[Artemisia] Smalls and language
S CLEMENGER
sclemenger at msn.com
Thu Aug 9 21:33:37 CDT 2007
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?
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