Re: Dead languages?

From: Gerry Thomas (gfthomas_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 07/10/04 

Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 21:58:29 -0400

"Michael Metcalf" <michael.metcalf@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:ccjk7j$1qo$1@ngspool-d02.news.aol.com...
> I just happened to hear an editor of the new edition of the Concise
Oxford
> English Dictionary say on the radio that obsolete words get removed to
make
> way for new ones. Her two examples were Snobol and Cobol. Is this a valid
> definition of a dead computing language?
>

OED is as authorative in matters English as Stg. (sic Schulz) Maine is in
matters Fortran, secondary sources at most and best treated with the utmost
suspicion.

I used to meet a retired Prof (U of Toronto) of Classics at the gym who for
reasons best known to himself always spoke to me in Latin. I'd respond in
English and this didn't seem to bother him. Perhaps the CLF unintelligentia
who think that Latin is deader than Fortran would do well to catch up with
reality at http://www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/Classics/aestivumeng.html. 

-- 
You're Welcome,
Gerry T.
______
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." -- Tennyson, in Morte
d'Arthur.