Then I saw this comment on /., and it inspired me to finish the post:

Language is a dynamic, evolving thing. Decimated is no longer used to refer to the Roman army selecting 1 out of every 10 soldiers from a mutinous unit for execution; it’s fairly universally accepted to mean that a large portion of the subject group was destroyed. Words changing meaning can be annoying, but it’s part of the process of language. “Nice” was the first to go; it used to mean “infinitely fine and complex”, now it’s that white sofa in the Ikea catalogue. Isn’t that awesome?

Things like “die-sect” used to annoy me, though. There’s a double “s” folks! You “by-sect” and you “dis-sect.” But whatever, it’s too late. “Die-sect” has already been formally accepted. And English is rife with exceptions anyway. Though through tough times, I say unto thee, “Cool hwip.”

But, I’ve seen some particularly egregious mishandling of “good” vs “well” lately, so here’s a friendly refresher, so that as you consciously violate strict propriety, you can think back and marvel at the ways of yore:

“Good” is an adjective. Nouns are good.
“Well” is an adverb. Actions are done well.

Here’s a quick quiz:

http://www.english-zone.com/grammar/gd-wll1.html

This begs the question, “Did I just beg the question correctly?” And the answer is, “No one cares anymore.”

まじ？？。。。め

But for the sake of debate and logic, it just seemed kind of odd, and even a little amusing. We have a word (or several) for “nonno” in English. “Grandpa” or “grandfather” or “grandpappy” or “grandpapa” or “grand patriarch” or “senior male overlord.”  I mean, it’s just a little weird to be conversing in English, and then busting out a foreign word that has several commonly used English equivalents, with no explanation or precedent. We’re not talking “rendezvous” here.  Imagine this:

“Hey Friend, yesterday I went to the beach and surfed a bit, then when I got home, my Ah-Gong told me to mow the lawn.”

Your reply would probably be,

“Excuse me, your what?”

“Oh, Ah-Gong is Taiwanese for ‘Grandpa.’”

“Oh….OK.”

Since I am a JERK, I contemplated just replacing random words with their foreign equivalents in all conversations with said friend with no explanation. Throw in Japanese “inu” for “dog”, “coche” for car, “capitan de America”, etc. etc. But I did not.

Of course, I usually do engage in mini-language games with certain friends, where foreign vocabulary is used randomly (but I have been “losing” a lot to a certain someone lately), but I never do with this particular friend, so I distinguish the two “types” of conversations.

Anyway, the aforementioned thread: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=967035&cid=25039529

Does anyone else find the practice of using the foreign-language version of “astronaut” a bit annoying? It seems a bit bizarre.

A Chinese astronaut is… an astronaut. A Russian astronaut is… an astronaut. You’ll notice that during the Olympics, Chinese athletes were still called “athlete.”

Why arbitrarily translate some words into the foreign language?

The complete thread regards China’s plan on building a space station.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/17/1435201

http://begthequestion.info/