French is similar, in that some 'intellectuals' and politicians think that the purity of French must be maintained against the constant adaption of English and other languages' words! And recently a school in London has decided that no student must ever use 'fillers' such as 'like' or 'you know' etc. All languages modify, adapt and even undergo major changes over time. That's the beauty of language. I find similarities within the 'Art' and Photography worlds. My experience is that the more challenging (unintelligible) the work, the more challenging (unintelligible) the language becomes. Art is a means of non-verbal communication: if it fails for me, expert comment without jargon may help. But obtuse, jargon filled texts merely confirm that (mine?) failure. David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >On 2013-10-26 17:37, Jan Faul wrote: >> >> ON JARGON: AN ILLUMINATING HISTORY OF SPECIALIST SPEECH >> >> by Brian Dillon > >Sounds like a fascinating book, maybe I'll find time to read it. > >And this looks like a good opportunity to quote James Nicoll on the >"purity" of the English language: > >The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that >English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow >words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways >to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. > >(Back to me) > >There are areas of English where we have four terms for something, >derived from the Anglo-Saxon, the Norman French, the Greek, and the Latin. > >"Jargon" is mostly these days taken to mean specialized, probably >technical, terminology. I'm a computer programmer and a science fiction >fan, which puts me squarely at the source of a lot of the more annoying >jargon of the late 20th and early 21st centuries -- we've been busily >inventing so much new stuff, we needed ways to talk about it. (The old >jargon.txt file from the ARPAnet, later expanded and published as The >Hacker's Dictionary, shows how strongly SF fandom's jargon influenced >computer jargon.) > >-- >David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ >Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ >Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ >Dragaera: http://dragaera.info Nikon DSLR photo list: >http://d4scussion.com >
