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Examples:

  • Database
  • Performant
  • Hyperlink

Are these correct usages of English, or not, and why?

RegDwigнt
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Camilo Martin
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    It seems you used some jargon yourself, namely correct English. As with all jargon, before we can answer a question about it, we need its precise definition. – GEdgar Feb 03 '12 at 01:12
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    @GEdgar Oh, good question, I don't know what "correct English" means either. Parliament and ROTFLMAO are English I can correctly understand. So let's say I mean "English that should not have a red squiggly under it". – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 01:18
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    @CamiloMartin Turn off the red squiggly thing; it's even dumber than you suspected. It just looks in a database and doesn't see something. You can put it in the database if you wanted to do Microsoft's work for them, but it really isn't worth the effort. BTW, there's nothing wrong with these words; it's just that Microsoft is run by and for Americans, who will believe anything and are very nervous about language because they're never taught about it. – John Lawler Feb 03 '12 at 01:25
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    @JohnLawler They're taught English in the schools for several years, but that further proves schools don't teach anything at all. Mind you, I've learnt english by playing videogames, and reading an old paper dictionary, before having internet. If I've learnt anything at a school I really can't remember :) Thanks for your comment, you have an awesome attitude. – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 01:44

3 Answers3

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"Database" and "hyperlink" are proper in English; "performant" is not.

Those two "proper" words were invented to fulfill a lexical gap for a new technology; by counting these as improper English, things like "computer" would also become improper English; there is no other way to say "computer," "database," or "hyperlink" that is more commonplace.

However, if a non-standard word like "performant" overtakes a standard word like "capable," "agile," or "efficient" in general usage, then it can be considered proper English.

