I've observed that although we have no dearth of dictionaries, we Americans for the most part tend to fail to use them to our best advantage. We are fast becoming a culturally illiterate society, relying only on a skeletized version of the rich language that we had called English. This may not only be true of Americans or even English speakers of the industrial nations, but also of Spanish speakers in the Americas. Is it just the "grass is greener" syndrome, or is Europe surpassing us in the teaching of the liberal arts? Is the Moslem system of education perhaps now providing the cultural content that our secular and technocratic culture is failing to provide? I would like to promote the reading and proper use of dictionaries and thesauruses for the enrichment of the mind. Where this thread will go, who knows?
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An invitation to a more rigorous yet liberal educationVoted for by cafegroundzero.
When I say liberal, I mean for the liberal arts, toward a more well-rounded person, then a more balanced communitas, a better adjusted politas, a more balanced and coherent state. When I invite us to seek more rigor in our thinking, in our expression, and in our proofs, I invite us to review what we know, look toward where we want to go, and see where we're actually headed. Are we on the right course?
The dictionary, the thesaurus, heck, even the encyclopaedia, have been relegated to mere tools, but we have forgotten how to use those tools to our best advantage. This could go for other things, like calculators and computers. Many of us use calculators only for relatively simple arithmetic, yet we could be learning how to calculate changes in the movement of fluids, or stock, or electricity... Many of us now have computers in our houses, our schools, our offices, our factories, even our battlefields. But we submit them to very narrow uses, and in our leisure time we just play games, sometimes very very basic games that we repeat, like neurotic lab rats. Have you won a game of solitaire, lately? How many games of backgammon have you played thus far in your life? Do you recall many memorable ones? Lest I merely steer you from one soul-less activity to another, let us remember that the dictionaries are there to serve humanity, and not the other way around. Let your knowledge be of some use to a fellow creature. As John Donne wrote in Meditations XVII, "No man is an Island." (Or woman, or simian, or dolphin, horse, etc. for that matter).
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NoVoted for by Weydon.
"the rich language that we had called English." Is always evolving, never exactly what it was like 100 years prior. All languages do. That's how we get languages. Even when we were colonies, within a generation there were dialect differences. The differences continue, although in the same direction just with different accents due to gloabalization.
Literacy is higher today than in most any other time.
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