Steve Brust writes:
> At 04:06 AM 8/16/2002 -0700, Caliann the Elf wrote:
>
> >>Most of the changes in language that evolve are due to people trying to
> >>be MORE considerate of one another. Including such little things as
> >>"Hopefully".
>
> I beg to disagree. I think very few changes have to do with
> consideration.
I can't see `hopefully' in that class, but there are a significant set
of words (terms, more accurately) which began with or acquired connotations
that people wished to avoid, so new words were developed which then
acquired those same connotations, ad nauseum. I specificly recall being
informed in 1963 that we were to call kids with certian learning problems
`retarded', not `stupid.'
Now, of course, 'special' has slid down that slippery slope and there's
probably some new term that people are trying to use to avoid a negative
connotation for intelligence deficits.
This might be just an English-ism, can't speak for other languages. But
it goes back quite a ways -- supposedly `moron' and 'idiot' were coined
at the turn of the century as clinical terms.
The previous century turn, you moron. :-)
--
"Deconstruction is [when] a work is interpreted as a statement about itself,
using a literary version of the same cheap trick that Kurt Godel used to try
to frighten mathematicians back in the thirties." -- Chip Morningstar
in <http://www.dourish.com/goodies/decon.html>