Hi Jeremy, I agree it was a very interesting article. I've always felt slightly ashamed of not having learned another language properly, but now I feel quite proud of myself for just being able to make sense out this gibberish.
Everything the writer says rings true, and it's a very well written piece, but I still found myself wanting to stick up for English. Yes, it is indeed a very silly language, and riddled with ambiguities and foibles but it's malleability is also a creative strength, allowing a necessary element of chaos into our thought process. I think it's fun that new words are created all the time - dongle, widget, tiddler and that we can convey meaning even by using words that aren't really even words "I intend to wikify this content" and then these words stick if they're useful enough. Of course, the great variety also means that it's possible to write technically correct English which is practically impossible to make sense of and the burden of clarity falls on the writer to make him- or herself understood. The links about Simplified Technical English are very interesting and it's certainly worth thinking about in terms of our documentation. Having translators seems a great asset in this respect because if something is difficult to translate into another language, it may suggest there is something ambiguous about the English original. I was a bit confused by this paragraph of the piece: If we hear the story told the previous week was true, even though it is, *technically*, syntactically ambiguous, we know that it should be interpreted as ‹the story [that] was told [during] the previous week› was true, not the story told [≈said] ‹[that] the previous week was true›. (Unless the context calls for it: Ada's story was stirring something in my mind: I had lived so many lies and falsehoods, but not last week—no, last week was different, Ada's words revealed something that I had not dared to hope: these days were not a lie, Ada's words said to me—the story told the previous week was true.) The writer appears to be suggesting that, in the context of this couching paragraph, the last sentence would be read to mean "the story told [≈said] ‹[that] the previous week was true›" but I wouldn't read it that way because it doesn't do enough to dissuade me from the most natural form. I think a modern English writer would, at least, add "that" - ie; "the story told *that* the previous week was true", to avoid the confusion. Regards, Richard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
