My Thawtz

  So You Think You Understand Language By Jon N. Hall   The mathematician John von Neumann once said: “Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.” The same sort of thing might also be said about language -- you don't understand language, you just get used to it.   But with language, it may be even more the case than with mathematics. That’s because folks often have to invert the true meanings of words in order to grasp what they’re hearing, i.e. what’s intended. When one thinks about it for a bit, language itself can seem rather mystifying -- better to just use it, right?   Not if one is trying to be exact. It is for the sake of exactness and precision that we create “usage rules.” But we Anglophones need better usage rules for some of the most common words in English: conjunctions. Conjunctions can create ambiguity , and in some arenas of contemporary life, like law, ambiguity can’t be tolerated. Sad to say, but we Anglophon