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On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Uche Ogbuji wrote: > But all that aside, my argument for "schema", "schemata" go beyond respect > for the original language: it includes respect for English. My argument for "schemas" is much simpler: "schemata" sounds as if the speaker is showing off a knowledge of Greek which (by implication) the new listener probably does not have. It's a piece of historical pomposity from the early days of database technology which has long outlived its usefulness. (I'm happy to see no-one arguing for the undifferentiated "schema" as the plural form as well as the singular, though. From its widespread abuse, even in the hands of XML experts, I thought it might have had some merit which was escaping me.) Technology, and especially computer science, is far too full already of words being used in unusual (and occasionally, unnecessary) senses. It is essential to have an accurate special vocabulary to discuss the subject, but there is a tendency to add to or unnecessarily perpetuate this corpus as a method of defending our territory from the outsider, or by making comprehension the price of admission. > Efforts to pare this richness to a blond regularity of idiom are quite > dangerous. Newspeak in Orwell's 1984 is not just about efforts to > place political codes into speech (as the popular press seems to > interpret it). It's more about the effort to stultify people's > imagination through highly regular idiom. I agree completely that there is this risk also. But in the present case I see the longer plural as adding unneeded complexity to an already complex subject. > I see this as a real threat. And it does seem that the computer > revolution has dangerous tendencies towards Newspeak. It takes time for a language to absorb new material. US English speakers still talk about the cut of meat as a "fee-lay" when British English speakers have said "fill-it" for over a century. These are the linguistic differences we can enjoy and allow to persist, as they cause no harm to anyone and enrich the language. Differences which merely act as barriers to comprehension or acceptance, however, have no place in the discussion of our technology. I would actually argue that the computer revolution is precisely *not* heading towards Newspeak, as its constant invention of new words and shades of meaning is enriching our language rather than stultifying it. Fortunately, many of these inventions are chosen with care by people with a high regard for language and derivation, perhaps indeed with Latin and Greek in their education. In this case I think preserving an irregular plural just to show we know where the word came from is not useful. ///Peter
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