The reasons why this is not a blog (and the reason why nobody should call it such) are linguistic: I simply do not accept the etymology of the utterance "blog". Let us revise it.
In the beginning was the Middle English logge, from which the ENglish word log, in the sense of a length of a tree trunk ready for sawing and over six feet (1.8 meters) long (Merriam-Webster). A round block of wood (a piece of log) was often used as the main part of the device used to measure the speed of a ship, hence the acception of the word log to indicate the record of the rate of a ship speed and then, by extension, the diary of a ship's captain.
From there, the word log has passed to denote any kind of chronological account of events. When people started putting these accounts on the web, the same illiterate who created blurts such as e-comerce or e-education (a bunch of e-diots, if you ask me) started use the term weblog and then, since these people seem unable to deal with any polysyllabic word, they cut it in the beginning into blog.
I'd rather not use a word with such poor etymology so, as I said before, this is not a blog. Call it a diary, an opinion column, a cuaderno de bitacora. Just don't call it a blog. And if you think I am too picky about language, be warned that I can do much worse, as shown in this article that appeared a few years ago on the IEEE Computer magazine.
Monday, 23 April 2007
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3 comments:
Great article.
But I think that the "eight powerful" just don't want us the commoneers to think about their decisions. And they take special care with the language, because it's like the "assembler" of human communication, even though its richness may lead us to think that it deserves a higher consideration.
The less us "commoneers" think and question what they decide, the more they gain. Unfortunately, that's how the present world works.
Gr8tings
P.S.: By the way... how do you go from Java to Café con Leche? XD
"P.S.: By the way... how do you go from Java to Café con Leche? XD"
Oh... I didn't: somebody did it before I could. Café con Leche is a library whose purpose is "intends to make the development of internet cafe programs easier".
Once you start with the American acception of the word as a type of coffee, it is not to hard, in a few well screwed-up hops, to arrive to Café con leche...
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