On Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post a reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the "Obama's." This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy.
-- Gene Weingarten asserting that the English language "succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself."
(Obviously Mr. Weingarten doesn't understand that living languages change and only already-dead languages are immutable.)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A metaprime example is something that IS an example of itself in a self-referential way. Metaprime examples can be words themselves, or names, or names of things, or things themselves. Metaprime examples can be ideas or objects, abstract or literal, metalanguage or existential. They can be intentional or un. Sometimes they make you laugh, and usually they make you dizzy if you think about them too long!
No comments:
Post a Comment
You can use some HTML tags.