Verbs = what things DO, not what they're named.Languages have too many nouns, too few verbs. So why do style guides say cut back on adverbs?
ET is, of course, a god, but...
a god, it would seem, unfamiliar with the fabulous verbs of Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Turkish, Russian and Hungarian. (I don't suggest that this is a comprehensive list.) ET! ET! ET! What words have passed the barrier of your, erm, fingers?
Also, I take exception to the claim that a language can have too many nouns. Czech, I think (but memory may deceive) has a word for the space under a bed. This is a Rachel Whiteread of a noun; we could, in fact, do with more.
3 comments:
Bizarrely, I have been blocked from his Twitter account. WHAT THE HELL? I barely even tweet. I need to invent a new noun for the place in the universe into which one is hurled after learning that one has been blocked by Edward Tufte. Christ. What could I have done?????
Now I will probably find I have joined you there.
I suppose it's POSSIBLE that someone hacked into your Twitter account and used it to troll Edward Tufte, but it seems wildly improbable.
Mind you, Twitter has a way of making one say What have I DONE? A perfectly innocuous retweet goes out in the world, and the number of followers promptly goes down. Why? Are these people who turn to Twitter for flame wars? Who rashly followed @helendewitt only to discover how drearily blameless it is? No doubt people grow disenchanted with a blog, too, but the blogger is not alerted to deserters every time s/he ventures on a post.
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