Posted by Peter Ceresole on June 28, 2004 at 10:56:48 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: aye aye, Sir - today posted by David Bamford on June 27, 2004 at 22:57:52:
I read in a book by Lancelot Hogben ("From Cave Painting to Comic Strip") that the 'fixing' of the written language happened when the first large scale printing presses started to operate.
Previous to that, everybody had their own idea about how to spell.
Makes sense.
There are still languages that don't have a formal written form, such as Swiss-German, although there are some generally accepted ways of spelling some of it. And even in languages that have become highly formalised such as English (but in at least two versions, English-English and American-English) there are niches of flux.
Is there a formal Navy document that lays down the written form of acknowledgement of an order as 'Aye, aye' or 'Aye-aye'? Does anybody here have access to the full Oxford Dictionary? On thin paper or on CDROM? That should settle the question.