Tortoise
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  • Well, Oracle uses it. They could have used another word but they used that one. "Performance" had a different meaning before machines had to "perform" well, so I feel it fills a lexical gap for a new technology. – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 01:29
  • @CamiloMartin Wiktionary's example for "performant" is: "The software is ten percent more performant than its predecessor." Replace "performant" with "capable," "agile," or "efficient," and the sentence still has a similar meaning; "database" and "hyperlink" have no meaningful, more common alternative that I can think of. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 01:32
  • I see, so the point is that if there isn't another word to use, the jargon is proper English? Now, what about the fact that many people use the word, doesn't that make it proper too? Since we have a lot of synonyms, and they had to be introduced some day, so they became English due to sheer use. – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 01:38
  • @CamiloMartin Many people do use "performant," but not enough for it to become a universally-accepted word. Many, many more people use "database" or "hyperlink" than "performant." In fact, until reading this question, I had never actually known of "performant." If you feel like the audience that you are writing for would be inclined to have used "performant" in the past, then it could be used just as well as any other word; in general, however, the word is jargon and is limited to a small group that is familiar with it. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 01:56
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    ‘Peformant’ sounds like something silly invented by some marketing department. I wouldn’t take it seriously. – tchrist Feb 03 '12 at 02:11
  • @tchrist I saw it used, so I really never looked at it like a marketing term, but it's good to know others feel that. I generally shudder when I hear "the cloud", "Agile development", etc., but I've never felt so with "performant". I'll avoid using it, from now on. – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 02:42
  • It is however a word in French and Romanian, so I suspect one link in Wiktionary sources (by Bilciu) has an incorrect translation . See also what is wrong with the word performant – Bogdan Lataianu Feb 03 '12 at 03:13
  • @CamiloMartin "The Cloud" is one that started out being a pretty awesome concept, and not really jargon-y in my opinion. Then Microsoft came in and...well...it wasn't pretty. Microsoft keeps trying to bill it as some product, or something else tangible - I see commercials like "Microsoft Office - now with THE CLOUD!" It makes me sick. I digress. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 03:45
  • I am a self-confessed IT geek and native speaker of English. I understand the word "performant", and use it myself occasionally. Who gave Tortoise the right to tell me I'm not speaking English? When did "more common than 'capable'" become the criterion for standardness? And if a word is only "standard" if it's more common than other standard words, where does that leave whatever the least common "standard" word is? –  Feb 03 '12 at 06:10
  • @Tortoise "The Cloud" IMHO means "Let's go Mainframe Again(tm)". I wouldn't blame MS, every company out there says Cloud This, Cloud That, it's the new Dot Com bubble. Managers hook up to the word because it makes them feel everything will be safe and simple. It's just like calling a .NET feature "It Just Works". So all of it allows the manager to say "Do Agile Programming and use the It Just Works feature and make it Cloud and the site should be Web 2.0 and as AJAXy as possible!". – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 06:27
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    @DavidWallace Good to hear that, I feel the same way. Altough I'll reserve the word for trivial and informal use, e.g. commit messages like "Now the system is more performant on Linux", I don't want to sound like a brochure to anyone. – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 06:31
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    The OED records ‘performant’ as ‘A person who performs a duty, ceremony, etc., a performer’. It is shown as being ‘rare’, but there are three supporting citations, the earliest being from Coleridge in 1809. – Barrie England Feb 03 '12 at 08:22
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    @BarrieEngland In my opinion, that usage seems archaic. It still sounds marketing-ish, and I would refrain from using it anyway, even if it is accepted by the OED. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 22:33
  • @DavidWallace I'm not telling you you're not speaking English. The term "performant" is perfectly valid English, but I still wouldn't use it in general situations, because it's something that the average English speaker couldn't be reasonably expected to understand, in my opinion. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 22:35
  • @CamiloMartin What with "the Cloud," it started out as an actual thing: storing data on servers elsewhere and accessing it through web-based frameworks. This grew into something relatively undefined, which is what I would expect it to do, just as "the Internet." My problem in particular with what Microsoft is doing with it is that they are billing it as a tangible product: "We will sell you the CLOUD! Buy Office 2010 today!" Then, you buy Office 2010 and there's no button in your face that says "CLICK HERE FOR CLOUD," because the Cloud isn't a real thing. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 22:39
  • (continued) I'm not against Microsoft here - I like Microsoft in general, and believe that Apple is the devil. It's just that that particular marketing tactic makes me quite angry. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 22:39
  • @Tortoise Don't forget Azure's marketing. I also think Apple is the devil, but mostly because they put users above developers, which is kinda the opposite of what Microsoft does... not that they don't have good taste, but their tooling for developers is really below the rest of their products. Now, "The Cloud" really could never sound professional to me. Reduntant storage is what it is, and some file hosts are putting cloudy thingies all over their webpages (see MediaFire) just to make it sound special. "The cloud" just sound like marketing for toddlers. "who's the server? papa is the server!" – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 23:28
  • @CamiloMartin - really? How is "the cloud" in 2012 any different from how "the web" sounded in 1994, when it was shiny and new? –  Feb 03 '12 at 23:48
  • @CamiloMartin Originally, the idea with the Cloud was not redundant storage, which became part of the Cloud because of evil marketers. The Cloud started out being limited exclusively to web-based services, like Google Docs, in which an online GUI serves as an interface to do useful things with the data; this concept is where it started before it morphed into a blob of all things Internet. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 23:50
  • @DavidWallace I would say that it is different because the cloud isn't actually a thing. – Tortoise Feb 03 '12 at 23:51
  • @Tortoise - it's no less a "thing" than the web. –  Feb 04 '12 at 00:15
  • @DavidWallace Well, then, give me a definition of "the cloud" that is valid for use of the term in all corporations that use it. I will for "the web": a hypertext-based form of data transfer used on the Internet, powered by an amorphous network of servers and readily accessible by computer users using common Web browser software and typical Internet connections. – Tortoise Feb 04 '12 at 00:41
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    @DavidWallace "The Web" is indeed the first term that encapsuled a number of technologies including but not limited to the hypertext internet. "The Cloud" is more like "There's a server in an abstract fluffy place doing the gimmick automagically, look, a progressbar". – Camilo Martin Feb 04 '12 at 01:05
  • @CamiloMartin My issue with Apple is the fact that they charge ridiculous amounts for clearly inferior products: a $300 Android phone will have much better hardware than a $300 iPhone. All of their money comes from people who have had the formerly-true belief that Apple is the most wonderful thing in the world passed down to them, and if they were informed of the facts about Apple products, they would run screaming from all of them. However, Microsoft did do three things that really cook my chicken: Windows Vista, Internet Explorer, and "Office 2010 - Now with THE CLOUD!" – Tortoise Feb 04 '12 at 01:05
  • @CamiloMartin Thinking back, I now realize that I was wrong about the cloud - it started out being synonymous with "the Internet," and then was restricted to the Web. Meanwhile, "Web 2.0" surfaced, referring to the creation of websites relying heavily upon user-generated content. As part of Web 2.0, "cloud computing" was soon invented, and it was very strictly defined as the use by individuals of online utilities to usefully manipulate data stored on a server. "Cloud computing" recently became a large part of the Web, and was thus merged to be the main use of the term "the cloud." – Tortoise Feb 04 '12 at 01:10
  • That still doesn't help with Microsoft, though. :) – Tortoise Feb 04 '12 at 01:10
  • @Tortoise I don't want to be the devil's lawyer, Vista was ME 2.0, but the concept was actually valid: in the beginning they were planning to make it a fully new, .NET only architecture, and when they noticed they'd have to re-write all the .NET code in C++ it was too late and they had to push the unfinished crap to the end users (it would have been a wonderful world if .NET was ready to me the basis of Explorer, office, etc). Internet explorer... I hate it from the bottom of my heart, especially IE6. Now I've read your last comment, so indeed, the cloud was a bizarre term it felt like so. – Camilo Martin Feb 04 '12 at 01:19
  • @Tortoise - since you DEMANDED a definition of "cloud", I'd say it's the combination of hardware and software that work together to enable people and organisations to store data and access it using the internet. You may have a different definition in mind; that's OK. I think it would be as difficult to find a definition that everyone agrees with today, as it would have been 18 years ago to find a definition of "web" that everyone agrees with; and that was my point. Re your definition of "web"; I don't know where you found it, but I seriously disagree with it. Which kind of proves my point. –  Feb 04 '12 at 01:36
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'Proper English' is a hopelessly inadequate term for any description of the language. English exists in many varieties, and all have equal linguistic validity. The dialect most widely understood, and the one that non-native speakers learn is called Standard English, but it is spoken only by a minority.

