[NLRS] Rover semantics....

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson, electrical engineer]

Actually many words enter the language yearly naming new products and
new companies carefully chosen to NOT be in the dictionary. A few years
ago auto makers set up a computer program to synthesize pronounceable
words that were not in the dictionary to use for names of cars. Saves
them all kinds of copyright problems and if they are careful such a
selection can prevent them naming a car something that's not nice in
some other language of a country where they'd like to sell cars. Their
record in other countries has not always been perfect.

My 1967 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (big enough to be useful,
small enough to not need its own table) says to rove is a verb, to move
about aimlessly, to roam. or rove is a noun an act or instance of
wandering. Then there's applications to textiles and ropes. This
dictionary gives no special declension for the verbs hence they must
follow common verb English language declension, thus a rover roves as a
roamer roams, and so it would seem to me that roving corresponds to
roaming as a wanderer wanders and that rovering corresponds to
wandering. That's no help! This logic accepts both roving and rovering.
This dictionary defines roving as a strand of slightly twisted fibers,
does not define rovering.

This language we call American English is anything but static, anything
but defined by a dictionary. The dictionaries only attempt to report the
language as found in general use at the time the dictionary was
prepared. The language as it is spoken on the streets and in homes
varies as much as the ancestry and schooling of the person speaking. Its
best when those hearing understand the language, but that's not always a
perfect occurrence.

So it matters little whether the rover speaks of roving or rovering, so
long as those listening (or reading) readily understand that the speaker
means the act of wandering about (my dictionary says "aimlessly") for
the purpose of making contacts from multiple grids, the use is
appropriate. Words and their meanings enter the dictionary by use, not
by officious definition that a new word shall be defined...

That officious definition and cleansing of the language is a French
tradition. Technical French reads almost like English because the
technical writers have adopted so many English technical words, yet the
French spoken on the street in some regions probably is not understood
by the American scholar of the French language. I know that's true of
German as spoken (and written in DUBUS and UKW Berichte) outside
academia.

And there's influence of immigrants. The variations go on and on and the
language of the people, no matter where in the world, will continue to
evolve to describe new things and new activities and new perceptions.
Not all change enhances the language, sometimes change that becomes
generally accepted dumbs down the language, but change will ever be.

A century or two ago, most speakers of languages did not read, write, or
spell. So when a clerk (who could read, write, and spell some) wrote
down a name, that clerk wrote it as he thought it should be, and never
asked the person for a correct spelling. And what that clerk thought was
right depended on his upbringing. So the name Johnson has been spelled
Janssen, Johnsen, Johnston, Jonsson, and many other variations, all for
the same person or the same family. The written language also has the
same variations for common words because the writer may have come from
Ireland, Scotland, England, Normandy, Germany, France, Italy, Russia,
Greece, or any of 100 other countries each with dozens of local
dialects. As immigration continues, as writers create, as poets create,
as advertising writers create, and as TV news reporters murderlize the
language, the language as it is used will continuously change.

73, Jerry, K0CQ
-- 
Entire content copyright Dr. Gerald N. Johnson. Reproduction by
permission only.