The word liseuse being used outside of MobileRead?

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Peverel

for some reason the look of the word makes me feel a tiny bit angry - no idea why.......

Now, when you say you have no idea why, think back to the first time you saw the word...make a picture of where you were when you saw it...you can see the word written and you can feel the anger in your body...where in your body can you feel the anger...you can see the word and feel the anger, now you can make the word smaller and as you make the word smaller you can feel the anger evaporating...you can make the anger evaporate by making the words smaller...and when you are ready you can make the word disappear...and as you make the words disappear you can make you anger evaporate.

$200. Pay the laddie on the door!

[Peverel]

Ahhhhhh sighs.........

Sorry I meant, ARGHHHHHHHHHHH You made me think of the word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

I'll use whatever words I like in whatever fashion I see fit in whatever context I deem necessary.

You have the right to use whatever words you want. As your audience has the right to choose not to be your audience.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

You have the right to use whatever words you want. As your audience has the right to choose not to be your audience.

What audience?

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I loath this word personally. Unless you're French, I can see no conceivable reason for wanting to use it. Let's hope that it dies the death that it so richly deserves.

oh yes. absolutely. thank HEAVENS that english so far has managed to remain pure and untainted by any of those nasty foreign words. especially the horrid french ones.


image : Origins of English PieChart from wikipedia.

[Moejoe]

From the story 'Liseuse' which I'm now writing and will publish sometime before the weekend.


“It’s a paragraph, a line or stanza of a poem and it’s your youth, the first time you tasted love on your lips. It’s that hot summer where you could do nothing but lay still and hope for breezes. It’s the winter when first you let your breath come out in frozen plumes of smoke. It’s the tombs of Ancient Egypt, the surface of the moon and the sewers of Paris. It’s not in the paper, young man, it’s here in the Liseuse I hold in my hand. And this Liseuse holds words and all the dreams of those who dared put those words down in other times. It’s the ideas reaching across history that cared not for paper and glue and old men turning to dust in the company of dust-ridden pages, but eyes and hearts. Always eyes and hearts.”

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

oh yes. absolutely. thank HEAVENS that english so far has managed to remain pure and untainted by any of those nasty foreign words. especially the horrid french ones.

I completely agree with Harry. And I'm not even English. And we already have plenty of french words I gladly use (in favor of the newfangled Dutch spelling of those words... cadeau vs kado comes to mind...)

But that word lisseaausue doesn't say anything. It's a nonsense word. And I'd probably not even pronounce it rightly. Book is so much easier. Who cares if it's electronic or not?

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I completely agree with Harry. And I'm not even English. And we already have plenty of french words I gladly use (in favor of the newfangled Dutch spelling of those words... cadeau vs kado comes to mind...)

But that word lisseaausue doesn't say anything. It's a nonsense word. And I'd probably not even pronounce it rightly. Book is so much easier. Who cares if it's electronic or not?

Because 'book' is wrong. I can listen to MP3's on my Liseuse, that is not the function of a book, nor will it ever be. Book does not describe, nor is it adequate or fun enough for something as news as the Liseuse. Liseuse is, as we call it in my neighbourhood, 'buzzin''.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

What audience?

Re-quoting myself "One writes to communicate with their audience, not to confuse them."

Whenever you write something for public consumption, you are writing to an audience. To write well and effectively, you have to identify who that audience is, and write in a manner that communicates to them-- else you either will not get your intended message across or you will turn your audience away. That is Writing 101.

An example coincidentally showed up on the front page of CNN.com this morning (after I had made the comments) where someone is claiming that President Obama's recent speech-- said to be at a grade level of 9.8-- was too difficult for much of the target audience (which says very sad things about the American public, but is doubtlessly trure.)

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

From the story 'Liseuse' which I'm now writing and will publish sometime before the weekend.


“It’s a paragraph, a line or stanza of a poem and it’s your youth, the first time you tasted love on your lips. It’s that hot summer where you could do nothing but lay still and hope for breezes. It’s the winter when first you let your breath come out in frozen plumes of smoke. It’s the tombs of Ancient Egypt, the surface of the moon and the sewers of Paris. It’s not in the paper, young man, it’s here in the Liseuse I hold in my hand. And this Liseuse holds words and all the dreams of those who dared put those words down in other times. It’s the ideas reaching across history that cared not for paper and glue and old men turning to dust in the company of dust-ridden pages, but eyes and hearts. Always eyes and hearts.”

lovely ! i can't wait to read the whole thing.

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I completely agree with Harry. And I'm not even English. And we already have plenty of french words I gladly use (in favor of the newfangled Dutch spelling of those words... cadeau vs kado comes to mind...)

