D
dandelion
(Richard Tobin) writes:Dan Pop said:
Which is pretty much how the English language (and any other) came to be.
Long before there were any officials to call it technically wrong.
Which is pretty much how the English language (and any other) came to be.
Long before there were any officials to call it technically wrong.
R
Richard Tobin
Ok, last try, then I give up.
Official for those things that the BSI standard applies to. Not
everything is standardised.
See below.
Perhaps I could persuade them that they had misremembered it, by
showing them numerous examples of the usual spelling. Or perhaps
I wouldn't be able to convince them.
You might as well say that there is no basis to say that someone with
measles is ill, in the absence of a higher authority to define
wellness. What is English can be determined by observation of English
speakers. (Not, of course, by observation of any one English
speaker.)
The widening I referred to was from "English in ISO conformant
systems" to "English", not from one word to the whole language.
Bingo! There is indeed no proper definition of English, just what we
observe, and this is only a problem worth solving for certain specific
areas, such as interoperability of coputer programs.
Good heavens. How could we possibly stand for that?
-- Richard
Official for those things that the BSI standard applies to. Not
everything is standardised.
See below.
Perhaps I could persuade them that they had misremembered it, by
showing them numerous examples of the usual spelling. Or perhaps
I wouldn't be able to convince them.
You might as well say that there is no basis to say that someone with
measles is ill, in the absence of a higher authority to define
wellness. What is English can be determined by observation of English
speakers. (Not, of course, by observation of any one English
speaker.)
The widening I referred to was from "English in ISO conformant
systems" to "English", not from one word to the whole language.
Bingo! There is indeed no proper definition of English, just what we
observe, and this is only a problem worth solving for certain specific
areas, such as interoperability of coputer programs.
Good heavens. How could we possibly stand for that?
-- Richard
M
Michael Wojcik
Or more precisely, by the dominant usage in the language-use context.
Usage varies, of course. Some forms predominate, due to various
factors such as popularity, use by the politically powerful classes,
presence in various media, and so forth. But they predominate only
in specific contexts; in others, regional or other variations may be
more influential in determining what a given speaker or author and
audience will consider "correct".
Of course, many usages get codified, and many users like to point to
such codices as authorities, but they're no more authoritative than
users grant. They have no special status.
A reasonable position, and the right one in my view, though of course
any English speaker can choose to defer to some language "authority".
What they can't do is demonstrate that it applies, or should apply,
to all English speakers.
Well, there are certainly people who maintain such lists, such as
the authors of English grammar and usage primers. Whatever authority
they have comes solely from the decisions made to publish and purchase
those books.
That said, I imagine I'd consider ISO 3166 a standard for English
spelling of country names, though I'd want to read it first before I
committed to that position. And clearly it is "official" in a useful
sense. However, I wouldn't call it an "official English standard";
I'd call it an "official standard for spellings (of country names) in
English". That may seem like a fine distinction, but I think it's
significant, as it implies that its office pertains to certain
spellings rather than to English per se.
D
Dan Pop
In said:
Country names are standardised, so the official English spelling is
"Romania", which is the starting point of this discussion.
That's why a language authority is a good thing. Languages having such
an authority don't have three different spellings for "Romania"
As long as there is a higher authority to define measles as an illness,
you don't need anything more.
The result of such an observation is a complete mess. If you don't
believe me, go and rent a copy of "My Fair Lady"
Non-authoritative as they are, dictionaries are still the only reliable
source of information about what is English. Which is why it is downright
stupid not to have an authoritative dictionary of the English language.
"English in ISO conformant systems" doesn't make much sense to me.
You have English in an official context and colloquial English.
In the former, there is only one spelling for Romania, in the latter there
are three. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Then why do people buy and use dictionaries? Why do they bother inquiring
about the spelling of one word or another?
It is a problem anywhere precise communication is important.
Dan
D
Dan Pop
This is also true for everything that eventually got standardised.
Anything wrong with having standards?
Dan
M
Michael Wojcik
And indeed that is precisely the situation, and has been for the
entire time the English language has existed. So what?
D
Dan Pop
So the poor usage of (especially written) English among its native
speakers. If their usage is as good as anyone else's, in the absence of
any authoritative reference, why should they bother to improve it?
So the confusion among the people trying to learn English as a foreign
language and being exposed to multiple spellings of the same word, some
accepted by the dictionaries, some not, but none of them incorrect in the
absence of an authoritative reference.
So the proliferation of multiple spellings for the same word, which
is hardly a good thing. So the creation of unneeded words, like
"irregardless".
Dan