Timeline for What does "a literate language" mean?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 7 at 5:47 | comment | added | No Name | The English dictionaries - and yes, that is the plural - are not authorities from on high that tell us how our language "should be", and never have been. Instead, they are ever-ongoing research projects that tell us how English is used, and certain technical meanings simply aren't common enough outside of their context to warrant inclusion. I'm sure if you looked it up in the appropriate technical dictionary you'd find this meaning of "literate", but we don't need to, because we can do our own research, as FumbleFingers did | |
| Apr 3, 2023 at 10:22 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I studied English language & literature to degree level, but it's quite possible I never encountered the collocation literate language before this question. I didn't look it up in a dictionary, though - I just "reasoned" the likely meaning from context (plus my prior knowledge of words like literature, literacy, letters,...). Then after posting my first comment, I checked Google Books for the collocation itself, which confirmed my assumptions about the meaning. Sometime after that, I realized that the far more common form preliterate language is crucially relevant. | |
| Apr 2, 2023 at 23:31 | comment | added | Static Bounce | @Fumble Fingers: How do native speakers improve their English? I'm Polish and I would imagine the dictionary would be my go-to if I wanted to level up. Why is it different from English? | |
| Apr 2, 2023 at 17:58 | vote | accept | Static Bounce | ||
| Mar 31, 2023 at 22:54 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | English is defined by usage, not by dictionaries! There are at least a dozen instances of the usage in my previous link, all from obviously scholarly / erudite writers. The "definition" they're working to is quite obviously as I said above, even though it's not necessarily common enough to justify its own dictionary entry (and native Anglophones don't learn English from dictionaries anyway! :). But if you're still not convinced, search in Google Books for usages of the sequence preliterate language (from which we trivially derive literate language). | |
| Mar 31, 2023 at 18:50 | comment | added | Static Bounce | @FumbleFingers: I can't find any definition for "literate" with the meaning "written or read". I know what the phrase means as the collocation of these two words based on my and the people's in this thread interpretation of the context. But what is the closest sense of the word "literate" in this sense? Can you provide a definition? | |
| Mar 31, 2023 at 16:43 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Check out instances of the sequence of literate languages in Google Books to see how the collocation is used. It's somewhat different to, say, He is a literate Anglophone. | |
| Mar 31, 2023 at 16:39 | history | edited | Laurel♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 20 characters in body; edited title
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| Mar 31, 2023 at 16:39 | answer | added | James K | timeline score: 4 | |
| Mar 31, 2023 at 16:37 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | In context, I'm sure "a literate language" simply means a language with an established written form. It needn't necessarily imply a language in which literature can be written, though that would often be the case. | |
| Mar 31, 2023 at 16:31 | history | asked | Static Bounce | CC BY-SA 4.0 |