Defining terms and proper use of language?

[Lark]

How important do you think it is that people define terms and use language correctly? How often do you hear the use of language which may be inaccurate or give rise to misunderstanding and do you think its significant at all?

I'll give you two examples of it that I personally dislike:

The first is "social distancing", I dont understand what that could mean at all, really, what I think it is being used to mean is "physical distancing" or at least I think that would be more accurate, when I think of "social distance" as distinct from "physical distance" it means divisions in privilege or status.

The second is when people refer to things as "free", such as "buy one get one free", it really means buy one, get one no extra cost, or when things paid for via taxation are described as "free", it is not "free", its at "public" or "taxpayers expense", which may or may not be a case of "no extra cost" to the individual or consumer of whatever it is.

 

[Red Herring]

I'll wait to see what others have to say or until I have a little more time on my hand before I chime in. Suffice it to say that - as a Ti dom and a language professional - this is an issue I that care about but which is a little more complex and could lead to a wall of text.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Well I am not too big on every linguistic detail possible as long as the point is completely clear. My first language is fairly complex when it comes to details and therefore it is very easy to make minor spelling mistakes. Plus it has very strong dialects that are often more like similar languages than the versions of the same one. What means that there is no 100% right way how spelling works or even what is the proper word. Since various parts of the country have totally different history and for centuries were parts of the different countries/empires. What means that they took some words from different languages. While official language is basically nothing more than the most common dialect that politics polished a little bit.


This is exactly what fueled my mistyping since here everything is more flexible than in English speaking country. Even if something is set in stone the odds are that the stone will be thrown off the cliff eventually. The only constant is the change itself.