a joke about two pere ubuists

[David Morris]

--- Abdiel OAbdiel <abdieloabdiel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Every language is a composite of dialects. Some people believe languages are
well defined and fixed systems with various dialects diverging from this norm. 
These folks tend to be prescriptive rather than descriptive grammarians.
Prescriptive grammarians usually consider the dialect used by politicians,
business leaders, the upper socioeconomic class, the dialect used for
literature and printed documents, the dialect taught in schools and used in
courts, and propagated by the mass media, as the "correct" form of language.
These so-called "language purists" have no support for their claim other than
political one. Standard American English is an ideal. Nobody speaks this
dialect, and if somebody did, we wouldn't know it because the ideal (SAE) is
not defined precisely. 

The word "precisely" is the key to the above paragraph.  Also, "Every language
is a composite of dialects."

As a dialect emerges so do new rules.  Rules exist to be broken, of course,
setting the stage for new rules.  Art and expression are usually the generators
of these new rules because expressiveness often relies on novelty in order to
be noticed.  But it is important for the continuity of a language that a
"standard" is acknowleged and propogated, especially by those whose job it is
to teach the language.  I suppose this could be considered an arbitrary
political goal.

Music has rules too, and the best rule breakers in that language are the ones
who know the rules by heart.

David Morris
 
> To answer your question, if my lawyer addressed the
> court with that phrase I would fire her. 
> 
> No, NO, really, I would. 
> 
> 
> 
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