Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 21, 2020 22:44 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Loaded terms in free software by Wol
Parent article: Loaded terms in free software

I'm cynical in that I strongly suspect said changes will achieve pretty much nothing.

I agree. On the other had, they do no harm, they do some small amount of good, and they are easy to do. So why not take care of the low-hanging fruit while fully recognizing that there's still much more to do.

Plus, I'm strongly upset by *American* angst messing about with the *English* language

That sentiment is very un-English; it's more worthy of the Academie française or similar. English is a wild, freely-evolving language with no central control, and it's all the better for that.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 0:18 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Read my other response - yes English is a freely evolving language etc etc. But we have two very distinct languages - that spoken in England, and that spoken in America, and they both have the same name. The confusion is painful...

The quicker it goes down the path of Latin and becomes like Italian/Spanish/Portuguese(/Romanian/etc) - several mutually comprehensible versions of the same root language which all have the decency to have their own name, the better!

Cheers,
Wol

English (was Re: Loaded terms in free software)

Posted Jun 22, 2020 18:15 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

In the past, English might have split into two languages, but given modern telecommunications, I suspect that's unlikely. You're stuck with the awful language of the ex-colonies.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 23, 2020 11:54 UTC (Tue) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

Hah well, Latin may have split into several distinctly named languages but, first, it had about a 1000 years to do so, and, second, Spanish and Portuguese are really bad examples for your cause. The official language of Brazil is still called Portuguese. The language spoken all over Latin America is still called Spanish. I'm not familiar with their identity politics but I don't think they're moaning in Spain that these hideous rebels in New Spain are destroying their language...

Anyway, English is not yours anymore and you have no right to dictate how other peoples use it. If it has ever actually been yours. A living language is much like free software - if you don't like the direction it's going in, you can fork it. But then you can't complain that nobody understands you when you speak The One True English.