On Mon, 18 Feb 2019 21:44:11 -0000 (UTC), William Unruh
wrote:
On 2019-02-18, Ken Blake wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2019 11:15:26 -0600, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:
On 02/18/2019 11:01 AM, wrote:
On 18-Feb-2019, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Worse, here is my RESPONSE to MIke's privacy rant:
A. Mike essentially makes the claim that I have to DEFEND my right to
privacy.
B. I respond, strongly, with cites, that this is a common ignorant
statement.
C. When I ask Mike to provide cites backing up his ignorant claim, he
can't.
Let's state the super obvious things he
1. Nobody has to defend their right to privacy.
2. If you (Paul or Mike) want to claim otherwise, then back it up with
cites.
3. Rest assured, I already provided Mike with cites proving my point of
view.
What the hell are cites?
References.
Thanks, I was mistaking it for sites.
As far as I'm concerned, you are right, and the original post with the
word "cites" is wrong. "Cite" is a verb, not a noun. The noun is
"citation."
I'm sure I'm going to get arguments about this, telling me I'm an old
fuddy-duddy and I'm behind the times. So I'll repeat my first five
words in the paragraph above: "as far as I'm concerned."
English has the ability of making verbs into nouns.
I knew I would get an argument. Maybe more are coming.
You are certainly right. There are many, many examples of that. Some
of those have been around for a long time. Some of them started very
recently.
Making nouns out of verbs is only one example of the way English
changes. It also makes verbs out of nouns, and changes in many other
ways. Like all languages, English changes over the years. Today's
English isn't the same as Shakespeare's, and Shakespeare's wasn't the
same as Chaucer's. And Italian isn't the same as Latin.
I'm well aware of that. It's the nature of language. I can't object to
that; it's a fact of life. But I can object to it's happening very
quickly. To my way of thinking, because of television and the
Internet, these days it happens too quickly, much more quickly than it
used to. Too quickly, to me, means that it's very difficult for
everyone to keep up with it, and the result is that communication is
impeded.
So wherever possible, I personally avoid those "nouns" made of verbs.
I say (and write) "clean installation, " not "clean install,"
"invitation" not "invite," "citation" not "cite," and many other
examples that don't spring to the mind at the moment.
I know. I'm an old fuddy-duddy and I'm behind the times. So be it.
There's an office complex near my home that has a sign in front of it:
"If you officed here, you'd be home now." Besides making up the verb
"office" from the noun "office," the sign makes no sense.