From Sipesprngs@aol.com Sat May 20 18:12:40 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id SAA11184 for ; Sat, 20 May 2000 18:12:39 -0700 From: Sipesprngs@aol.com Received: from imo-d07.mx.aol.com (imo-d07.mx.aol.com [205.188.157.39]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id SAA16522 for ; Sat, 20 May 2000 18:12:39 -0700 Received: from Sipesprngs@aol.com by imo-d07.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.9.) id d.db.4655749 (4232) for ; Sat, 20 May 2000 21:12:33 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 21:12:32 EDT Subject: Re: Triump(h)us To: classics@u.washington.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 106 In a message dated 5/20/00 4:03:44 PM Central Daylight Time, Lorenzo.Smerillo@worldnet.att.net writes: > G[eorge]S[teiner]' s thesis > is that the German language was traumatized by the Nazi experience. Well, I think that is true. My remark was to the hollowness of making the Nazis a pejorative comment upon the Romans. I noted that the same had been done with Luther and Nietzsche, even going so far as to suggest their responsibility for Nazi excesses. By way of clarification, I called attention to a language reformer of the early 17th century, whom no one would think of blaming for the Nazi's linguistic "reforms," even though on the surface they appear quite similar. You are of course right to say that German was traumatized by the Nazi experience. I would add that it was political correctness that traumatized, somelthing with which we happen to be very familiar in academe. Note that we avoid words like "right" and "wrong," preferring "correct" and "incorrect"--even to the point of incorrect usage, e.g., we will say that a person is "correct" when we mean he is right in what he has said, not that his dress is appropriate. Other examples, "persons" for "people," "request" for "ask"--again in violation of good English. One could go on mind-numbingly with examples of political traumatization of English. Scholars have already done so with the language of the Third Reich. Fact remains, of course, that Albert Speer was as much influenced by classical models as, say, Thomas Jefferson. I think that's where this thread started. Best, J.W. Worthy Sipe Springs, Texas .