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Fox 5 news DC Learning "the" flamenco.
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3437
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Fox 5 news DC Learning "the... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
Indeed: Wiktionary thinks so; and when I tried to correct it, I was contradicted with a quotation from Tennessee Williams. So I asked “If there is such a dance, what does it look like? What is its time signature, is it fast or slow? Is the key of the music major, minor or Phrygian?”
The reply:
“It's about usage as well as accuracy. If people say 'I can dance a good flamenco' then we need to cover that usage.” After that I gave up.
The whole "Wiki" enterprise, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc. is fraught with pitfalls. I never depend on it for information. Regarding Wikipedia, if you know your subject you don't need it. And if you don't know the subject, you have no way of knowing whether or not Wikipedia has the correct information. In looking up some information I knew well, I found that Wikipedia got it wrong. But more often, I have found that Wikipedia may not be wrong as far as it goes, but it is incomplete in its description of the subject under consideration, which is just as bad as getting it wrong.
There is still nothing like a good hard-bound dictionary or Thesaurus for proper English usage. And the same holds true for a good library of established authors on subjects one is interested in that can be used for reference, whether it is one's home library or the public library.
It is supposed to be a marvelous development that anyone can post anything on the internet regardless of his level of expertise and experience in the subject. Everyone gets to enter the public domain and comment on anything. Fair enough. But it leads to a lot of garbage as well.
So Wiktionary thinks "It's about usage as well as accuracy. If people say 'I can dance a good flamenco' then we need to cover that usage." That's like the Topeka, Kansas school board mandating that "Creationism" be taught along with evolution. After all, if accuracy is of so little importance that it must compete with inaccurate "usage" (or in this case "belief"), why not teach that the earth is 6,000 years old, along with touting one's ability to "dance the flamenco." Indeed.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 8 2016 18:02:13
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3437
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Fox 5 news DC Learning "the... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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Ignorance of the correct use of English can have real world consequences that go beyond syntax and misunderstanding the meaning of a word. A good example occurred in the mayor's office in Washington, DC about 12 years ago and received wide coverage in the Washington Post. A white male employee, commenting on the city budget, noted that one line item received so little funding that it, as he put it, "was a niggardly amount." A black colleague overheard him and lodged a complaint, stating that the comment was "racist." When told that "niggardly" was not racist and meant "stingy" or "miserly," the black colleague still complained. the white employee was eventually transferred to another department. So instead of the employee ignorant about English language usage being reprimanded or transferred, the employee using the term correctly was.
Unsurprisingly, there have been dust-ups at several universities over the term "niggardly." Several years ago at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a leader of the Black Student Union complained to the faculty senate that a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word "niggardly," and that the professor continued using the word after she (the student) told her she was "offended." When told that the term had no relationship to racist language, the "offended" student replied, "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid." These are supposed to be educated people, and yet their ignorance of the English language appears to be setting the agenda these days.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jun. 9 2016 18:45:39
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