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Re: Wot not How.
Not sure about language being an organism Bazf but yes it is constantly changeing. You only have to look at the first ever English dictionary to see how the meanings of words have changed over the years. We have aquired new words too for things which didn't previously exist. We import words from other languages and export some of our own. Those of us who have lived long enough will even be aware of words which have come and gone in our own lifetime.
We have adopted a lot of US alternatives. Nobody listens to a "wireless" any more but lots of us have radios. Have any of us got a "trannie"?
When it comes to theose hyphenated words I find it difficult to recognise "cooperative" as being "co-operative" because the hyphen tells me that the "o"s are not both in the same syllable. A lot of Americanisms simplify the language such as "color" rather than "colour" but those words mimic the pronunciation whereas "cooperative" doesn't.
To get back to the point - there's nothing wrong with languages evolving but when it leads to the meaning being ambiguous then we need to think twice about whether what we are saying is actually what we mean. Earlier today I had to re-read a very informative post several times before I fully understood what was being said.
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