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a11n (Re: How could RDDL be distributed ?)

• From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 14:38:58 -0700 (MST)

> >As the original author of the insiderism comment to James, I stand by my
> >point.  Obfuscation by alpha-numeric abbreviation is *both* convenient
> >to insiders *and* a barrier to outsiders.  Proliferation of such
> >abbreviations increases the socio-linguistic distance between insiders
> >and outsiders.  Such is life.
>
> I have to agree here; the first time I saw a numberism ("i18n") I thought it
> was cute, but as I see more and more of them they start to look like
> expressions of nerdismo ("We're more comfortable with numbers than words and
> we're *proud* of it!") which, at least for me, are a bit offputting and
> conjure up images of 3l33t h4x0r slang ala B1FF.

Come now.  Is it really all that bad?  IMO the culture of computers has
had an extraordinarily rich contribution to English.  I'm not sure there
has been a period as rich since the Elizabethan age.  As opposed to the
jargon of business, which largely seems to concern itself with ignoring
rules separating parts of speech, computer neologisms actually tend to be
creative and useful.

The contribution is sometimes to language (for example "i18n") and
sumetimes to culture (for example "YHBT YHL HAND"), but even though I
consider myself a linguistic conservative, I think this age will have a
profound and beneficial effect on linguistic expressiveness.

BTW, to be fair, if "contextualization" is dissed as a nonce-word (which
it is), then "insiderism" deserves even worse abuse.  The addition of
"ism" to every other word without the least consideration of propriety is
one of the linguistic trands that do indeed shame our age.

BTBTW, I hardly see the use of the term "c15n" as a smug attempt to appear
an insider.  Certainly not when an "I'm feeling lucky" query for "c15n" on
Google leads straight to

http://www.ietf.org/ietf/00dec/c15n-agenda.txt

Which explains it all in sordid detail.  That's not what I'd call
"secretive".

BTBTBTW: "acculturation"

Valete.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@f...               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python

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