this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
76 points (97.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27165 readers
1872 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Mine is that at my age (barely made it into Gen Z on the old end) I just found out today that a Bo Weevil is an insect (beetle) and not some kind of mole or similar rodent.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] JubilantJaguar 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Sure, that's fair. And of course the guy on the street is not waiting on a linguistics academy for permission to open his mouth.

But you're gonna have a tough time persuading me that a change like this is somehow "good" for our language. Languages get poorer as well as richer through use. The envy-jealousy case to me looks pretty clear: most people never learned the difference at school, or didn't understand it, or just didn't care, and now the rest of us have to accept that there's no word for "jealousy" any more. Coz the people is always right, innit? It's this attitude that is really modern.

So many other examples. "To step foot on" springs to mind. Yes, yes, entirely correct, and logical (foot! step!), and probably already in the dictionary. But to me it will always be what it obviously is, really: a mishearing by a lot of people who never saw it in print because they don't read.

[โ€“] ylph 1 points 18 hours ago

I do understand the sentiment. I am a bit old and have seen words and phrases shift meanings in my lifetime and feel occasional irritation due to it (although I try to care less and less about it :)

I do find it harder to get worked up about a word that acquired additional meanings in the 14th century though - that ship has truly sailed :) Like who am I to school Mark Twain on the meaning of words.

I also find the ability of English to use the same word with different meanings and the power of context quite interesting (the fact that individual words exist in English with 100s of distinct meanings is really quite mind blowing.)

Ideas and concepts can sometimes be fuzzy as well with large overlaps, and insisting on too much specificity, precision and delineation in the language can be counterproductive to effective communication just as much as allowing too much flexibility can - but yeah, I guess there will always be some tension there and differences of opinion.

Language is often messy, but always fascinating. (And btw, I never said good or bad or right or wrong - I don't feel it's really my place to place such judgements)