Why aren't colons optional?

[Stefan Nobis]

Courageous <jkraska at san.rr.com> writes:

> >Maybe it's the other way round. Why did you make your observations about those
> >people you call "folks in an ivory tower"?
> 
> That information has already been communicated in the thread: it
> was to suggest a disconnect between the individuals in question,
> whoever they happen to be, and how language is actually used by
> the people. I certainly never _attacked_ their language capabilites.

But i say you really don't know very much (if anything) about what those
people really do and what they really say. I'm german and here in germany i
oberserve much the same -- many people say linguists don't know how others use
the language and they should shut up, but those people first don't quite
understand about what the linguists are talking and second most think that
what they learned in school is exactly what linguistic is about, but that's
wrong more often than not because most teacher are not very good and so they
give a very bad and quite wrong picture about linguistic.

And by the way talking about "folks in an ivory tower" is already an attack
because you imply that those people don't know much about what's going on
around them.

But this is off-topic here, so f'up2 poster.

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.