csj wrote: [snip] > Deviant is a politically incorrect term (but you're free to use it). > Yesterday's conformists may well be today's deviants. Imagine somebody > wearing Victorian dress to work or speaking Shakespeare at a board > meeting.
My apologies. I was aware of the incorrectness of deviant, but not really conscious of it. I meant 'deviant' as 'one which deviates,' and did not intend any innuendo. While it is true that standards change, they are still standards. If we are to run with your clothing analogy then we would say that, although the standards have changed as years pass, there is still a standard to which people must conform. There are certain modes of dress (not many, but a few) which are illegal in Australia. Almost any pub that you go to in Australia will turn you out if you aren't wearing shoes and a shirt. You are not free to dress as you wish; there are constraints. You have almost complete freedom within those constraints, but the constraints are there. It is true that in certain contexts these constraints are different, such as in the armed forces or certain workplaces, but the constraints are still defined and must be conformed to. To bring this analogy back to language, we would say that there are constraints on the use of language. These constraints do vary; the language we use here is not appropriate for technical documentation. The language that I use at work is not appropriate when speaking to my wife (she understands none of it) and she, being a biologist, can't speak to me using the language of biology. So there are constraints determined by the context. Note that these constraints do not make your speech deterministic; there are still a very large number of correctly expressing any idea in most of these contexts (with the possible exception of with the wife ;-) and you are free to use any of them so long as they conform to the constraints placed upon you by the context. But see below for a major source of constraints. > The problem with Microsoft would only be if they aggressively patent > their protocols, etc. I see nothing wrong with Microsoft "deviating" > from a supposed standard if others are allowed or are able to "deviate" > along with them. As a non-native speaker of English, I place this text > under the GPL (or is it FDL?) for you to borrow, criticise, flame or > /dev/null. That isn't being Microsoft. My objection to the mention of the GPL was not that you could place your text under the GPL, but the claim that the *spirit* of the GPL encouraged the incorrect use of language. I disagree that this is the only problem with Microsoft. I think that Microsoft are in a different position than most with regards to this topic. If I write a server that speaks some strange protocol (say TCSMTP - Tom Cook's SMTP) and publish it on the 'net, or even worse try to sell it, then it will very quickly be discarded as a useless product by a sort of natural selection; no-one else can understand it. But if Microsoft do the same and publish MSTCSMTP (Microsoft's Stolen Tom Cook's SMTP ;-) then it will be installed on a very large number of servers, probably before anyone realises that it is bad. Now the software world has a dilema. Do we harass Microsoft until they change their protocol, or do we modify all our other products to be able to communicate with Microsoft's version? It sounds like an easy question to answer, but maybe isn't. To bring this analogy back to speech again, if an individual speaks English on a public forum in a manner incomprehensible to English speakers then they are in the position of MSTCSMTP; their incorrect English will die out. English speakers are kinder than Microsoft however; we have not only made the effort to understand, and then asked what he meant, but have then gone on to try to show him where he went wrong and to help him speak it better. This seems to have caused you offense, which I regret, but I do not regret the action which caused it; I think it far closer to the 'spirit' of open source, whatever that may be, than defending someone's right to be wrong. [snip] > I didn't mean "however you want". What I meant was that the "rules" of > English, as an international (rather than a literary) language, > shouldn't be based solely on the usage of two nations. There should be > German English, Japanese English and Chinese English in addition to the > ones the British and the Americans are accustomed to speak. No, you have > already been preempted. Look at the manual that came with your > motherboard or UPS. That's Asian English for you! No use holding back > the tide. So, rather than having a language which everyone can understand, you would rather have each country speaking its own mutually incomprehensible version of English??? Why not just speak German, Japanese and Chinese? I know you will say that they should be mutually comprehensible, but I would remind you that what started this was a sentence that several native English speakers on the list could not understand. > You talk about standards. The GNU folks have their website. Now show me > a URL that claims that it has the final word on what is right in the > English language. Is there an ANSI or ISO standard for English? My > browser is waiting. http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/ looks like a good place to start. http://userpages.umbc.edu/~kpokoy1/grammar1.htm is another good source of resources. If you browser is not satisfied, plug 'English Grammar' into google. [snip] > No, I don't speak Esperanto. My point is simple. Everybody should have a > second language (or a third, if we consider C or perl languages). It > gains you the perspective to see the problems of a non-native speaker > communicating in a language s/he may have learned only in college. If > people whose mother tongue isn't English take the trouble to speak or > write it, I think it's only fair that those "fortunate" to be born into > the language should take the trouble to try to understand the meaning > from imperfect message. I have made several attempts at learning both German and French (all of them disasterous, but attempts nonetheless). I think they were unsuccessful because I don't know anyone who speaks German or French _and_ no English, so I just talk to everyone in English. I don't have the time to join the Adelaide German club, nor do I have the foldable resources to spend a year in Europe. Now you will argue that America and Britain (and her colonies) all have their own dialect of English, so why not a few more? but I say that this argument is false, since the English spoken by Americans and the British people differ only in very minor regards; grammatically they are identical, they have a very near to identical vocabulary, and have a few minor and fairly deterministic spelling differences. Moreover I object to the implication that we did not make an effort to understand the intent of the original message. I personally spent several minutes looking at the sentence trying to figure it out and couldn't. Obviously someone else had the same problem since he wrote back to say he didn't understand. When an explanation was given the explainer was thanked several times, as I recall. We have also tried to explain where the original author went wrong. What more would you like us to do? Name it! and it is yours. [snip] > In all natural languages, for every person who's misunderstood, there's > another one who misunderstands. Just because I understand you doesn't > me everybody will. Yes, you can destroy syntax and semantics, and still > have a context. I think we celebrated it last Feb. 14. Nonetheless the misunderstanding is not caused by both parties in equal parts in all circumstances. > > It should be noted that I am not trying to villify or condemn the author > > of the original post. He has made a remarkable effort at learning > > English, but his learning is incomplete. I do not blame him for this. I > > personally know about six words of German, and, according to my wife, speak > > the > > most execrable French she has ever had the misfortune to hear. But the > > claim > > that it does not matter how English is used is one which I will not let > > pass. > > > > Regards > > Tom > > If you didn't put that in, I would have thought you were flaming me. Or > maybe I didn't catch your context despite your good, grammatically > satisfactory English. What is it to flame? If you mean to disagree with you strongly, and to put that disagreeance into strong words, then yes, it was a flame. If you mean that I am trying to ridicule you, or that I disrespect you, or that I underestimate you, then no, I hope not. Please do not take it for such. Tom
