ext_50207 ([identity profile] gooofy.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] bcholmes 2006-10-27 12:31 am (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to say that one language or dialect is "better" than another. All languages are equally good at what they do. Any concept that can be expressed in one language can be expressed in all languages. I think most linguists would agree that there is no such thing as an untranslatable word.

I don't see how "Forward the information to myself" is the product of any serious misunderstanding; at worst it's just a mistake about what the reflexive should be referring to. Some of the Language Loggers do think that it's grammatical, but I need to brush up on my syntax to understand them.

And I don't see how "where he be?" is ambiguous, if that's what you're suggesting.

Would you say that Middle English is "better" than Modern English because it makes a distinction between singular and plural second person?

"degrade" doesn't have a specific linguistic meaning, but to me it suggests "become worse". And this is just not what languages do. Maybe what you're looking for is "language change". Language changes, and the change isn't good or bad, it's just change. It might have undesirable consequences, like one speech community stigmatizing another, but that's to do with social factors that are not purely linguistic. And since we have a standard English, change that results in classes of the same society not being able to communicate is not likely to happen.

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