-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: ACB on Virginia Woolf died (28-3-1941)
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2024 10:07:42 -0700
From: HenHanna <HenHanna@devnull.tb>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang,alt.english.usage

> That's worthy of a Darwin Award.

-- When i saw this, i felt a bit a better about being hated by (Dr.) ACB

Re: Virginia Woolf died (28-3-1941)
On 3/29/2024 2:46 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2024-03-29 09:35:59 +0000, Ross Clark said:
>
>> Walked into the Ouse River after filling her coat pockets with stones.
>
> That's worthy of a Darwin Award.
>
>> It was three weeks before her body was found.
>>
>> Crystal quotes at length from a radio talk (29-4-1937) in a series
>> called "Words Fail Me".
>>
>> She says:
>> "In the old days, when English was a new language, writers could
>> invent new words and use them. Nowadays it is easy enough to invent
>> new words...but we cannot use them because the language is old. You
>> cannot use a brand new word in an old language because of the very
>> obvious yet mysterious fact that a word is not a single and separate
>> entity, but part of other words. It is not a word indeed until it is
>> part of a sentence."
>>
>> Can anyone make sense of this for me?
>
> I can sort of understand that, but not to the point of trying to
> translate it into English.
>
>> Who are the "we" and the "you" in that passage?
>
> They're the same person!
>>
>> Further:
>> "To combine new words with old words is fatal to the constitution of
>> the sentence. In order to use new words properly you would have to
>> invent a new language; and that, though no doubt we ahsll come to it,
>> is not at the moment our business. Our business is to see what we can
>> do with the English language as it is."
>>
>> Again the "you" and the "we" (well, "our").
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf

> > That's worthy of a Darwin Award.
>
> -- When i saw this, i felt a bit a better about being hated by (Dr.) ACB
>
>
> Re: Virginia Woolf died (28-3-1941)
> On 3/29/2024 2:46 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> > On 2024-03-29 09:35:59 +0000, Ross Clark said:
> >
> >> Walked into the Ouse River after filling her coat pockets with stones.
> >
> > That's worthy of a Darwin Award.
> >

and what's your reasons for hating Virginia Woolf ???

__________________________________________________________________
by: Athel Cornish-Bowden - Sat, 6 Apr 2024 01:42

So far as HenHanna is concerned, here are some things that annoy people:

1. Refusing to format messages in a normal way;

2. Refusing to use normal punctuation;

3. Refusing to use capitals when they are needed (beginnings of
sentences, the pronoun I, etc.);

4. Ignoring all suggestions (and not offering arguments against them);

5. Using abbreviations like pls and ppl that may be acceptable in SMS
messages, but are not acceptable in a group devoted to English usage;

6. Insisting on signing as HH after being told several times that there
was already an HH at alt.usage.english who had been there much earlier.
(He's gone now, but was a regular when HenHanna arrived.)

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

____________________________

----------- (the other, older HH was long gone, when i started posting)