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Re: Flamewars & Why pedantic spelling is good.



(Please excuse my English, as it's not my native tongue).

Craig Sanders dijo:
> small minded people think that dictionaries prescribe language.
> anyone who has studied even basic linguistics knows that they do not,
> linguistics is a *DESCRIPTIVE* discipline...it does not presume to
> prescribe what a language *should* be, it describes what a language
> *is*.  living languages evolve over time - new words are invented, old
> ones fall out of usage or gain new meanings or lose old meanings.

I happen to disagree. Us linguists struggle between descriptive and
normative linguistics, and finding balance is not that easy. And,
believe me, there should be some balance. 

There's also a big difference on how the same speaker uses language
depending on context. IMNSHO, debian/control is the right context for
extra care. To non-English speakers, it is specially hard to spot
"common use" and avoid confussion, so being extra careful is always
appreciated. Maybe this case is not a great example for this, but
anyway... 

I guess this thread is just plain useless now that you O: all the
"offending" packages. 

Kind regards,

	Amaya - quite struggling right now ;-)

-- 
 .''`.      "No tengo el coño pa ruidos" -- David Amor, dear friend
: :' :  
`. `'          Proudly running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (Kernel 2.4.9)  
  `-        www.amayita.com  www.malapecora.com  www.chicasduras.com



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