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[Soadreqm]

Yes / No  1985
Where is the reason for its banishment?

Two Common Symbols are banished – The international road sign of a circle with a line through it meaning “No…”; and hearts meaning “love.” Preston Turengano of San Diego, Cal., said the road sign was okay on highways, but should never be used for “No burping.”

Maybe it's referring to this? I've no idea, really. Is this even serious, or are they being sarcastic?

...Actually, that's an angle I really should have thought of earlier. Being adverse to evolving language is entirely human, but the approach they're taking to redundancy and flourish mostly reminds me of Minitrue. Maybe it's just a joke and I'm not getting it. ._.

[Tellemurius]

Yes / No  1985
Where is the reason for its banishment?

Two Common Symbols are banished – The international road sign of a circle with a line through it meaning “No…”; and hearts meaning “love.” Preston Turengano of San Diego, Cal., said the road sign was okay on highways, but should never be used for “No burping.”

Maybe it's referring to this? I've no idea, really. Is this even serious, or are they being sarcastic?

...Actually, that's an angle I really should have thought of earlier. Being adverse to evolving language is entirely human, but the approach they're taking to redundancy and flourish mostly reminds me of Minitrue. Maybe it's just a joke and I'm not getting it. ._.

i think its also sarcastic as i have pointed out earlier there is a section of 'Unicorn Hunting' on the right.

[Siquo]

Epic. If you're not going to tell your grandchildren about 20 times about a specific event, you have no reason whatsoever to call it "epic".

That whole site is a joke, loaded with pseudo-intellectuals who don't get that the existence of not-quite-synonyms serves to broaden the language and allow for easier expression of shades of meaning.

No. No. No, You Don't Need More Words.

"The statistics of English are astonishing. Of all the world's languages (which now number some 2,700), it is arguably the richest in vocabulary. The compendious Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words; and a further half-million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued. According to traditional estimates, neighboring German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000, including such Franglais as le snacque-barre and le hit-parade."

[Tellemurius]

so english rules?

[Siquo]

About grammar rules, I'm not too familiar with their numbers.

[Tellemurius]

About grammar rules, I'm not too familiar with their numbers.

ok let me rephrase that...

ENGLISH RULZ

does that help you?

[Soadreqm]

No. No. No, You Don't Need More Words.

"The statistics of English are astonishing. Of all the world's languages (which now number some 2,700), it is arguably the richest in vocabulary. The compendious Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words; and a further half-million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued. According to traditional estimates, neighboring German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000, including such Franglais as le snacque-barre and le hit-parade."

Yes, English has a preposterous amount of words. Is this a bad thing? Whatever source you quoted doesn't seem to think so, speaking of a rich vocabulary and astonishing statistics, hardly adjectives one would intuitively associate with some unwelcome development that must be swiftly dealt with lest it devour us all. There is definitely quite a bit of English literature, some of it considered quite good, which suggests that a large vocabulary doesn't completely cripple a language's potential for expression.

[Siquo]

Yes, English has a preposterous amount of words. Is this a bad thing? Whatever source you quoted doesn't seem to think so, speaking of a rich vocabulary and astonishing statistics, hardly adjectives one would intuitively associate with some unwelcome development that must be swiftly dealt with lest it devour us all. There is definitely quite a bit of English literature, some of it considered quite good, which suggests that a large vocabulary doesn't completely cripple a language's potential for expression.

Let me put it this way: You may only invent new words once you know all of the old ones, to avoid duplication.

[RedWarrior0]

First, they apparently get a number of letters regarding this. The way they use the term "banished" (not banned, mind you) seems to imply "We want this word and/or phrase to stop being 'misused, overused, or generally useless.'"

[Soadreqm]

Let me put it this way: You may only invent new words once you know all of the old ones, to avoid duplication.

Let me put it this way: No.



Anyway, isn't the casual use of 'epic' actually moving towards a LESS interesting vocabulary? Rather than saying that something is nice, good, fine, excellent, beautiful, sublime, glorious, perfect, flawless, immaculate, sweet, delicious, great, magnificent, astonishing or grand, it's just epic every time. Or sometimes awesome.

I sat here for like ten minutes thinking up synonyms, but successfully resisted the urge to open a thesaurus.

[Vector]

I'm guessing they don't like "R" in place of "are."

Just like I'm currently forcing myself to stop writing "bothe" instead of "both the."

(That's just a personal tic, but I constantly catch myself doing it)

[Leafsnail]

Some of them seem to be railing against overuse, which I guess is fair enough.  Other ones, though, seem to be intent on reducing the English language to as few words as possible...

[fqllve]

Let me put it this way: You may only invent new words once you know all of the old ones, to avoid duplication.

Alright then. What counts as an English word? Does it have to be from Modern English? Even then that goes back to the 1600s and includes scores of words considered archaic. How about Middle English? Are we still allowed to borrow words from other languages? Oh! Speaking of borrowed words, do I have to know every one of those as well? And which count as borrowed anyway? Only after they've been used enough times, but how many times is that exactly?

And beyond all that, inventing words is how a language stays alive. Banning everyone from creating words would only kill the language.

[RedWarrior0]

Let me put it this way: You may only invent new words once you know all of the old ones, to avoid duplication.

Alright then. What counts as an English word? Does it have to be from Modern English? Even then that goes back to the 1600s and includes scores of words considered archaic. How about Middle English? Are we still allowed to borrow words from other languages? Oh! Speaking of borrowed words, do I have to know every one of those as well? And which count as borrowed anyway? Only after they've been used enough times, but how many times is that exactly?

And beyond all that, inventing words is how a language stays alive. Banning everyone from creating words would only kill the language.

Yes, inventing words is how a language stays alive. I would like to restate that the list is pointing out the "overused, misused, or generally useless" words, not curbing the half million words with less than half as many meanings.

[Sensei]

I dunno if someone already beat me to saying this, but I'm pretty sure they're not serious about their list of banned words.