Sir, - Mr B.J. Cullinane of New Zealand (May 11th) was shocked to find the word "it's" used incorrectly in the explanatory material accompanying his millennium medal. If he lived in Ireland he would long since have become inured to publicly displayed - and sometimes startling - spelling errors, and to the daily misuse of language in speech and print.
One of the most irritating aspects of the latter is the interchangeable use of words that sound alike: "bemused" for "amused", "simplistic" for "simple", "disinterested" for "uninterested" - not to mention the ever-present confusion of "infer" with "imply" and the use of "refute" to mean "deny".
Does it matter? Language is, after all, a developing organism. It imports and invents words and responds flexibly to the needs of speakers in their engagement with daily life. There is a continuous process of attrition that chips away at the meaning of some words and that can, over time, change that meaning. But the careless, incorrect use of existing, long-established words impoverishes the language and reduces the effectiveness of communication between people. Words do not mean what we may, from time to time, wish them to mean; their value lies in their specificity. If they are used incorrectly they lose that value and become worthless. To the extent that anything matters (other than having enough to eat and a roof over your head), I believe that preserving the integrity of the language does matter. - Yours, etc.,
Joyce Andrews, Goatstown Road, Dublin 14.