Re: Planet of the New Papers

["Jerry D. Harris" <jharris@dixie.edu>]

> I don't believe I've seen one single message on this thread that
> intimated any such thing.  What has been stated is that "one" has an
> inherent advantage over any other number as the number of different
> languages in use in scientific discourse.

    Well, it's certainly the sense I got from a couple of the posts in this 
thread...

> I'm pretty sure if the word decided to standardise on, say, Spanish,
> I'd find it well worth my while to learn that language because the
> pain of learning would be as nothing beside the great gain of being
> able to read _all_ new papers.  Isn't that the whole point of a
> universal language?

    Yes, of course, and I wasn't saying that a universal language wasn't 
_desirable_ -- just unrealistic, at least in the short term (meaning our 
lifetimes).

> > Believe you me, after you've had to grade papers where students
> > actually use text-message-speak in their answers, you'll realize
> > how poorly the natives grasp their own language.
>
> Red herring here -- that's a cultural problem, not a linguistic one.

   True, but it's little things like that that, over the long term, induce 
linguistic changes.  Languages evolve over time, of course -- it's why we 
don't use "thee" and "ye" anymore in English yet get all excited when 
"D'OH!" is added to the Oxford English Dictionary 
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1387335.stm).  ;-D  Perhaps not in 
British English, but it wouldn't surprise me much (though it would seriously 
depress me) if "c u" became acceptable instead of "see you" in American 
English in another few decades.  In our lifetimes, we've already largely 
done away with the "rule" that sentences shouldn't end with prepositions 
(perhaps wisely, as Winston Churchill would note!); this has been the result 
of public pressure, which began with a culture in which so many people 
couldn't be bothered to actually _adhere_ to the rule that whomever it is 
that makes the rules decided to just abandon it -- hence, cultural changes 
effect linguistic changes.  Languages that aren't adapted to the environment 
in which they exist don't survive unless they adapt.  (It's just whether or 
not those adaptations are "good" is what's arguable!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jerry D. Harris
Director of Paleontology
Dixie State College
Science Building
225 South 700 East
St. George, UT  84770   USA
Phone: (435) 652-7758
Fax: (435) 656-4022
E-mail: jharris@dixie.edu
and     dinogami@gmail.com
http://cactus.dixie.edu/jharris/

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