On Thursday 22 December 2011 21:28:15 Keith Edmunds wrote:
> Right or
> wrong, justified or not, that's reality.
Speaking personally, that jars considerably less than modern teenager-speak 
for contact lenses.  
To me, a "contact" is either a person with whom I in contact, or a person with 
whom I wish to be in contact, or something that enables electrically charged 
wires to meet and communicate.  To my granddaughter it is a miniature 
spectacle lens that you wear in your eye.
Even the Académie Francaise is in the process of not being able to hold the 
breach.
And don't get me started on monstrosities like television and beefburger.
C'est la vie.  Language is a living entity.  I am just in the process of 
reading Chaucer - in translation.  I can't understand a large part of the 
original: yet his English is the ancestor of ours.  Language changes with 
time and space.  It is not immutable.  That is what makes it so interesting.
Lisi
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