> The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their offspring
Details? Where do I go to buy a career? I'm not being sarcastic, I actually want to know.
Details? Where do I go to buy a career? I'm not being sarcastic, I actually want to know.
Or "if you give my kid an internship then I'll give you the keys to my ski lodge for this season"
> rich people can literally buy a career
I'm not being sarcastic here. It used to be possible to purchase a commission in the military. That is speaking historically.
I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't careers today you can literally purchase. Franchising comes kind of close, and running a taxi in NYC comes close. In ancient times, you could purchase the position of tax collector.
Anyway, that person should not have said "literally" unless he meant it.
Even someone who thinks that language should not be rule-based still should not use it, if their goal is to communicate clearly and concisely---since it does not achieve that.
So ultimately, it is incorrect regardless of your views on rules of language.
"Literally" has been debased by overuse for emphasis, and now it no longer means what it used to mean.
See e.g. https://nowtoronto.com/news/in-defence-of-the-figurative-and... and http://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2013/aug/14/lan... for more discussion.
> it is incorrect regardless of your views on rules of
> language
However, regarding:
> That isn't correct usage
It's also incorrect to use wood to build a house that is twice the thickness needed.
It's also incorrect to build a rocket that uses an inferior type of fuel.
These are not matters of social dictat.
We don't need an Academie francaise for English because we should be taught the above principle in school and we should correct others when they make mistakes, in appropriate circumstances.
Another principle: We should change the language to improve it when it is trivial to do so; so even if "literal" were well-established in the opposite meaning, we now know better and should stop doing it. But I do not believe it is well-established, despite the article you linked.
You talk about language as being "confusing" or "inferior". You clearly have strongly held criteria for those. Where have they come from?
Has the English language changed in the last 1,000 years? How have you decided which of those changes to adopt? Were all those changes improvements, given your strongly held criteria? What about in the last 500 years? Which year did the version of English that you believe is most "correct" or "superior" occur? Are we currently at "peak" English?
What improvement would modifying the meaning of "literal" bring? Do you know what the word etymology means? Does the etymology of "literal" support your desire to change its meaning? If the root of a word has subtly changed between its Classical roots and emergence in Anglo-Norman French, Middle English, or whatever, which of these is superior? If the root is unclear, and could be Latin or Greek, and has subtly different meanings, which is the right one to use? What about modern English words that have been adopted from - say - Hindi?
...
Having pondered those, perhaps you could examine the rest of your comment. In the phrase "the thickness needed", what criteria define 'needed'? Cost? Durability? Ability to restrict noise? Foundation strength? Could these criteria change from house to house? Could people hold different opinions on those subjects, and both be right? In the phrase "inferior type of fuel", what constitutes 'inferior'? Could safety margins vs cost lead two experts to come up with different opinions on which fuel was superior?
What would be helpful would be a counter-argument, if you have one.
I won't be falling for this again and replying to you further in the future.
I hope it feels good to be "right" all the time.
If you want evidence that I'm an honest person, look at my comment history. I don't go around tricking people and trying to win arguments by deception. In fact, I frequently call people out for being nasty in various ways, much like you are doing here.
I can understand why you think I'm trying to trick people and I was worried that would happen. That's why I talked about historical and quasi-examples of people buying careers. I didn't want you to think or feel that I was playing a trick.
Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making. Wealth is influence, and influence gets you favors, like a foot into a career.
If it had been the original poster making the clarification then moaning about 'literally' would have been pedantic, but it was not, and so therefore it was justified - it was making the point that the interpretation given by jackvalentine did not actually clarify the statement as made, and that Javert had assumed something else, more interesting was being said. At that point the conversation depressingly quickly devolves into name calling, threats and patronisation.
> Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making.
According to you. Javert was actually using a charitable interpretation when he assumed that the original maker of the statement meant what they had said.
As far as I can tell this entire subthread consists of people uncharitably failing to spot that Javert was not in fact trying to score points, (or believes that language is a program to be compiled, or would benefit from a list of topics to meditate on about the evolution of language) and was merely asking for more detail, and getting upset that he is skeptical their trivial 'explanations' actually explain what was originally meant.
It's mainly a lot of people freaking out about their hot button topics without actually spending any brain power on understanding what the other person is saying and why.
He did, but not from you, since you don't know what Aikah actually meant. Regardless, your freakout is unseemly.