tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post3004131696566440253..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: For the Love of Dictionaries - Simon Winchester's The Meaning of EverythingCurtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-46679436038320641702009-08-16T20:58:36.712-07:002009-08-16T20:58:36.712-07:00Sigh. If you think that any middle school student...Sigh. If you think that any middle school student should know better than to say, "that good of a base stealer," you haven't spent much time recently with middle school students. The low levels of instructional quality are one of the reasons why the language is mutating as fast as it is. Any middle school student when you and I were young, maybe.hederahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-82099447241240374402009-08-11T16:39:15.939-07:002009-08-11T16:39:15.939-07:00Kirby: I could answer your question in a number o...Kirby: I could answer your question in a number of ways. Art (literature) isn't "just about" communication. Poems are "things", not train schedules or drug prescriptions. <br /><br />Chaucer wasn't "bonkers" and neither are we. How we speak changes over time. Chaucer and Milton and Shakespeare and Tennyson and Eliot all speak to us--we're close enough to them in lexicographical "time" that there's little barrier. But give it another 200 years, and Chaucer will probably be incomprehensible, even with cribs.<br /><br />I think there are, however, people who would disagree about that. With the shrinking of the globe, speed of communications and consolidation of culture and media, it may well be that there will develop some kind of ur-language, a mix of all the existing languages in the world, at some point in the future. <br /><br />The modern age has brought us many nice things, but it destroyed--or will soon destroy-- provincial differences. If everyone intermarries, and speaks the same language, and is governed by the same power--how dull the world will be!Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-26019119807098918332009-08-11T13:57:37.406-07:002009-08-11T13:57:37.406-07:00How would Ted Berrigan's sonnets hold up in te...How would Ted Berrigan's sonnets hold up in terms of "accurate communication"?<br /><br />How about Eigner's stuff?<br /><br />Most people even today can't understand what they're on about. In a hundred years you say that we'll be about as bonkers as Chaucer to others.<br /><br />And yet, there are sentences in Shakespeare that are terribly clear:<br /><br />"Out, damned spot!"<br /><br />Lady MacBeth's not talking to a dog.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-69405472998166511822009-08-11T12:32:17.332-07:002009-08-11T12:32:17.332-07:00Another good one: K.M. Elisabeth Murray, Caught in...Another good one: K.M. Elisabeth Murray, <i>Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary</i> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).<br /><br />I’ve admired your poetry from way back and just found your blog.Michael Leddyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05547732736861224886noreply@blogger.com