Date   : Sun, 05 Feb 2006 20:43:30 -0000
From   : "Colin" <cwhill@...>
Subject: Re: Grammar

Oh, before anyone goes and looks it up......

menu
1837, from Fr. menu de repas "list of what is served at a meal," from M.Fr.
menu (adj.) "small, detailed," from L. minutus "small," lit. "made smaller,"
pp. of minuere "to diminish," from PIE base *mei- "small." Computer usage is
from 1971, from expanded sense of "any detailed list," first attested 1889.


Colin Hill

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pete Turnbull" <pete@...>
To: "BBC Micro Submit To List" <bbc-micro@...>
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] Grammar


> On Feb 5 2006, 16:25, Colin wrote:
>
> > Usage determines which words become part of the language.
>
> Agreed.  Language and usage change over time.
>
> > Programme is used because that is the spelling that the English
> adopted as
> > the correct spelling for that particular word.
> > To adopt an American spelling (for whatever reason) follows that
> method of
> > incorporation into the language. Programme and program are two
> variants of
> > the same word and their meaning should the same. To say that one
> means one
> > thing and the other something different although similar is really
> incorrect
> > unless we accept that "foreign" words are acceptable but only if
> their
> > meaning is different from the one we are presently using. That's
> confusing
> > the language, not strengthening it.
>
> Here is where we differ, I think.  And I certainly wouldn't rely on any
> ordinary dictionary for the correct meaning or usage of technical
> terms.  I can point to several entries in the OED for example, where
> the dictionary entry is incorrect from a technical or scientific point
> of view.  My pet gripe concerns "stress" and "strain" which the OED
> insists both mean a force.  This is true in common usage, but is quite
> wrong from a physicist's point of view; to him a stress is a force but
> strain is a measure of length (elongation, normally).
>
> I was taught, consistently, through the 1960s and 1970s when I was
> learning about these things, that the common English word is programme,
> for a theatre or football programme, a television programme, or w.h.y.,
> but the technical term for instructions for a computer is a program.  I
> have in front of me my first two programming textbooks, written in the
> UK by British authors (one by Donald Michie, a stickler for
> correctness,
> and the other by Corlett and Tinsley from Oxford, but ironically
> published by Cambridge University Press) and both explain that the list
> of instructions to the computer is "a program".  Documents recording
> the
> earliest computers at the University of York also refer to "programs".
> So do various textbooks in the classic UK School Mathematical Projects
> Handbook series from the 1960s.
>
> The introduction by Corlett and Tinsley begins,
>
>     "The computer is a very new member of the family of
>     calculating devices, but its development has been extremely
>     rapid.  The abacus, logarithmic tables, slide rule and desk
>     calculating machine all depend on the human operator for their
>     manipulation.  The computer, however, is a calculating device
>     which can be made to follow a sequence of instructions
>     automatically, and at great speed.  This sequence of
>     instructions is called a program (using the American spelling)
>     and once the program has been prepared, it may be used either
>     for a single calculation or for a series of similar
>     calculations on different data."
>
> Donald Alcock's well-known "Illustrating BASIC", written in Reigate in
> 1976, begins, "To make a computer do a calculation ~ however simple ~
> you must first describe every step of that calculation in a LANGUAGE
> the computer can understand: this description is called a PROGRAM.
>  This book presents a popular and widely available language called
> BASIC and explains how to write simple programs in it."
>
> Of course, in case anyone thinks this settles the argument once and for
> all, it's only fair that I point out that early British computer
> developers such as Williams, Kilburn, Newman, and Turing, all wrote
> "programme", at least until the 1950s, which is when the American
> spelling seems to have become the norm.  I believe that the American
> spelling has been the accepted-correct one in the five decades since.
>
>
> -- 
> Pete Peter Turnbull
> Network Manager
> University of York
>
>
>