OT: Sci-fi (was RE: Ultra-portable terminals)

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 02:05:52PM -0400, Fairlight wrote:
> Well it's not intentional.  Sure, things leave my keybord with my personal
> viewpoint imprinted upon them.  That's different than setting up either a
> virtual pulpit or a public diary.  I've considered doing the whole weblog
> thing and in the end my analysis still comes down to, "And -who- exactly is
> going to give a damn enough to read it that I should waste my time
> maintaining one instead of gaming?"

Well, finding that out is sort of the point, isn't it?  :-)

> That's wrong on so many levels.  I mean, I guess it's a continuation of
> acknowledging and making definitions of slang words available to all
> through the dictionary.  But has anyone noticed a significant uptick
> in slang and bastardised words in the last decade?  It's also not just
> coming from the tech crowd, but largely from (not to be racist) ebonics,
> the hip-hop scene, the drug scene, etc.  I mean, do you know how long it
> took me to find out exactly what a "phat spliff" was?!  The spoof of a
> Delta commercial has more examples than I care to count (but is absolutely
> hilarious to me for some reason--I think it's the realistic way the
> announcer did it straight-faced like it was perfectly normal).

You speak truthiness, sir.

> I roll contradictorily roll my eyes at the French take on maintaining the
> cultural purity of their language, to the extent they won't even use the
> word "email" (they have their own French version),

And, amusingly enough, (another version of) email is actually a French
loanword, IIRC.

> the French seem to be doing it out of pretentiousness, while I'm simply
> wishing people would remain intelligible.

They are intelligible.  To each other. 

They don't care what you think.

Language has many purposes.

> be almost another job.  You can listen to one coloured person call another
> coloured person a name, and it's -not- derrogatory!  Apparently, from what
> I gather, it's the difference between "er" and "ah" in the ending, and
> the fact that that community adopted the latter themselves.  

It is neither of those.  Many minority communities adopt the terms
which others use about them derogatorily as internal nicknames,
reclaiming them at least for their own use.  Not too many jews call one
another 'kike', at least non-ironically, but it's not too uncommon, I
gather, to hear "wop" used in this fashion.

Again, only within the community.

It's an interesting discipline, sociological linguistics.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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