| Páginas sobre el tema: < [1 2] | Off topic: Stephen Fry's view on language purism Autor de la hebra: Heinrich Pesch
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Michele Fauble 
Estados Unidos
Local time: 11:25
Miembro 2006
noruego al inglés
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| To gift or not to gift | Jun 28, 2013 |
Ty Kendall wrote: I just can't get on board with "to gift", fry-endorsed or not. 
My policy with such words or phrases is just to accept their use by others, but not use them myself.
| | | | Suzan Hamer
Países Bajos
Local time: 20:25
inglés
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| Serendipitously enough... | Jul 2, 2013 |
I was delighted to read in Bill Bryson's "At Home: A Short History of Private Life" at bedtime the same day Heinrich posted this, about Horace Walpole as a great coiner of words, but have not had time until now to post.
"Although he is hardly read now, Walpole was immensely popular in his day for his histories and romances. He was a particularly adept coiner of words. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with no fewer than 233 coinages. Many, like ‘gloomth’, ‘greenth’,... See more I was delighted to read in Bill Bryson's "At Home: A Short History of Private Life" at bedtime the same day Heinrich posted this, about Horace Walpole as a great coiner of words, but have not had time until now to post.
"Although he is hardly read now, Walpole was immensely popular in his day for his histories and romances. He was a particularly adept coiner of words. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with no fewer than 233 coinages. Many, like ‘gloomth’, ‘greenth’, ‘fluctuable’ and ‘betweenity’, didn’t take, but a great many others did. Among the terms he invented or otherwise brought into English are ‘airsickness’, ‘anteroom’, ‘bask’, ‘beefy’, ‘boulevard’, ‘café’, ‘cause célèbre’, ‘caricature’, ‘fairy tale’, ‘falsetto’, ‘frisson’, ‘impresario’, ‘malaria’, ‘mudbath’, ‘nuance’, ‘serendipity’, ‘sombre’, ‘souvenir’ and, as mentioned a few pages back, ‘comfortable’ in its modern sense."
I love "inbetweenity" and "fluctuable"... but given the way I react to "gift" as a verb, I wonder how I would have reacted when I first heard them. I'd like to think I would have been tickled with his inventiveness (inventivity?)
(Just came across a Walpole quote which I will have to add to my profile page of quotations: "Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.")
By the way, Heinrich, thanks for posting the Fry link. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Michele Fauble
Estados Unidos
Local time: 11:25
Miembro 2006
noruego al inglés
+ ...
Ty Kendall wrote:
I can't quite pin down my dislike for "gift" as a verb. The sound doesn't really bother me, and I'm not usually fazed by nouns becoming verbs... perhaps it harks back to my days of learning German, if I recall "Gift" in German is "poison"...perhaps somewhere in my mind I'm making a connection, thinking they're saying "he gifted [poisoned] her...". It's a stretch but I can't think where else this aversion to it comes from.
"Poison" in Norwegian too, but also "married".
| | | | | I used to be a prescriptive grammarian, but... | Jul 2, 2013 |
... But these days I tend to agree with Stephen Fry. Good writing is more important than the whining of purists, and prescription often makes little logical sense if any at all. Once you have a bunch of competing camps of purists, my patience is really at its last, and I just don't give a rat's breath about many things that used to be important, once (or not even).
Grammar whining by non-writers is a bit like being an armchair commentator or spectator in a fighting sport. What right... See more ... But these days I tend to agree with Stephen Fry. Good writing is more important than the whining of purists, and prescription often makes little logical sense if any at all. Once you have a bunch of competing camps of purists, my patience is really at its last, and I just don't give a rat's breath about many things that used to be important, once (or not even).
Grammar whining by non-writers is a bit like being an armchair commentator or spectator in a fighting sport. What right do non-fighters have to speak about blows and parries with authority?
This said, a smart person should write logically. A sentence must make sense. The logical operators must be in good places and have their proper, clear significance. Sometimes even if the meaning is otherwise obvious. I don't like grammar whining but I don't like whining-inducing grammar, either. ▲ Collapse
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