If the English language is dying, it is due to people having no way to express their thoughts beyond crude versions of the same word since they lack the vocabulary to do anything else. Mathematics teaches you to think, but vocabulary allows you to express it in all the shades of meaning needed. We aren't teaching either one in school.
The concept of shades of meaning seems to be disappearing from the English language. As proof, I respectfully submit the lowly Roget's Thesaurus.
I hope y'all know what a thesaurus is -- that's the book you pick up when you sort of know what you want to say, but you think there's a better word and you can't quite think of it. The thesaurus was invented by Peter Mark Roget in 1805. The genius of Roget's original thesaurus was that it goes far beyond being just a dictionary of synonyms. A true Roget's thesaurus is divided into two parts. In the back of the book there's an alphabetical index of words. You find the word you know there. After the word, there will be one or more numbers, which refer to general classes of meaning for the word.
You then choose the number corresponding to the general meaning you want, and look up that number in the front part of the book. That's where you find a rather complete list of not just synonyms, but also words and phrases that mean the same thing as the word you originally looked up.
For example, just in my small, paperback edition if I look up "spurn" I find
reject 610, and also
disdain 866, 930. I would then look under section 610, 866, and 930 to find the best substitute for the word "spurn."
The problem is that "Roget's" is a licensed trade name in the UK, but not in the United States. That's not a good thing, because it seems just about everybody is selling dictionaries of synonyms and calling them "Roget's Thesaurus." And they aren't. If a thesarus doesn't use the two-part format, it certainly shouldn't be called a "Roget's" thesaurus, and IMHO should not even be called a thesaurus. Call it what it is -- a dictionary of synonyms.
It's gotten so bad that even Barnes & Noble doesn't carry "real" Roget's Thesauri. I guess you can special order it. but all they have on the shelves in the Reference section of the store near me is about a dozen different dictionaries of synonyms masquerading as thesauri. When I asked a staff person about a "real" thesaurus, she had no idea what I was talking about.
At the moment, I have seven "real" Roget's thesauri in the reference book shelf on my desk (along with three English dictionaries, one dictionary of synonyms, a couple of French-English dictionaries, several Spanish-English dictionaries, a German-English dictionary, a Russian-English dictionary, and a Portuguese-English dictionary.
Yeah -- I like words.
