>...
>>>
>>>But Spanglish is becoming the object of serious study. One of Solomon's professors at Amherst has published on the subject. I suspect Spanglish will soon be considered a real language like Yiddish.
>>>
>>>Tamar
>>
>>There are always people willing to 'seriously study' just about anything that might get them a grant. They do a disservice to both languages by pretending that this is just 'language evolution' instead of language devolution.
>>
>>In the same sort of vein for instance, in English, what is the real requirement for using the word 'like' 4 times in one sentence - not one of those times actually using it to mean 'like'? People go to the store; they don't 'like' go to 'like' the store, y'know. Much to my chagrin, there are even teachers and others in positions of responsibility who are now starting to say publicly that there is nothing wrong with it; that it's just a further evolution of the language. I disagree (for what that's worth). You could round up a dozen of those people who speak that way, and maybe, if you're lucky, one might know the meaning of the word 'chagrin'. No, the language is devolving, and the fact that somebody is willing to seriously study something, doesn't make it truly worth serious study.
>
>This is a bit debatable, Alan. If not for the evolution of our most adaptable of languages, we'd all be speaking Chaucerian "A verray parfait gentille knicht" or Shakepearean, or the stunted tones of the old black & white movies: "Say, what is this? You don't say so."

I don't think it's quite the same thing. Languages to evolve, but in general changing spellings or relaxing grammar rules a bit don't bother me. When a language starts inserting words that have no meaning and add nothing to the sense, then I call that devolution.

And you can't really count the movies. Yes the language was often stunted, but you can blame the censors and puritan attitudes for most of that. The movies did not reflect real language. They had to use it much too carefully. But again, what is the purpose of, "I'm like going to like the store and like get like a chocolate bar." I don't see how anybody can call that 'evolution'.

>You may know I'm a bit of a language purist, but I love the fact that we can "brown bag" our lunch, et al.

That phrase conveys meaningful imagery though.

>If you're so purist don't let me ever catch you talking of "leveraging" an application (detest that expr.!) or "fragrancing" (ugh!) a room with a new air freshener :-)

It's not that I'm really a purist, but no. You will never catch me saying "Let's do lunch", or "I'm tasking that", or "We need to aggendize that item for the meeting", or any of that business buzzword bingo nonsense.