B
Bosola
Guest
Bull.
English spelling systems have been based on nothing other than:
* Common usage, and
* Mutual intelligibility
These have been the only arguments Prescriptivists have ever been able to hang on to. So when a case like this appears, where the disc<>disk confusion manages to maintain
- continuity with common usage, and
- intelligibility despite ambiguity
There's really no argument whatsoever for upholding the matter. Please remember that English has only had a standardized spelling system since the mid-Eighteenth Century, and that was only devised for the sake of preventing confusion and verbal ambiguity. There is no other solid, compelling, or even rational argument for linguistic prescription otherwise.
As it happens, you're wrong anyway. There has never been a semantic difference between disc and disk, and all hard drives contain platters of thin, circular 'discs' anyway. It was purely by chance that the first floppy developers used the term 'diskette', and that Philips chose 'disc' when trademarking 'Compact Discs'. These have created precedents and de facto habits of spelling in certain fields, but this is quite something off an immutable matter of 'right and wrong'.
English spelling systems have been based on nothing other than:
* Common usage, and
* Mutual intelligibility
These have been the only arguments Prescriptivists have ever been able to hang on to. So when a case like this appears, where the disc<>disk confusion manages to maintain
- continuity with common usage, and
- intelligibility despite ambiguity
There's really no argument whatsoever for upholding the matter. Please remember that English has only had a standardized spelling system since the mid-Eighteenth Century, and that was only devised for the sake of preventing confusion and verbal ambiguity. There is no other solid, compelling, or even rational argument for linguistic prescription otherwise.
As it happens, you're wrong anyway. There has never been a semantic difference between disc and disk, and all hard drives contain platters of thin, circular 'discs' anyway. It was purely by chance that the first floppy developers used the term 'diskette', and that Philips chose 'disc' when trademarking 'Compact Discs'. These have created precedents and de facto habits of spelling in certain fields, but this is quite something off an immutable matter of 'right and wrong'.
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