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Laurence Urdang urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET
Thu Jun 7 13:06:06 UTC 2007


Arnold Zwicky wrote:

  "for them to look things up in a dictionary, they'd
have to know
there's some reason to do so."

  That is certainly the point, isn't it?  We rely on the education system to alert students to matters they ought to tuck away in the backs of their minds for later tweaking, but the system had generally failed, and, without any tweaking of any kind, everybody stumbles on in his own fog.  If one has the audacity to suggest that
  "In 14 hundred 93
  Columbus sailed the deep blue sea"
  might be more accurately rendered
  "In 14 hundred 92,
  Columbus sailed the ocean blue,"
  the response is a dismissive, "Whatever!"
  Only the next Madonna video is important (or is that Beyonce? ---Whatever!)
  L. Urdang

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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