Moot vs Mute

[mrerick]

A mute trumpet sounding retreat after loss of a battle is moot testament to the valor of the fallen.

The curious carpenter picked up his hammer and saw!

When I moved to the South, I always wondered what was meant by, "I'll get up with you later"...

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The multiple meaning of same or similar sounding words has always kept language "living" as people either play with the words, or unintentionally confuse them. English is full of examples over time. So are other languages like German, which evolved into old English. (corrected per below)

Words like "irregardless" have made their way into language in my area, including a cafe by that name.

Language is living. My state (ranging from coastal Gullah communities to the Scotch-Irish roots of the mountain folk, has a huge range of accents and language usage.

I try to use language correctly, but am sometimes amused by what I hear from time to time...

When I was helping produce television, we had a program on regional accents in our state. The production process includes closed captioning for hearing impaired, which is done by hand by people with court reporting skills. The caption files for this program didn't come back on schedule, and the caption encoder finally called us and asked us never to send a program like this one to him again... We finally got the files, but it was difficult.

The correct interpretation of similar sounding words is a real challenge in automated voice recognition. Much of the artificial intelligence used in modern systems chews up processing power on this problem.

[Doubs]

Originally Posted by mrerick

So are other languages like German, which is based in old English.

Quite the opposite; English evolved from German.

"English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. ... The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant."

Only one King in Britain is called "Great" and that was King Alfred the Great who likely kept the English language from extinction. He insisted that court affairs and education be conducted in English rather than Latin.