🚀 go-pugleaf

My apologies if this is a duplicate posting, but our mail system has
been broken for several days, and I have reason to believe that the
following never left our site:

In response to Ned Bedinger <qwa@u.washington.edu> on the subject
of the appropriateness of the word "port" in "guitar technology 

will more readily port to flat-backed instruments":

First of all, would you please translate the following sentence for me?

           "Why on earth would an editor be absent compunction about
	   dispossessing such a useful word?"

What I think it says isn't consistent with the rest of your message, so I'm  
obviously misinterpreting something.
  

           OK, soapboxing aside, I think the language is undergoing
           a collossal adjustment to the terminology of emerging
           technology. The computer revolution has introduced 

           drastically new perspectives on work, home, education,
           employment, information, communication and the vocabularies
           as well. Let's face it, computer programmers
           are in control of an awfully [sic] lot, suddenly, and it would
           behoove the population to be in touch with them, even if that
           means going out on a limb to assimilate jargon so that we
           can at least communicate with them.

It's one thing to learn computerese in order to communicate with computer  
programmers; it's entirely another to assimilate computer jargon into the  
general vocabulary, subsituting it for perfectly good words and expressions  
that say the same thing more accurately. As my husband, himself a computer  
programmer, says: "The language of computer programming is shallow and stupid."  
Did the first people to speak of "porting" software from one computer platform  
to another think of the verb "port" as an abbreviation for "portage" or  
"transport," or did they incorrectly think that "port" actually means "carry"?  
Since most computer programmers, whatever other virtues they may possess, are  
not highly verbal---that is, they have relatively little "facility in the use  
and comprehension of words" (Merriam Webster's)---I wouldn't be surprised if it  
were the latter.

           And besides, why does specialized (technical) vocabulary 

           always end up referred to perjoratively [sic] as jargon? 


Because that's what the word means. "Jargon" = "the technical terminology or  
characteristic idiom of a special activity or group." There's nothing  
inherently pejorative about it.
	   

	   A word like 'port' is in common use and has been for years. 

	   

Yes, with other perfectly good, clear meanings. Why muddy the waters by  
altering its definition in order to express a concept that can be better  
conveyed with existing vocabulary?
	   

	   If Webster hasn't heard of it yet, it may take decades for 

	   them to log it. 

	   

I cited Merriam Webster's Tenth because it is hot off the press---the most  
up-to-date dictionary that I know of---and it has a reputation for being  
quicker than most to adopt new words. 


As I said before, I'm all for adopting new words, or new meanings for existing  
words, when they enrich our language. But computerese is generally cryptic and  
often poorly conceived. How can its assimilation into the general vocabulary do  
anything but impoverish our language?

Carol Odlum
Salt Spring Technical
carol@dreamer.eyrie.com
phone: (503) 684-1416
fax: (503) 639-6652