roachboy

first off, this is about writing rather than about all ways of using language.
it is curious that there's such distance between what is written and spoken. that distinction is largely about social power and it's reverse in exclusion.

i assume that there is an institution that "runs" portugese the way the acadamie francais "runs" french yes?--so changes in written portugese has far more to do with the composition of that institution and the prevailing ideology within it than it does with conditions in the world. one of the dimensions of that ideology would be the extent to which the population is understood as changing the language--this may or may not have to do with "decrased literacy" so much as the emergence of other rationalities, some of which might well link written to spoken language in a different way than was the case in the old days to total classification.

on a related note, it's probably more accurate to think of "correctness" as itself a style rather than as the measure relative to which styles operate. and given the choice between reading someone who writes correctly and reading someone who may not write correctly, but who has something to say, i'd take the latter.
if you have nothing to say, writing it correctly won't change that.

on the other hand, i like words, i like reading and trying to write things. i like the density of words, that they are never single, that they can be bent in various ways--within limits, which tend to follow from structure.

i also like trying to get words and sentences to do things they can't do--writing has trouble with motion, so i like to try to build a sense of movement into things. which could pitch me toward being more traditionally minded about the topic at hand--but i would prefer to have it both ways, really, and not to see in changes like this necessarily a loss of anything.

you might say "but poetry: where will it go?" and i'd think that it will change and that it is generally good that poetry change, like everything else does.

i think you should know the tradition, know the past, because they open up possibilities in the present--i'm less interested in them as antiques that you keep around on a shelf and take out to look at from time to time. i figure folk make the past static because they're afraid of how fleeting the present is. but it's fleeting regardless of what you think.

i value precision of thinking, but i am not at all sure that precision of thinking and correctness of writing necessarily have much to do with each other--but on the other hand, it's hard to be precise if you cannot be correct.
but i think that follows more from the fact that it's easier to push steps together if your writing is incorrect than it is if it is correct.
does that mean that correctness and clarity are the same?
if it is, then the reverse should be true: all sentences which are correct are precise.
but that'd be wrong.

i notice, as i am sure you do, that there are no caps here.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite