Do you really think this!? I admit to being extremely surprised to find anyone saying this.
If rubies were called diyermands it seems to me that people wouldn’t guess what it was when they heard it, they would simply guess that they had misheard ‘diamond’, especially since it would almost certainly be a context where that was plausible, most people would probably still have to have the word explained to them.
Furthermore, once we had the definition, we would be endlessly mixing them up, given that they come up in exactly the same context. Words are used many times, but only need to be learned once, so getting the former unambiguous is far more important.
The word ‘ruby’ exists primarily to distinguish them from things like diamonds, you can usually guess that they’re not cows from context. Replacing it with diyermand causes it to fail at its main purpose.
EDIT:
To give an example from my own field, in maths we have the terms ‘compact’ and ‘sequentially compact’ for types of topological space. The meanings are similar but not the same, you can find spaces satisfying one but not the other, but most ‘nice’ spaces have both or neither.
If your theory is correct, this situation is good, because it will allow people to form a plausible guess at what ‘compact’ means if they already know ‘sequentially compact’ (this is almost always they order a student meets them). Indeed, they do always form a plausible guess, and that guess is ‘the two terms mean the same thing’. This guess seems so plausible, they never question it and go off believing the wrong thing. In my case this lasted about 6 months before someone undeluded me, even when I learned the real definition of compactness, I assumed they were provably equivalent.
Had their names been totally different, I would have actually asked what it meant when I first heard it, and would never have had any misunderstandings, and several others I know would have avoided them as well. This seems unambiguously better.
Hm, that’s a good point, I’ve changed my opinion about this case.
When I wrote my comment, I was thinking primarily of words that share a common prefix or suffix, which tends to imply that they refer to things that share the same category but are not the same thing. “English” and “Spanish”, for example.
But yeah, “diyer” is too close to “die” to be easily distinguishable. Maybe “rubemond”?
But yeah, “diyer” is too close to “die” to be easily distinguishable. Maybe “rubemond”?
I could see the argument for that, provided we also had saphmonds, emmonds etc… Otherwise you run the risk of claiming a special connection that doesn’t exist.
Do you really think this!? I admit to being extremely surprised to find anyone saying this.
If rubies were called diyermands it seems to me that people wouldn’t guess what it was when they heard it, they would simply guess that they had misheard ‘diamond’, especially since it would almost certainly be a context where that was plausible, most people would probably still have to have the word explained to them.
Furthermore, once we had the definition, we would be endlessly mixing them up, given that they come up in exactly the same context. Words are used many times, but only need to be learned once, so getting the former unambiguous is far more important.
The word ‘ruby’ exists primarily to distinguish them from things like diamonds, you can usually guess that they’re not cows from context. Replacing it with diyermand causes it to fail at its main purpose.
EDIT:
To give an example from my own field, in maths we have the terms ‘compact’ and ‘sequentially compact’ for types of topological space. The meanings are similar but not the same, you can find spaces satisfying one but not the other, but most ‘nice’ spaces have both or neither.
If your theory is correct, this situation is good, because it will allow people to form a plausible guess at what ‘compact’ means if they already know ‘sequentially compact’ (this is almost always they order a student meets them). Indeed, they do always form a plausible guess, and that guess is ‘the two terms mean the same thing’. This guess seems so plausible, they never question it and go off believing the wrong thing. In my case this lasted about 6 months before someone undeluded me, even when I learned the real definition of compactness, I assumed they were provably equivalent.
Had their names been totally different, I would have actually asked what it meant when I first heard it, and would never have had any misunderstandings, and several others I know would have avoided them as well. This seems unambiguously better.
Hm, that’s a good point, I’ve changed my opinion about this case.
When I wrote my comment, I was thinking primarily of words that share a common prefix or suffix, which tends to imply that they refer to things that share the same category but are not the same thing. “English” and “Spanish”, for example.
But yeah, “diyer” is too close to “die” to be easily distinguishable. Maybe “rubemond”?
I could see the argument for that, provided we also had saphmonds, emmonds etc… Otherwise you run the risk of claiming a special connection that doesn’t exist.
We would also need to find a different word for almonds.