Charles, you are an elitist. You convince yourself that you're education or social standard entitles you to the assumption of having a better understanding than some other people, and therefore you feel entitled to make decisions for them, too.
That is not the way I feel about language correctness (admission of a word is not really a question of correctness, again a pro of flat grammatical structures). Instead, I think, that language is a tool so fundamental for any access to anything (may that be a social bonus program or simply a friendly contact), that it should be cared for being inclusive, not exclusive.
I still am opposed to language anarchism, but in practice it seems to be the case in English. In Germany, we have a restricted political control over language. It is totally admissible to anybody to use a deliberately chosen creative spelling (or grammar) system. This is also true for applications to courts, public offices etc. Restrictions apply only to pupils, teachers and lawmakers. Also the norms have always been open (as to the inclusion of neologisms and foreign words, e.g.), extensible, and (were supposed to be) descriptive, not normative in the dogmatic sense.
As I understand the French are more rigid in language control.
Tendency seems to be correlated to the relative semantic abundance... <g>.
BTW it is "Schmetterling", the hard end was overdone in your example. Although I very much agree about the aesthetic qualities of German sounds, in that special example I don't see the advantage of 'butterfly' over the German version. Both are surely worse than 'mariposa' as well as 'papillon'. Some people don't have nice associations when flies meet butter ...
MNI. |
