I don't think japanese has many lingustic squabbles. Chinese
would be a better example of language where one term can be expressed in a
lot of ways.
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Callomon <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 1999 12:11 A.M.
Subject: Re: I like to annoy


> I suggest that anyone who has enough free time to be interested in the
> Mollusc/mollusk question nip out and buy themselves a copy of Baugh and
> Cable's 'A history of the English Language'. This has recently been
revised
> and reissued as a paperback, and on top of its enormous value to anyone
> interested in English is also a superb read. In there you will find all
the
> reasons why these semantic squabbles are a waste of time - and this from
> me, the most pedantic nit-picker of all - and eye-openers such as :
> - in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, most people who wrote anything
> in England used French, as did most educated people in conversation
> - the American forms of words such as 'color' and 'valor' are older (in
> usage) than the fake 'Frenchified' 'colour' and 'valour', which date from
> the Regency;
> - hundreds of words in English are objective synonyms of others, having
> come into English independently via Danish, Norse, French and German.
>
> All one can say is that one can't say much about what is and isn't correct
> in English. Could be worse - could be Japanese.
>