But that word lisseaausue doesn't say anything. It's a nonsense word. And I'd probably not even pronounce it rightly. Book is so much easier. Who cares if it's electronic or not?

personally, i really don't care *what* you (or anyone) call it. i think it's a question of personal preference. that's why we also see some people saying "book", some people saying "ereader", some "reader", some "ebook"... well, more power to them, it's their choice. in french the word liseuse is quickly becoming the most common word for "dedicated electronic reading device", despite the fact that perhaps 2 or 3 years ago it was virtually unknown with that meaning. i've seen it used recently in Le Monde, for instance, to cite only one.

what i *do* find interesting (and frankly a bit disturbing) is the rather excessive antagonism and aggression displayed by the "anti-liseuse brigade" towards those who *do* like the word.

used on mobileread, people either *do* know what it means, or can easily figure it out, so that seems like rather a straw-man argument to me. and claiming that it's somehow wrong to use a french word in english... well, in light of the french words *already* commonly used in english (take a look at the list i linked to, or the graphic a few posts above), that seems pretty disingenuous.

as for the idea that there is already a "perfectly good" english word... well, that is an argument that seems a lot more sensible to me, but in fact, originally the reason some people decided to use liseuse was because it is an easy way to clearly differentiate between the device and the file, which in many cases is *not* clear from the currently used english words (when i say "ebook" i mean the file ; some people mean the device. "ereader" as jswolf will invariably point out is actually the name of an ebook format, making it even more potentially confusing. "device" could be *any* device... etc.).

in the end though, i really don't see why anyone should object so strenuously to other people's choice of language. it really shouldn't matter to them ; after all, no-one is forcing anyone else to use a word they dislike, whereas some people seem to want to force others *not* to use a word they like. it seems a bit xenophobic sometimes, frankly.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Because 'book' is wrong. I can listen to MP3's on my Liseuse, that is not the function of a book, nor will it ever be. Book does not describe, nor is it adequate or fun enough for something as news as the Liseuse. Liseuse is, as we call it in my neighbourhood, 'buzzin''.

"I was reading a book, while listening to music."

Why give more information than required? Why should I care you listen to that music in the form of an MP3, on a dedicated book reading device, most likely using ear plugs?

Besides, if we really want to make electronic devices for reading more popular, even for the un-educated (in ereading, that is), the more common you make it sound, the better. Otherwise you'll only scare away those un-educated.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

in the end though, i really don't see why anyone should object so strenuously to other people's choice of language. it really shouldn't matter to them ; after all, no-one is forcing anyone else to use a word they dislike, whereas some people seem to want to force others *not* to use a word they like. it seems a bit xenophobic sometimes, frankly.

It's when people are simply assuming that something is normal, while it's not an accepted behaviour/word/action/whatever, I will start to rise.

For instance, when the word gets used in a news item thread title (as was the case a few months ago). These words need to grow, not forced.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Re-quoting myself "One writes to communicate with their audience, not to confuse them."

Whenever you write something for public consumption, you are writing to an audience. To write well and effectively, you have to identify who that audience is, and write in a manner that communicates to them-- else you either will not get your intended message across or you will turn your audience away. That is Writing 101.

Doesn't that rather depend on the purpose of the writing. In a political speech presumably what one is trying to do by the use of rhetorical devices is persuade someone of something. In a piece of fiction what one is trying to do is provide a framework for the reader to build a representation of the world one is trying to portray. Not all writing is about "getting messages across", some of it is far better than that. Some of the best writing actually seems to block the easy comprehension of what is written in order to achieve particular aesthetic or meaning effects - I guess James Joyce's Ulysses is a parade example of that.

What you describe may well be Writing 101, I don't know, but a lot of what I read does not have the literal transmission of information as its aim.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

oh yes. absolutely. thank HEAVENS that english so far has managed to remain pure and untainted by any of those nasty foreign words. especially the horrid french ones.

You only make yourself look silly by attacking straw men. Nobody is saying that there are no foreign words in the English language. Nobody is saying that there should be no foreign words in the English language. All that people are saying is that this particular foreign word is a stupid one, an inferior one to what already exists, an ugly sounding one, and has a whelk's chance in a supernova of catching on.

New word usage happens organically, naturally, virally, not by people begging, cajoling and campaigning for a word that almost nobody wants. That's the difference between coining a word and blooming it (my own neologism that won't catch on, based on past anti-ebook spammer Dan Bloom, who has, I see, moved on from trying to get newspapers and ebooks renamed to campaigning to get South Africa renamed "Mandelaland".)

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Re-quoting myself "One writes to communicate with their audience, not to confuse them."

Whenever you write something for public consumption, you are writing to an audience. To write well and effectively, you have to identify who that audience is, and write in a manner that communicates to them-- else you either will not get your intended message across or you will turn your audience away. That is Writing 101. An example coincidentally showed up on the front page of CNN.com this morning (after I had made the comments) where someone is claiming that President Obama's recent speech-- said to be at a grade level of 9.8-- was too difficult for much of the target audience (which says very sad things about the American public, but is doubtlessly trure.)

That is journalistic writing 101 and in this case it does not apply. Individual words take on meaning because we assign them meaning through usage, whether that usage is formally agreed or not. A simplistic sentence structure can remain just as simplistic (targeted to the widest possible level of comprehension) with the use of a single 'foreign' word within that structure.



The President is an illustrious philanderer with a penchant for reading upon his Liseuse.

The President is a well-known cheat who likes reading on his Liseuse.



Liseuse is not the problem word when it comes to comprehension, as long as usage assigns the word Liseuse as a description for the device. Liseuse could become as common as Hoover in descriptive terms. It is those words that can be simplified which you may change or omit to widen comprehension and to target audiences.

The word Liseuse is not the problem in terms of comprehension. Whether it becomes widely used is up to whether it catches on and is used. For or against (and I love it as a word) there's no way to foresee the outcome. And if I have to, in any way, slant what I write towards a theoretical mean of comprehension, then there is no point in writing anything at all. There is no way to grow within a language if you have to restrict yourself to being understood by all. That to me seems the most unnatural way to communicate. If we stop using words they cease to exist and be understood, but that shouldn't be forced because of weak literacy rates and terrible education systems.