Esquire Awards

[David Morris]

Tom Collins?
PaLEEEEZZZE!

--- Thomas Colin <thomas_colin at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Spencer wrote :
> >However, English is without question the language
> that will always be
> >looked at as the most important language, probably
> due to the hard work of
> >the Oxford English Dictionary folks.  It is still
> the only language where
> >every single word can be defined by looking in a
> dictionary.  And since
> >they were the first to accomplish this feat, we are
> probably stuck with it.
> 
> Hum... Sorry, but I don't agree anymore. First of
> all, if English is now the 
> predominant language it has not "always" been and
> will not "always" be the 
> case. Since languages circulate and evolve and
> cross-fertilize, u.s.w. it 
> seems to me reasonable enough to say so.
> Second. I don't know when the fabulous enterprise of
> the O.E.D was started, 
> but there are equivalents in other languages, among
> which at least one that 
> I know of, hmhm... sorry again, French. French
> lexicon and grammar started 
> to be scientifically studied and referenced in the
> 17th c. if I remember 
> well, especially by a group of scholars at the
> College de Port-Royal (they 
> were Jansenistes, a Protestant sect) who produced
> countless grammars and 
> dictionnaries. The most comprehensive French
> dictionnary is now the Littre 
> (acute accent on the "e"), which is both diachronic
> and synchronic. I can 
> tell you, it's BIG (and has just been released on
> CD-ROM, good idea). 
> There's also the Dictionnaire de l'Academie
> Francaise, a work that has been 
> in progress for quiet a few years (they must be
> tackling the words beginning 
> with an L by now, but you have to keep in mind this
> academy is the retiring 
> home for a bunch of doting though eminent scholars
> with Alzheimer whose 
> views on la langue are not particularly progressive.
> They must be thinking 
> that French is and has always been the most
> important language because THEY 
> started THEIR dictionnary).
>   My conclusion : Que viva Die polyglossie
> Pynchonian!
>   Best,
> Thomas.
>
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