On Wed, 30 May 2012 18:42:21 +0200 tlaro...@polynum.com wrote: > On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 12:23:02PM -0400, Calvin Morrison wrote: > > > > Snarf is a dumb name. It isn't well named. > > This is because you are probably an english native speaker searching > sensibility behind sounds or "pictures" (written text) that seem > familiar to you. For the others---like me---the computer language > is something that has not much to do with a lingua and could be > almost arbitrary.
That's an interesting perspective but as a native English speaker I would disagree about the root of the problem. "Snarf" bothered my idiotic sense of propriety at first but I didn't have to consciously dissect it to get the meaning. I can make myself understood with slang and somewhat made-up words to most native English speakers whether they're English or American. There are two groups who don't get my "natural" pattern of speech. One is those who have taken "proper" English and believed all their lessons, whether they are natives with a social need to be proper or (more commonly) foreigners who have received a proper education in the language. This "proper" English is not the language of the English people, and I find it remarkable that there is so much so-called improperness in common between Britain and the US after 200 years of separation and 100 years of compulsory schooling. Even "English" slang has percolated down from the top, from the upper classes I guess, or at least those divorced from their linguistic heritage and subjected to a strict edumacation in ... okay, I won't rant, I really wont, but the old lower-class English used slang a lot like the US. That class of people had almost died out before US slang started filtering back in any substantial way. The other group who don't get it is those who take their slang from Spanish I think, but I'm much less clear on this point. uh.. I just noticed "snarf" wasn't picked up by my spell checker and isn't in its personal dictionary. Take that as you will. -- This is obviously some strange usage of the word "simple" that I was previously unaware of.