Jargon describes the vocabulary used in a specialized field. It is very useful for those working in particular areas because it means they can economize in their use of language. A linguist, for example, can with advantage use the word cataphora when speaking to another linguist because it’s shorter than saying ‘a feature of grammatical structure that refers forward to another unit’. Used outside a specialized field, however, jargon will normally hinder rather than aid communication.

That said, some words that begin life in specialized use can become part of the wider language and, given the prevalence of technology, both database and hyperlink may now be two such words. On the other hand, performant probably still belongs to the jargon of computing.

Barrie England
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  • Thanks for your valuable input. So, it can be said that database and hyperlink are now Standard English, since the general population understand these words? – Camilo Martin Feb 03 '12 at 12:37
  • @CamiloMartin: I would say that they'd always been Standard English, but that originally (and perhaps only briefly) their use was limited to the Standard English of those who understood what they meant. Standard English can be used in different registers and there is a computing register just as there are, for example, fiction, news reporting and academic registers. – Barrie England Feb 03 '12 at 13:12
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Yes 'jargon' is a proper English term. Words that can be classified as jargon could also be proper English words and phrases, in such cases they would be "English jargon". The commonest meaning of jargon is the vocabulary used by people belonging to a particular profession. A layman, hardly can make out words belonging to such jargon unless he/she has an interest in the field.

Ex; A computer jargon would involve such words as Monitor, Keyboard, Microprocessor, Hard disk drive, LED, LCD etc

A medical jargon would involve words like, hepatitis, cardiac arrest, anemia, conjunctivitis etc

Like wise a software/internet jargon will have such words as database, hyperlink, performant etc.

Ramkryp
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