Re: Is language a mess? (was: English is a mess.)


Joachim Pense wrote:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:

On Apr 16, 5:34 pm, "Jens S. Larsen" <jens_s_lar...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Peter T. Daniels:

Please stop using wikipedia as if it were a reliable resource.

Paper encyclopedias are hardly better in this field. If you compare
the national encyclopedias of Sweden and Denmark (Nationalencyklopädin
and Den Store Danske Encyklopædi respectively), both published with a
few years interval in the 1990's, you'll be amazed at how differently
they treat the article "language" (språk/sprog). The points of view
are worlds apart.

Did I suggest that the national encyclopedias of Sweden and Denmark
are any better? Who wrote the articles?

I can say that the Encyclopedia Britannica's articles on "Language,"
"Linguistics," and the languages of the world were excellent for their
time. They were published in 1974, and, at least as of the last DVD-
ROM version I have (2002 IIRC), they haven't been replaced. (But you
can't use the DVD for the language articles, as all diacritics have
merged into underscore.)

So they were excellent for their time. And they haven't been replaced in
thirty years. Is that typical for reliable resource?


I imagine it's typical for a strapped-for-cash reference company that
sees it far more urgent to update progress in the sciences,
technologies, culture, and current events than in humanities, where,
of course, nothing worth noting ever happens.

.

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