Re: Source


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Posted by Jock on June 28, 2006 at 01:06:20 from 81.76.86.2 user Jock.

In Reply to: Source posted by John on June 27, 2006 at 23:22:18:

The Times is a secondary source as long as their reporter is not there. So publishing the first sighting of the long necked farquarwee bird in Australia... from Iam A. Barekneeded who claims to have seen the bird is primary, whilst reporting... on the sighting of the bird in Australia is secondary

Of course, nobody is disputing this. The recording of events is history not etymology.

But the evolution of language does not take place through reporting lots of observations in far away places.

Language evolves in an entirely different manner and for me to try to sketch out all the processes to a student of the OED would surely be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.

Suffice it to say that the English language is not protected by a state Academy. (Trust the French to have come up with a neat solution.) But English English has its guardians too, Sir Ernest Gower and Martin Cutts come to mind as outstanding individual contributors, as do the editors working for The BBC, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times, The Economist and the OED.

In Ransome’s day the roll call would have been slightly different. But it was men such as these, together with the editorial staff of the principal publishing houses of the day, that, by the primary act of printing and publishing, determined what was correct English. It was not government agents like Colonel Weir sent out to flatter local rulers and bend them to do what was expedient for imperial policy.


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