tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post116999799444516155..comments2023-09-01T09:38:54.262-04:00Comments on Dumb Looks Still Free: Oil Outlook : Cross-Post at Classical Values and Power and ControlA Jacksonianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-88844410211817263062008-01-13T16:34:00.000-05:002008-01-13T16:34:00.000-05:00Brian - Language is a fun thing to examine! There...Brian - Language is a fun thing to examine! There are some universal word/sounds that have different meanings and yet show up due to their brevity and ease of pronounciation. The word/sound 'tic' is one of those, and shows up in nearly every language on the planet, although with a different meaning (beyond the Romanticized suffixing '-tic'). Then there are the anomolous words, particularly in English, that seem to come out of no-where. For all the folks looking at 'bug' the linguists still don't have its firm grounding and source. Damned useful, covers a plethora of small, multi-legged crunchy critters and yet... where, exactly, did it come from?<BR/><BR/>More firmly fixed words, like place identifiers, tend to retain their sound identification. My favorite for this being Wilusa/Ilios and its movement to Ilium/Troy. Going from Anatolian Hittite to Greek to Roman to Romanticized English and for the name of the story about it you get: The Iliad. We still retain the proper name of the place we call Troy in the name of the story, and yet call it 'Troy'! Ah, the glory of a fixed name that gets so transliterated, translated and shifted across time and yet... The Iliad is *still* the name of the story about it and a form of its proper name from when it first organized before the Trojan war by a couple of thousand years, going back to 3000 BC.<BR/><BR/>Why keep two names?<BR/><BR/>Tradition!!<BR/><BR/>And, remember, from 1180 BC to the present it is the most talked about war on the face of the planet.A Jacksonianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-42246338218108042832008-01-13T15:58:00.000-05:002008-01-13T15:58:00.000-05:00Came back looking for this link to refer someone t...Came back looking for this link to refer someone to, and read your response. <BR/><BR/>As a language note, it's recently been found statistically that regularly used words and expressions and grammatical structures are the most resistant to change, while the lesser-used ones tend to simplify and morph into more easily used forms. Interesting.Brian Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17895289104798325252noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-53892350153164179272007-07-04T07:35:00.000-04:002007-07-04T07:35:00.000-04:00Brian - Thank you!A bit on the incoherent side, ra...Brian - Thank you!<BR/><BR/>A bit on the incoherent side, rambling on, but my train of thought tends to bring in similar and analgous issues so that a comparison, system-to-system can be done. I used the engineering concepts due to Simon's background, but could have done pretty well with some others, too.<BR/><BR/>I love that quote from Answers, and thanks! The drift of human language and the ability of humans to substitute ideas to replace meaning, is always a wonder. That does go to show that a malleable and flexible language has strengths (adapting to new concepts) and weaknesses (shortening older ideas and often changing the meaning of them). The French really are interesting in trying to enforce French, as a language, and make it more cumbersome to use... so that terms like 'compact disc' need to get a long French equivalent, while the folks just say 'le CD'. Try to enforce too much structure on a language and it loses vitality... have too little and it becomes Orwellian.A Jacksonianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07607888697879327120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20372724.post-54638887017654285462007-07-04T03:11:00.000-04:002007-07-04T03:11:00.000-04:00Great, great article. The engineering take is fasc...Great, great article. The engineering take is fascinating.<BR/><BR/>Speaking of being an engineer:<BR/><BR/>"one in the same<BR/>The old expression “they are one and the same” is now often mangled into the roughly phonetic equivalent “one in the same.”"<BR/><BR/>From Answers.com. YCLIU. ;)Brian Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17895289104798325252noreply@blogger.com