On Mon, 2011-03-21 at 15:38 -0700, Joe Zeff wrote: > On 03/21/2011 03:04 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > > It's just that Joe Zeff apparently has a bad day today. ;-) Or maybe he has > > something personal against Stan and uses a public list to pass on a couple of > > personal insults. > > Or, maybe, just maybe, I have a personal dislike for that particular > barbarism, just as Mr. Wolfe once stated, "Contact is not a verb under > *this* roof." I find it rather amusing that you choose a fictional character to quote in support of a barb, rather than the author who truly owns the words. But to each his own. Rex Stout might be pleased or offended, depending on how he identifies with his character. In any event the phrase "begs the question" does have common use according to Wikipedia, as has been quoted here: Many English speakers assume "beg the question" means "raise the question" and use it accordingly: for example, "this year's deficit is half a trillion dollars, which begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?" Most commentators deem such usage incorrect.[10] 10. # ^ Follett (1966), 228; Kilpatrick (1997); Martin (2002), 71; Safire (1998). www.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question retrieved 3/21/2011. Language grows by common use. As English has not become a dead language but rather thrives in many places in the world it continuously evolves. Language is what one uses to communicate, and at best communications via spoken or written word is about 70% useful, from my personal observation. Let us not discuss accuracy in spoken or written word, as no real capability exists to quantify the transfer of accuracy by words, although evidence to the contrary exists right in this discourse. We must abide by common use to be understood, like it or not. This is one reason that in centuries past, Latin was chosen to be a "language of science", unfortunately science seems destined to outstrip the capability of that long dead language to express the complex concepts being uncovered almost daily. The uselessness of grammar for some forms of communications has led to development of formal protocols in many areas, such as: police communications, aircraft terminal communications, inter-ship communications, international communications and even to the unusual shorthand that is quickly becoming formalized from twitter users. Rebelling against the formality of grammar also produces such delightful idioms as "That will go over like a lead balloon." Of course the various combined dialects such as Spanglish or patois fly in the face of formal grammar, yet the people using these forms of speaking and or writing, manage to live their lives and communicate with others quite well. And while I am not an erudite scholar, I love to listen to people and try to understand their thought processes and their backgrounds from the words they use and the mannerisms they use to express themselves. It is useful to remember that what constitutes good grammar in English depends on a great deal more than the simple declaration it is English, because of the number of wonderful countries and cultures using English as the basis of their discourse. It is even more useful to remember that here, many people from around the world can see what you have written, and while it is not quite stone, words on the internet tend to hang around for quite a while. Good grammar is useful, when you can find it, but communications exist without it as well. Regards, -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
