Re: [tlug] [REMINDER] "Defending the Creative Commons"

[Matt Doughty <wyndigo@example.com>]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 09:48:48PM -0800, Brett Robson wrote:
> 
> 
> I understand my girlfriend when she confuses 'a' and 'the', and gets countable nouns completely screwed (she has many money), but my mother doesn't understand her. We rely on a commonality for understanding, you can just make stuff up.

Not true at all.  That is how things get into the vernacular.  Language is
adapted and changes with the times and the world in which we live.  It 
adapts.  I suspect he is using the term to represent process of designing, and
implementing. 

> 
> Most modern developments are actually making English less useful rather than more useful.

You really need to be more particular about that.  What recent developements 
are you refering to exactly?  It certainly can't be the using an old word in
a new way?  That has been going on for ages, and will continue ad naseum.
If you doubt this go and look at the etymology's of words in the dictionary.
Many of the meanings have strayed far from their origins.  I have the feeling
that what you mean by less useful is probably more akin to less like what you
grew up with.


--Matt