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From: Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Virginia Woolf died (28-3-1941)
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:49:06 -0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <slrnv0dl72.8vg.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de>
References: <uu62dd$79nh$2@dont-email.me>
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On 2024-03-29, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> "In the old days, when English was a new language, writers could invent 
> new words and use them. Nowadays it is easy enough to invent new 
> words...but we cannot use them because the language is old. You cannot 
> use a brand new word in an old language because of the very obvious yet 
> mysterious fact that a word is not a single and separate entity, but 
> part of other words. It is not a word indeed until it is part of a 
> sentence."
>
> Can anyone make sense of this for me?
> Who are the "we" and the "you" in that passage?

The "we" refers to today's writers, the "you" is impersonal (German
"man").

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de