Bang on Ron

If the question had been "Do none of you understand the difference between "traditional singer" on the one hand and "traditional song-singer" on the other?" the debate wojuld be more germaine, because the word Traditional does have a narrower definition these days than Folk - not least because that definitin is in part at least defined in law (in matters of copyright anyway).

'Traditional singer' is usually understood to mean someone from before the revivial - i.e. living and singing within the 'oral' tradition, before recordings and mass media priniting became commonplace (while remembering that the oral tradition is itself misnamed because there was actually a huge amount of writing down, publishing, semi-pro performance and composition by educated/professional writers etc). The word traditional here is being used to describe the singer and his artistic ecosystem, not the songs he sings.

'Traditional song singer' would include the above, but also anyone post revival who sings a traditional song - including me.

'Traditional song' is also quite well defined, though again there are two sometimes conflicting meanings. One means 'old, out of copyright, anon, in public ownership and at least partly reformed by mainly oral transmission,' the other means 'associated with a traditional activity but not necessarily any of the above' (e.g. Three Lions).

All this is bad enough. It's hardly surprising that people get confused, as is their perogative - it's their language after all. If we want to tidy this up, we really need to find more words to make the above less open to misunderstading.

Meanwhile, 'Folk' - which could have been substituted for the T word up until the 60s - has moved on. This is all Bob Dylan's fault, but he's ok about it now.

I do think Richard has a point here though: If "folk" is to have meaning that meaning must be consistent across the concepts of "folk song" "folk music" "folk tale" "folk lore" and "folk dance". I hadn't really thought about that. Certainly the other uses have not been eroded in the way folk song, folk music and folk singer have been. I'd like to agree that the meaning should be consistent - that would be good all round, but actually it's not consistent, and all we can do about it is notice, and complain if we don't like it.

There is a very very slim possibility that if enough people write to the Guardian about this, the F and T words might slowly move closer together again over time - if enough people campaign for it, but the reality is that words mean what the person you're talking to wants them to mean, not what you yourself think. Your task as the writer or speaker, if you don't want to be misunderstood, is to choose language that won't be misinterpreted by your listener.

It's unfortunate in some ways that folk has lost it's original meaning, because its value is a 'finger pointing back through history' has largely been lost. But the word still has A meaning, and we still have Trad - for a while yet anyway, and as long as people notice the difference and use both words carefully we can still tell people what's in the tin when we need to.