On Wed, 22 Nov 1995 14:53:26 -0600 Greg & Amy said:
>Darn those pesky progressives!  The English language should have stayed
>the same once Beowulf came out.  Those durned Normans had no respect for
>'traditional values'!    Smite them! Smite them all!

yeah!!! all them ffolkes yclept them thar words what don't ne'er mean
what they seems to mean when they do say what they don't mean!!!
Chaucer was the last of the best ... or maybe Johnson. possibly Shakespeare
or Walter Raleigh. but i think we'll all agree: they shudda stopped before
Elvis got hold of the language! :)

see, a lot of you young folks can't see what's happened to the language
over the last 50-odd (and they were VERY odd) years. as you grow older,
many cycles in nature and man's endeavors become apparent ... loooooong
cycles, some of which i have not yet seen the completion. anyway, it always
changes ... just like the law (hiss!! booooooo!) and government (HISS!!!!!!
BOOOOOOO!!!!) and morality. all that stuff is relative to the time and
geography in which you live (like, so how come it's ok fer them Kings and
Queens and Used-to-be-Princes to marry THEIR cousins and such, and it ain't
ok for me and Bubba to mess around in our own backyard??  huh???). :)

and the worst thing, for me, anyway, is that with the onrush of modern
technology, the RATE of the changes in language, society, etc., etc., has
greatly accelerated. in the past, a person could go for twenty years or
so with very little change in the way people lived. today, you're lucky if
"things" stay the same for five years or so.

so what does it all mean? nothing. everything. whatever you want it to mean.
it's your reality. ;)

unca joel
"ham me anudder wun of them mushrooms, Bubba ...  "