[Artemisia] Smalls and language

[S CLEMENGER]

Interesting.  You must be hanging out in places I don't, because I've neither seen nor experienced that kind of behavior.  My understanding of the move away from words/jargon such as "farspeaker" and "dragon" and "smalls" and neologisms such as "feastocrat" and "nastyocrat" is that it is, in general, intended to move us (as a group) away from the overly cutesy and/or inaccurate terms to ones more accurate, more "adult," and less jargon-y.  If we're trying to speak "in persona," why *not* use a term that that persona would have been more likely to use? How is it possibly an impoverishment of a language to endeavor to be more accurate when communicating in that language?
--Maire
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Stephanae Baker<mailto:stephanae at countryrhoades.net> 
  To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list<mailto:artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org> 
  Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 11:21 AM
  Subject: [Artemisia] Smalls and language



  My point is that we speak modern English, and I am for anything that  
  enriches our lexicon and against anything that would impoverish it.  
  In fact, I have some amount of difficulty understanding the many  
  arguments I see in the SCA that indicate we should have only a single  
  word for each concept. To bring up the oft-referred-to waster  
  conversation, I remember that several people in that conversation  
  proposed simply calling the objects "swords." Why not call a sword a  
  sword? Well, were we to go that route, we would have merchants at  
  events selling sharp objects made of metal called swords; we would  
  have grown men and women fighting with tape-wrapped rattan objects  
  called swords; and we would have people of all ages sometimes  
  fighting with foam and cloth objects called swords. We would  
  ultimately end up modifying the noun sword in order to distinguish  
  between these many "swords." We'd end up with "heavy fighter swords"  
  and "youth swords" at the very least. So why not head that problem  
  off, if possible, by keeping more nouns in our lexicon?

  Why do we want to eliminate so many words from the English language?  
  Is it not bad enough that we've already lost almost all declension,  
  conjugation, and the intimate second person singular? Do we not have  
  room enough in our Society for both people who use the word  
  "children" and people who use the word "smalls?" And, isn't it nice  
  to be able to use more than one word for something and possibly still  
  remain in persona?