Raul-02
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- Aug 23, 2021
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Mmmm Not really. France has an official language. The USA does not. Efforts at establishing one are always met with cries of racism.but still, at least you speak the same language
So because we don't have an official language there is no authority, no place you can go for a definitive answer to whether a word means one thing or another, how to pronounce it, how to use it, or if it even exists.
And because of that our language suffers all manner of depredations. It used to be that the lexicographers who put the dictionaries together had a smidgeon of decency. They looked to scholarly usage before attacking the language and just pronouncing changes.
Those days are as dead as the dodo.
Now the Lexicographers are constantly slumming for changes in linguistics. And because they are looking to the illiterate uneducated hoi polloi of the gutter the dictionaries are destroying the language.
Examples include
** Professional. It means to have professed oneself to a higher calling. The clergy and the priesthood are really the only professions. But today people abuse it for everything from how one dresses to conduct you name it.
** Devolve is another. It means to transfer the authority to do a thing from one bureau to another but the hoi polloi think it sounds like De-Evolve so they have forgotten the perfectly good word degenerate and substitute devolve. Because they are stupid.
** Use and Utilize are another lexicographic catastrophe. Utilize means to put something to a use for which it was not intended. But because it has more syllables the ignorant think it makes them sound smarter.