Speaker: Mixing it up, with stats like
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Anything else is not just hyperbole (and getting back to the sport=war metaphor talked about earlier) it just plain inaccurate.
A slight derail, but it warmed this curmudgeon's heart when the latest series of Doctor Who used "decimate" in its correct form.
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And Brian Edwards can bite me if he thinks common usage based on error trumps correctness!
I seriously don't understand this view of language. 'Correctness' in language, as people put it about these days, is pretty much what our grandparents/parents (depending on your age) had beaten into them at school. It's post WWII Queens English.
The idea that there's nothing in 'correct English' which doesn't include words which are actually 'common usage based on error' of some earlier spelling, pronounciation. 's' used to be written more like 'f'. I don't see anyone standing up to demand that everyone do that anymore.
Language evolves through a number of means. All throughout that history people have sat and looked at 'current English' and bemoaned it being wrong based on the English of a generation or two ago. Do people these days think this is a new story? It changes, it's normal, and there's nothing you can do about it, same as has been going on for hundreds of years.
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The idea that there's nothing in 'correct English' which doesn't include words which are actually 'common usage based on error' of some earlier spelling, pronounciation. 's' used to be written more like 'f'. I don't see anyone standing up to demand that everyone do that anymore.
I guess some of us get antsy when the incorrect-but-accepted meaning kills off the real meaning of some very fine words.
I suspect that the battle has been lost with "enormity", and people will now happily use it as a synonym for "magnitude" and not to mean "horror". Tell me that's not a damn shame.
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[decimate] has a very precise meaning: it means losing one in ten men
Mmm, up until recently I thought it meant to reduce to a tenth, rather than by a tenth. I prefer my version.
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I guess some of us get antsy when the incorrect-but-accepted meaning kills off the real meaning of some very fine words.
I suspect that the battle has been lost with "enormity", and people will now happily use it as a synonym for "magnitude" and not to mean "horror". Tell me that's not a damn shame.
OK, but here's the etymology of some words you used in your post:
Guess originally meant to estimate/appraise, as in value. You've used it as a qualifier to water down what you're about to follow up with, and the meaning you've applied to it is "think".
Kill originally meant "to strike, hit, beat, knock", and didn't become associated with "depriving of life" for a century or so later.
Similarly, real originally meant "relating to things" (hence "real estate"), and didn't become associated with "genuine" for a couple of hundred years.
Battle means a physical battle between soldiers, and yet you've used it with a meaning of some sort of verbal/written battle about ideas.
It starts to get silly, but people complaining about the changing nature of meaning of words, using words which have all changed meaning... 'correct' and 'incorrect' are only relative terms from where you're standing in history.
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3410,
I seriously don't understand this view of language. 'Correctness' in language, as people put it about these days, is pretty much what our grandparents/parents (depending on your age) had beaten into them at school. It's post WWII Queens English.
Actually, it's "post-WWII Queen's English".
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Ironically, and this isn't a recommendation 3410, but not according to Urban Dictionary.
But yes, good poking at that apostrophe.
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Back briefly to the original thread. Sean Fitzpatrick has an article on the impact of Samoan players within the All Blacks in The Times.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/rugby/article2461113.ece
Sadly for us no explanation of Simon g’s I, 2 and 3.
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I really really reeeeeeallly don't want to go back into the earlier comments about racism but...
Black Gold:
New Zealand has enjoyed a seam of Samoa’s most talented playersCouldn't Fitzy have come up with a better title? (Oh and I'm not implying he's racist just that the title is possibly not the best for connotations)
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3410,
good poking at that apostrophe.
Don't forget the hyphen. ;)
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OK, but here's the etymology of some words you used in your post:
Guess originally meant to estimate/appraise, as in value. You've used it as a qualifier to water down what you're about to follow up with, and the meaning you've applied to it is "think".
Kill originally meant "to strike, hit, beat, knock", and didn't become associated with "depriving of life" for a century or so later.
Similarly, real originally meant "relating to things" (hence "real estate"), and didn't become associated with "genuine" for a couple of hundred years.
Battle means a physical battle between soldiers, and yet you've used it with a meaning of some sort of verbal/written battle about ideas.
It starts to get silly, but people complaining about the changing nature of meaning of words, using words which have all changed meaning... 'correct' and 'incorrect' are only relative terms from where you're standing in history.
Kyle, you have confused etymology which means derivation or the origin of the word itself with original usage , meaning how the word was originally used in its first state - whether that is Latin, Greek, Middle English, Old English, Scandinavian, Polynesian etc.
The etymology of the word "munted" for instance, is - (speculatively, because no one seems to know for sure) - Westie New Zealand, and is (guessing again) from a contraction of the two words "mangled' and "cunt". The original usage __of "munted" is as a verb, passed tense, meaning "fucked up beyond any practical use".
