wed understand theirs a reason ;-)
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On the subject of good signs, Galbraith's toilets (gents)
Toilet out of order,
We apologise for the lack of convenience.Ahh, wordplay.
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Surely the only reason for any language is to be able to communicate, to convey ideas, wishes, wants, and warnings. The more complex the situation, the more complex the language. As the world became excessively complex so did the language. It gets to the point where the language becomes too cumbersome to fit its purpose.
Frinstance, "Excuse me, man who lives next to the blacksmith in the village beyond the second river after the hill. There is a large creature that is black in colour and covered in air and has very large teeth and claws................oh, never mind"
So, language has to become more simple to accommodate an increasingly complex world. Becoming more simple should not mean dropping rules that are essential to disambiguation, that would essentially increase complexity by having to remove disambiguity by other means. For instance adding another sentence or paragraph to fully explain.
Let's go back to the beach.
We see a sign."Swim Between the Flags"
A confused alien, with no understanding of, well, anything. Dives into the sand and starts flailing his arms for a while before he gets to his feet and complains, loudly, to the lifesaver."man in funny rubber hat" he cries "I cannot swim between flags, must swim in water"
"Ah" replies the lifesaver "when we say "swim Between the Flags" we mean "Swim in an area delineated by imaginary lines emanating from said flags in the direction of the sea that are positioned at an angle of 90 degrees from the imaginary line constructed by taking the shortest distance between the aforesaid flags"
"Why?" asks our intrepid alien
"Well my alien, the sharks are negotiating a free trade agreement and you, maybe, ware of the sharks"
"Why don't you just put up a sign"
"We cant afford the wood" -
I can understand why te young'uns prefer text. If you remove all the "like"s and "you know"s and all the other redundant expletives and similes then you are left with something that can be adequately expressed in a shrt txt 2 b undrstd.