Re: History of French

From: Harlan Messinger (hmessinger.removethis_at_comcast.net)
Date: 09/15/04 

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 09:37:17 -0400

Mxsmanic <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Peter T. Daniels writes:
>
>> Yet we managed to learn our native languages perfectly, and indeed to
>> create and transmit great poetry.
>
>True for perhaps one in a hundred thousand people, those few who
>actually did receive some sort of formal education, but not true for the
>rest of the population. Nobody learns to read without instruction, and
>people who can't read learn their native languages only imperfectly.

Do you think there is a substantive difference between the number of
literate English speakers and the number of illiterate English
speakers who use "comprised of" or "irregardless" or who use the
subjunctive in the traditional manner?

>Illiteracy is a significant motor of linguistic change, since it
>encourages drift. That's why so many place names in English are
>pronounced so strangely--for centuries nobody could _read_ the names.

Funny, if no one could read them, then how could anyone have written
them?

You seem to think that the written rather than the spoken form of a
word is the actual word.

>The same is true for the terminology of sailors, who were illiterate for
>many centuries and thus had never seen the terms they used in writing.

Were they more illiterate than the illiterate landlubbers who couldn't
keep track of their place names? 

-- 
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ๔ter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

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