This is also the contemporary meaning of "munted", but there are other words that start off meaning one thing but eventually come to mean another thing, so let me try again.
In Westie English, the term "wasted" means "stoned and drunk to the point of incoherence" but both Middle English and Modern English the meaning of the word "wasted" would be the passed tense of "waste" meaning "to squander".
So while the etymology or derivation of the Westie word "wasted" is Middle English, and meant the passed tense of "squander", the Westie English word "wasted" refers to the state of a person's sobriety. So "original usage" of "wasted" would refer to different definitions in Westie English than it would in Old, Middle or Modern English.
So it is correct to assert that words that once meant one thing sometimes come to mean quite another thing entirely, but that still doesn't mean you can use words interchangably.
By the way, slightly off topic but distantly related - I noticed that Flight of the Conchords fellows Brent and Jermaine are each lacking the letter "r" in their names. I gather this is because NZers, unable to pronounce the letter "r" when it is a medial consonant, and ususally pretend it is silent, and in the case of the FOTC fellows, they are young enough that the silent "r" in each name has been dropped entirely out of the spelling. I also discovered that they invented Rap Music, in 1989, at a BBQ in Wellington, which is not relevant here exactly, but is an interesting piece of trivia as well. It is fortunate for the world that NZers only have trouble with "r" as a __medial consonant, or it would simply have been Ap Music.
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Getting back to the real subject of rugby, Mike (the originator of this stats post) has taken up the challenge and gone through all 1071 All Blacks to find out whether more All Blacks were born in Britain or the Islands!!!
The results are here: Retrospectively Speaking
Fickin heck!
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oops ignore the word "real" in the first sentence, don't mean to offend the etymologists
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By the way, slightly off topic but distantly related - I noticed that Flight of the Conchords fellows Brent and Jermaine are each lacking the letter "r" in their names.
Er, surely Bret is in fact missing one letter "t"?
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Kyle, you have confused etymology which means derivation or the origin of the word itself with original usage , meaning how the word was originally used in its first state - whether that is Latin, Greek, Middle English, Old English, Scandinavian, Polynesian etc.
Umm. Etymology, has three meanings in my dictionary:
1. the derivation of a word.
2. an account of the history of a particular word or element of a word.
3. the study of historical linguistic change, esp. as manifested in individual words.I think I fell reasonably well into 3, with a bit of 2.
My point was, people complain about how people now, in common usage, use words differently than how they used to be used, or 'correctly'.
That's a falsehood, as most words in the English language are no longer used how they used to be used, and to stand in say 1950 (1960, 1970 etc), pointing at 2007 saying "that's wrong", without looking at the couple of thousand years behind you is, I think, short-sighted.
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3410,
It's "past tense", not "passed tense". :)
By the way, slightly off topic but distantly related - I noticed that Flight of the Conchords fellows Brent and Jermaine are each lacking the letter "r" in their names.
Er, surely Bret is in fact missing one letter "t"?
I don't understand, on this one, what either of you are saying. (He says, taking care not to split the infinitive).
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It's "past tense", not "passed tense". :)
I was going to say that, but I knew you'd be along soon enough ;-)
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I don't understand, on this one, what either of you are saying. (He says, taking care not to split the infinitive).
Bret and Jemaine of Flight of the Conchords both have unusual variant spellings of their Christian names, in that each appears to be missing a letter. If I ever interview them, this will be on the list of questions.
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3410,
to stand in say 1950 (1960, 1970 etc), pointing at 2007 saying "that's wrong", without looking at the couple of thousand years behind you is, I think, short-sighted.
No-one's saying that *all* new, altered usage is "incorrect"; just some. When people say "should of", it's not an example of the vibrant evolution of the language; it's just a mistake.
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No-one's saying that *all* new, altered usage is "incorrect"; just some. When people say "should of", it's not an example of the vibrant evolution of the language; it's just a mistake.
And I just like "enormity". It has a flavour.
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Change and decay in all around I see, Kyle. Just because change is inevitable doesn't mean I have to like it :)
Perhaps the missing letters explain the extra h in conchord, by way of compensation?
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I don't understand, on this one, what either of you are saying. (He says, taking care not to split the infinitive).
Actually, that should be 'what either of you is saying'. Either and neither are singular.
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Er, surely Bret is in fact missing one letter "t"?
Damn, you NZers are observant.
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Couldn't Bret be missing an "n"?
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It's "past tense", not "passed tense". :)
See? You may not be able to pronouce the letter "r", but dang, you are observant. And good spellers.
Except Brent and Jermaine's parents.
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