[quote=“popobawa4u, post:39, topic:51347”]
I have mixed feelings about the conundrum of “common usage”. In concept, it’s properly democratic. But in practice, my experience is that it seldom involves real creative (ab)use of language, and instead constitutes clueless misunderstandings of established, understood usage.[/quote]
How exactly do you think we got from the largely unrecognizable Old English of Germanic origin to Modern English today? Have you ever tried reading Beowulf in its original form?
I find it utterly bizarre that people get wound up about the subtle changes in English that have happened in the relatively small number of years since they learned the fundamental rules in school, while seemingly ignoring the massive changes that English underwent in the many centuries before. It’s as if people expect English to stop changing the moment they themselves learn it.
By means of a hearty infusion of Latin - a sensible language! English was renovated into something with which one could approximate something resembling technical or expressive precision. The programmatic nature of English is what I loved, and what inspired me to devour dictionaries as a young child. Being able to know words based upon the etymology of their roots, prefixes, suffixes, and other forms. This also enabled me to guess at choices of unknown words to use and have confirmation that they would be understood. Pulling a new coinage out of my backside would not have that effect. Also, even though the grammar and syntax differ, I can look at Latin and Sanskrit and at least have some idea what many of the words mean without assuming they were all fabricated devoid of any context.
I did something similar to this, in that I went through every article on Wikipedia that referred to “pinball tables” and changed it to “pinball machines”, which is the standard way to refer to the games per the original manufacturers. I spent the better part of a day doing it.
It just grates on me like fingernails on a chalkboard when I hear someone say “pinball table”. It’s not a table! I blame video pinball.
Try Latin, Klingon, or Esperanto. They are sufficiently non-living-enough languages that they do not change naturally, but only in deliberate ways.
Try Norman French as a greater impact, as well as the collision of the various germanics that preceded that, thankfully giving us very simple (if irregular) verb forms.
Latin gave us some words, but not much linguistic structure.
Deliberation is life, so far as I am concerned. I was deeply perplexed when I first looked up Esperanto and the dictionary referred to it (with several kinds of dubious accuracy) “the first man-made language”. The rest of them we must have learned from parrots and myna birds!
Esperanto was the first-known deliberately created (as opposed to “naturally” evolving) language.
You’ve mentioned this tendency of yours before, to prefer the deliberate, theoretical and precise. That is your choice, but it doesn’t survive well outside of sterile laboratory conditions.
Yeah, it must be them new-fangled devices interdoosin new words!
I thought I was
The Bally table king.
But I just handed
My pin ball crown to him.
Even on my favorite table
He can beat my best.
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest.
He’s got crazy flipper fingers
Never seen him fall
That deaf dumb and blind kind
Sure plays a mean pin ball!!!
Is this what you mean by “video pinball” using the word table?
But there are no theoretically consistent languages.
At times, it can be useful to mark gender.
English and the other Indo-European languages have noun classes for different genders, but these break down when groups contain multiple genders. French has no neuter and defaults to the masculine for mixed groups. Latin has a neuter but iirc defaults to the masculine. Gothic has a neuter and defaults to the neuter for mixed groups. Aside from English, these suffer cross-contamination between the shapes of the words and the genders of the words.
Laadan assumes either feminine or neuter by default, and marks masculine with a suffix, but this breaks down when we need to specify feminine specifically.
Latin doesn’t have articles, and doesn’t distinguish indefinite and definite adjectives.
And attempts to standardize English led to utterly bizarre borrowings from Estuary English. For example, the use of “I shall” and “we shall” instead of “I will” and “we will” to imply future events.
I understand perfectly what you mean; pulling apart and gluing together the Latinic and Greek fragments is one of the more charming things about learning English - and as a bonus, I can vaguely guess at meanings when I see Latin.
That said, I feel a certain need to defend the Germanic side. Old English was presumably closer to old Norse and old German in structure and grammar, and I’d hardly call the living relatives of old German incapable of technical or expressive precision. Their take on the “toolbox full of useful fragments” that has given us New Latin and medical Greek and a whole lot of useful English is to glue together almost any two or more native words. The results often lack the elegance of a (neo-)classical word, but make up for it by being easier to construct, spell, and arguably understand.
After all, is “nocturnal” really better than “night-active”?
I disagree, and consider this to be my main problem with Latin languages. I think gender is more or less arbitrary even with regards to people, and completely so when describing non-living things or concepts. The friendly neighborhood dragon even yelled it me for referring to people as “it”. I don’t assume gender for people unless they specify one.
The Common Germanic source for “will” already has the double meaning of intent and of implying future events. The Common Germanic source for “shall” has the meaning of obligation, and was extended to slavery and other abuses. So if you say “I shall” or “I shan’t,” I naturally assume you believe you have an obligation to or an obligation not to, but if you say “I will” or “I won’t,” I naturally assume you believe you will or won’t.
… And before I studied the etymology, then if you said “I shall” or “I shan’t,” I would have wondered what you meant.
I understand. It does seem practical to me to be able to split meanings from overloaded words to avoid ambiguity. I am not very successful with it, but much of my effort in communication tends to involve efforts to be as unambiguous as possible. Not to imply that I don’t appreciate fluidity of meaning, but users of English usually (in my experience) seem to assume some specificity from the outset, even when their practice doesn’t appear to reflect this.
People using their language to entrench imbalanced power relationships, prejudices, and other abuses does occur. But I think of this as generally more of a cultural and motivational rather than linguistic problem. Informal glosses over words which serve to frame perception, such as “supposed” tend to be far more problematic for me.
The “ancestor” of all pinball machines is acknowledged to be the 19th century “Bagatelle-Table”,
a sort of hybrid between a “pin table” and pool table. - See more at:
While “pinball machine” is certainly acceptable, I see no reason why “pinball table” should not be equally acceptable, given that these pinball amusement devices evolved from something that was properly called a table and have been regularly referred to as “pinball tables” ever since.
Sounds like you were vandalizing Wikipedia in the name of your own misapprehensions.
Please find me a reference to any pinball machine referred to as a “table”, in official company literature like promo flyers, prior to Stern using it this year.
NO ONE at Williams, Bally or Gottlieb ever referred to them as “tables”. In my 20 years of pinball collecting and restoration, the only time “table” appeared was in England, and when virtual pinball games started popping up on iPads.
Perhaps I am an old man shaking my fist at the cloud of changing language but this one I can’t let go. It’s not a table. Whatever you do, don’t put stuff on the glass like it is!
And pedantic Latin instructors trying to correct the English language by removing such native concept as “split infinitives” and “dangling participles.”
Another step towards the modern pinball form occurred sometime at the end of 19th century, when inventor Montague Redgrave patented a device called a “ball shooter”, which was based on the recently invented steel spring…
On the other hand, RedMonkey has observed that “comprised” means something rather special in Patent Jargon, so perhaps patents aren’t reliable for proving general usage questions.
It would seem that this sort of thing merits a trip to the library to consult dead trees. Admittedly, most libraries would not have the breadth to prove or disprove your claim, unless it was a pinball company’s archival deposit.
