naivete

From: "Raymond Brown" <ray.brown@...>
> >Just because Uusisuom does not stink of rehashed Latin does not mean it
is a
> >'naive' language or somehow bad or inadequate as you seem to imply.
>
> I grant naive might imply inadequacy - tho not necessarily IMO - but since
> when has _naive_ meant _bad_?  IME in certain contexts it is regarded as a
> positive quality.
IME, when I hear 'naive' now, it's usually used to mean either 'gullible' or
'idealistic due to a lack of understanding how things work in the real
world', and almost entirely negative.  ["You're so naive" etc.]

But in certain contexts (such as old books, and foreign translations) it
seems to mean simply 'uninformed, untutored', with no positive or negative
connotation whatever: if someone said 'folk art' was 'naive art' I would
understand something like "this art (regardless of whatever value it has)
was developed outside of the historical framework of our art culture from
classical to modern art".  [Uusisuom certainly presents itself to me this
way.]

[Compare the human writeups at http://www.everything2.com/?node=naive with
the definition from Webster 1913.]

     *Muke!
--
http://www.southern.edu/~alrivera/