John,
your description of changes in the English language sounds hideously
familiar. It echoes the developent we see in Norwegian as well. One
certainly doesn't have to be an old fart to disapprove.
Interestingly, one of the threats to our language is in fact the
influence of English. Hard to come up with a good example, but one
little silly thing is the use of apostrophs, like in "Foster's". In
our language we don't use apostrophs that way ever, exept after words
ending with "s", like "Forbes' ".
<sidewinder>And of course we don't capitalise the names of languages.
Especially not Canadian.</sidewinder>
Cheers,
Jostein
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Forbes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<old fart mode on> I have always considered it thus:
[...]
What saddens me, and many other old farts too, I expect, is that
many of these linguistic changes are not, as supporters claim, a
sign of richness or diversity, but of simple ignorance, stemming
partly from poor education and partly from incorrect usage by
non-native speakers. "Lense" is a case in point. "Specie" for
"species" is another, and "criteria" for "criterion" is a third.
The worst is "media" for "medium", as in "a media". The proponents
of richness and diversity claim this is just organic change; I say
it is degeneration.
</old fart mode off>
