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This definitely falls deep into the pedantry zone. Lots of modern English uſage was once wrong and has become normalized. The language doeſn't have an Académie
by kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
This definitely falls deep into the pedantry zone. Lots of modern English uſage was once wrong and has become normalized. The language doeſn't have an Académie calling the ſhots. It inevitably evolves, warts and all.
- za3faran 4y agoI'm curious if that's mainly specific to English. As an Arabic speaker, tremendous care and effort has been taken to preserve Fuṣḥā (formal/High) Arabic throughout the centuries. Language and conjugation that sounds wrong is often shunned or mocked, even though it may partially be spoken in day to day speech in certain contexts. However, the distinction is always there, and such language will not be accepted in official discourse, let alone avenues like poetry and literature.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> Lots of modern English uſage was once wrong Get back to me when you can type the traditional ct ligature. ;D
- devnullbrain 4y agoEvolution isn't unidirectional. English reached what it is today not only through the influence of people using words with new meanings but also with the force of people mandating style, taste and opinion. You wouldn't use 'normalized' if it wasn't for Noah Webster calling the shots. Moralising about caring about style is itself prescriptivism.
- brylie 4y agoI’m still waiting for autocorrect to stop changing “wellbeing” to “well-being”
- gondaloof 4y agoTime to start using Text Replacements. I have: - fuck -> fuck - duck -> fuck Note: I do like ducks but they’re generally less common than fucks.
- brookst 4y agoI miss being young. Ducks will far outnumber, eventually.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y agoI'm not sure whether you're implying old people curse less or have less sex.
- nicklaf 4y agoPedantic, perhaps, but within the purview of an editor of an encyclopedia enforcing a style guideline!
- chx 4y agoExcept there is no such thing. To quote. > Wikipedia does not have a policy or guideline on whether "comprised of" is welcome in the encyclopedia. This is nothing less but one person trying to punch way above their weight in shaping the English language.
- nicklaf 4y agoHmm, I suppose I'm inclined to agree with you here. If Wikipedia chooses not to adopt a style guideline on matters like this, his little quest to robo-edit this phrase is unrepresentative of Wikipedians.
- tasuki 4y agoThey're trying to influence the English language for sure. Who are you to say they're punching above their weight?
- prepend 4y agoThey’re enforcing a style that’s not in a work’s style guide. That’s a total noob move for pedants. A more at weight pedant would work on changing the style guide. This is the equivalent of a self appointed hall monitor yelling “no skipping in the school hallway” when there’s no rule against skipping. The fact that some people don’t like skipping and that skipping is dangerous is not relevant, the place for that discussion is for the rules nerds in authority to change the rules to disallow skipping. What worries me about this approach of one person is that they can say “I yelled at people 90k times to stop skipping therefore it’s important and we should change the rule based on all this anti-skipping activity.”
- denton-scratch 4y ago
- 0_____0 4y agoI mean it's their time, if they want to do something useless but harmless, why not? Unless this is their first step in a grand scheme to halt the evolution of language, I don't see a problem here.
- eru 4y agoAnd even if there was an Académie, what authority would they have? Eg the French have one, but that doesn't mean they have any moral authority.
- ggm 4y agoMoral, no. But they might influence e.g. textbooks and legal drafting. That ordinateur is not ordinary and l'informatique isn't always very Informative. Unless I am mistaken both English words coming in from the French?
- denton-scratch 4y agoI like the French language; I was once fluent (when I was 6). So when I was sent on a course to do with computers in Paris, I said that my French was up to it. Wrong! My presence on the course was seriously disruptive, because French technical jargon (which I didn't learn at age 6) is unrecognisable to people who haven't learned that jargon in France (nobody else uses it).
- slily 4y agoHow is that different from any other language? For instance, Chinese/Eastern medical jargon is objectively more readable than Western terms (unless you are fluent in Greek and Latin), but that doesn't mean you'll be able to understand them without some prior exposure. French is also spoken outside of France.
- denton-scratch 4y agoI apologise; I routinely discount anything that is in a language that I can't read, and isn't available in translation, which means an awful lot of stuff from the far-east. I assumed doctors everywhere had built an informal consensus to use English, with terminology derived from classical greek; rather as pilots and air-traffic controllers all use English.
- 4y ago
- gsinclair 4y agoSure, but why should people who can’t use the language properly () be an uncontested force in that evolution? () If we can’t say that “comprised of” is objectively wrong, then what _can_ we say about English? Should we accept “bought” as a legitimate past tense of “bring”? Sometimes people are just making a habitual mistake. It happens to me, too.
- casey2 4y agoWhat about it is objectively wrong? Semantics? There are plenty of words that contain 'of' in the definition, yet are used with of "Because of" being the primary example, and afaict is allowed on Wikipedia. Grammar? "Possessed of" "descended from" etc. This is also very common.
- riwsky 4y ago‘Of’ is not itself the problem. The problem is that the direction has flipped from the original usage. It’s like if instead of “my book collection includes all the classics of Russian literature” people started saying “my book collection is included by all the classics of Russian literature”
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoI accept his argument but it is tilting at windmills. Is it valid to engage in mass erasure of a historical record to suit outmoded ideas? The issue here is that an existing word has acquired a new usage and the old guard isn't happy with the change. There was once much grousing about youths failing to properly conjugate second person pronouns. Now it's anachronistic to use them.
- emodendroket 4y ago"You" is still around so we do still have second-person pronouns.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoI guess the use of the long s here was intentional, in which case, funny.
- housemusicfan 4y agoNo one seems to understand Wikipedia operates as a system of lords and serfs, where a powerful few pull this crap all the time. Most relevant example I can think of is when Mac OS X was renamed and stylized to "macOS" someone went and systematically did a find and replace all instances of "OS X" to macOS even in situations where it made absolutely no sense as the article was explicitly talking about prior versions. It was like rewriting history in real time. Imagine if someone went into a library and started editing history books with a Sharpie to reflect future events.
- sholladay 4y agoThere are probably hundreds of articles that mention macOS. What are you suggesting that they do, edit them all individually by hand? That could take months. If more than half of the instances deserve to be updated, then replace all saves time. You can always check the diff and undo any damage.
- sametmax 4y agoI think lagging behind is better than a wrong correction.
- tgv 4y agoI think you’ve (inadvertently) pointed out a serious weakness in Wikipedia’s editorial process.
- prepend 4y agoI think it’s a balance based on harm of not changing vs harm if changing incorrectly. I’m this example, there very little perhaps no harm of not changing because it’s just a corporate brand and the corporation cares and if they cared, they would edit. The harm of incorrectly changing means information is wrong and makes understanding wrong and readers either have the wrong knowledge or spend time researching and correcting something they normally wouldn’t. I don’t think the goal is absolute accuracy of cosmetic branding, I think the goal is accurately capturing humanity’s information to improve human understanding and knowledge.
- 4y ago
- rbirkby 4y agoIs the abomination that is “I’ll revert on that” a wart?
- emodendroket 4y agoThe long "S" was typically not used as the first letter, as I recall, but only mid-word.