« Powerful Stuff | Main | Great Customer Service »
January 26, 2005
Contradiction and Redundacy
Look at the subject of this post. I'm sure most of you are still familiar those ideas. To me these are some of the largest indicators of ignorance. Not that we aren't all guilty of these things at some point. I know I am, probably frequently too. So I'm probably ignorant. Maybe I'm ignorant because I rely on photos to update this blog.
But what had me thinking about these two things was something I noticed on a test-review I was doing in class. One of the answers contained the phrase "makes logical sense." When I saw this, I immediately thought it was redundant. If something makes sense, isn't it logical by nature? Maybe not. I don't know what the dictionary definition of sense is, but I'm not interested in what the dictionary says. Dictionaries are always at least 2-3 years behind the popular use of a word. I'm more interested in how people relate the word sense and its meaning.
That's another interesting topic. Where does a dictionary get its meanings? It must derive them from the way the word is used by people. Why else are new words added all the time? I see these words that are added and I think people have been saying that for a while. So why can't anyone use any word any way they like? I suppose they can, but often people will refute them. If it's a word that already exists they'll say "You can't use it that way. It means this..." If it doesn't exist people will say "It's not in the dictionary." So the dictionary becomes the choice for definition of language. Yet this is contradictory (to tie this in again) to the idea that language usage by people is what defines the dictionary. Where is this contradiction broken though? It has to be somewhere. Probably around the less educated or even children and teens. These peoples will constantly have new slang. Nobody cares enough to tell them it's not a word, and others will even pick up on the words and start using them. Many of the words recently added to dictionaries have been of this nature and it's a remarkable phenomenon. I believe it is anyway.
I'd like to direct everyone's attention to Choplair and his Kana-no quiz. I first stumbled across his quiz tool a while ago and was extremely impressed. I used it a lot and even mentioned some suggestions. That was a while ago, and not very long ago I recieved an e-mail where he said he added my suggestions and made Kana-no quiz 1.2. I was extremely impressed and this is the least I can do in gratitude. This is a great tool for anyone learning the Kana.
Also right now I'm reading the blog Extraordinary Ordinary Guy In Japan. It's a wonderful blog by a japanese guy written in english. He has a lot of great thoughts that I enjoy. Thanks to Simon (see Simon Undercover in the Blogs section of my menu bar) for pointing him out.
Posted in Off-The-Wall By akijikan at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://chattablogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/22956
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Contradiction and Redundacy: