Dan Hemmens: It would take somebody with a far better linguistics background than me to make a statement on this

Good call; I'd stay out of it. Even the keen lay observer has trouble distinguishing post festum between horse- and bullshit. Better let those with the degrees bag and tag this steamer.

since I am a polyglot fluent in four languages, conversant in another ten, and passingly familiar with a half-dozen or so beyond that, I am a professional, award-winning writer and currently employed as an editor, and I am an English teacher whose mother was an English teacher, I do speak with some experience and authority of my own.

And since I eat every day of my life — more than once — and often order from restaurants colloquially called "ethnic," then I needn't defer to Harold McGee on the subject of food or science, or to any other food scientist for that matter, especially — and I mean especially — not to a group of them kind enough to contribute to a blog popularizing their subject of expertise. I eat, dammit — I know food!

I was aware of the mistakes in my previous posting. I thought it rather amusing to use a pompous style, complaining about incorrect usage of English, on a message board devoted to language, while having several glaring mistakes in my post. Perhaps my attempt at humor was far too subtle for the 'lol' crowd.

Irony that doesn't quite come across is a… what was the word you used so sloppily (albeit with intentional sloppiness, of course)? Ah, yes, "hallmark"! It's a hallmark of shitty writing.

I'm very tempted to make my personal motto "think bigly".

From Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs":

They debated the grammatical issue: If “different” was supposed to modify the verb “think,” it should be an adverb, as in “think differently.” But Jobs insisted that he wanted “different” to be used as a noun, as in “think victory” or “think beauty.” Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in “think big.” Jobs later explained, "We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. "Think differently’" wouldn’t hit the meaning for me."

Surely that should be "were it the case that he did not exist, it should have been necessary to invent him". Does nobody learn the subjective tense these days?

Incidentally two minutes with google reveals at least one onine French thesaurus (http://www.dictionnaire-synonymes.com/), reviews of several Japanese thesauruses (http://www.kanjiclinic.com/reviewthesaurus.htm) and similar tools in other languages.

"lol" no more ignores smirk, grin, chortle, chuckle and guffaw than guffaw ignores smirk, grin, chortle, chuckle and lol. Using one word does not imply ignorance of other words. There are specific contexts in which "lol" is the *correct* word to use and any of the other words you cite are *incorrect* either because they simply do not have the same meaning, or because they have the wrong register.

However, since I am a polyglot fluent in four languages, conversant in another ten, and passingly familiar with a half-dozen or so beyond that, I am a professional, award-winning writer and currently employed as an editor, and I am an English teacher whose mother was an English teacher, I do speak with some experience and authority of my own.

Experience and authority are of little use when one is simply *wrong*.

You assert that English is in danger of losing its ability to express subtlety of emotion and detail. This is - as I understand it - literally impossible.

English has the largest vocabulary of any language on Earth, and is the only one I am familiar with that produces a thesaurus, allowing one to choose the precise word for any occasion.

Firstly, vocabulary size is not a measure of the expressiveness of a language.

Secondly, "English" does not produce a thesaurus, people produce thesauruses in English. I have no idea whether they produce them in other languages as well, but I see no reason that one could not.

Thirdly, a thesaurus does not allow one to "choose the precise word for any occasion". It allows one to look up synonyms for words. I might also point out that the thesaurus is frequently the absolute *bane* of clear expression, since it so often consists of nothing but a blind list of words with no hints about how their senses differ.

A brief thesaurus search for the word "laugh" gives: " break up, burst*, cachinnate, chortle, chuckle, convulsed, crack up, crow, die laughing, fracture, giggle, grin, guffaw, howl, roar, roll in the aisles, scream, shriek, snicker, snort, split one's sides, titter, whoop, with sound be in stitches" with no indication of how these words or phrases should be used, or what other implications they might have. It is no help whatsoever in choosing the right word to describe a particular kind of laughter (which, nine times out of ten, will simply be "laugh").

That languages die is further proof that they can lose significant parts of themselves. After all, how many folks do you know that regularly chat in Phoenician, Babylonian, Sanskrit, or Latin? If entire systems of communication can die out, then it stands to reason that parts of languages can die, as well.

That's faulty logic and poor rhetoric. Languages die when people stop speaking them. Parts of languages die when people stop using those parts of the language, but there is a massive difference between languages losing *elements* and losing *functionality*.

English may well be losing a number of subtle distinctions - say the distinction between "less" and "fewer" but that does not mean that the language will become incapable of distinguishing between "a smaller number" and "a smaller quantity" (insofar as that distinction is ever anything but obvious) it merely means that the distinction will no longer be coded into a single word.

I thought it rather amusing to use a pompous style, complaining about incorrect usage of English, on a message board devoted to language, while having several glaring mistakes in my post.

You found it amusing to make yourself look like a fool?

You are *still* posting in a pompous style, you are still complaining, and you are still making glaring mistakes. I am glad that you find it amusing, but I suspect that you are in a minority of one. I have personally read far too much uninformed, inarticulate nonsense about the decline of the English language to be remotely amused by your rather pedestrian examples.

You made my point most eloquently. 'LOL' is a prime example of the abbreviating of the language. Not only does it fail to fully write out the concept, but it completely ignores such subtleties as smirk, grin, chortle, chuckle, and guffaw, among others. I also seriously doubt that someone who writes 'rofl' is actually rolling on the floor laughing. It is, however, a fine example of 'telegraph English,' in that it drops the subject and an article, as well as leaves off a perfectly good verb, such that, "I am rolling on the floor laughing," becomes "rolling on floor laughing," which is then compressed to 'rofl.'

I thank you for making my point so well.

As for citations, as I am writing extemporaneously without extensive research, I can not provide citations with any certainty. However, since I am a polyglot fluent in four languages, conversant in another ten, and passingly familiar with a half-dozen or so beyond that, I am a professional, award-winning writer and currently employed as an editor, and I am an English teacher whose mother was an English teacher, I do speak with some experience and authority of my own.

English has the largest vocabulary of any language on Earth, and is the only one I am familiar with that produces a thesaurus, allowing one to choose the precise word for any occasion. Certainly, if people do not use such a wealth of verbal resources, they will be lost at some point and the language will further contract, losing its ability to express many subtleties. That it is impossible is absurd, since the number of obsolete words in English is quite large. That languages die is further proof that they can lose significant parts of themselves. After all, how many folks do you know that regularly chat in Phoenician, Babylonian, Sanskrit, or Latin? If entire systems of communication can die out, then it stands to reason that parts of languages can die, as well.

And yes, I was aware of the mistakes in my previous posting. I thought it rather amusing to use a pompous style, complaining about incorrect usage of English, on a message board devoted to language, while having several glaring mistakes in my post. Perhaps my attempt at humor was far too subtle for the 'lol' crowd. It's enough to make me headdesk, but at least I'm not gob-smacked.

It would take somebody with a far better linguistics background than me to make a statement on this, but I am pretty sure that one of the defining features of human languages is their ability to express an unlimited number of concepts, and to be adapted dynamically to express new and unfamiliar concepts.

This being the case, I am pretty certain it is *completely impossible* for English to lose its ability to "express such subtle shades of emotion and detail".

I'd also point out that if you want examples of the way the English language expresses subtle shades of emotion and detail, you would be hard pressed to find a better example than the subtle yet beautiful distinctions between such things as the lol and the rofl, or the facepalm and the headdesk.

The notion that the English language is becoming less expressive is so cracktastic that I'd find it lolworthy if I wasn't so busy headdesking.