atw: Re: US/Aus English

Sorry Peter,

Written down words have quite different purposes from oral
pronouncements. Ask any government official, medical practitioner or any
'servant' of the Court systems in this and other countries.
Some of these purposes are:
 *Political defence
 *Official mystification and obfuscation
 *Outright elitism
Ask Don about 'weasel words'.

Your claim reminds me of the statement I found in a nursing text - that
the word 'nurse' comes from the verb 'nourish' and so that's what nurses
do. Hooey!

Another example of this 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' reasoning is the
alarming growth in the use of acronyms - when you ask people why they do
it, they say "It saves time" - what they carefully omit to say is that
it only saves writing time - it usually increases reading time.

In other words, just because you can find some apparently historical
excuse for the existence of something, does not mean that is its
purpose, or even that we should keep doing it that way.

Brian.


You warped on:  

Written language was devised as a means of recording 
spoken language




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