When I first encountered Financial Accounting, it started off with the simple explanation that it would use words we already fairly understood and would distort them for its own means and requirements. The word “asset” for example would be turned from its kind of adjectival status in common language, as the describer of a valuable or useful quality, to a valuable quality. This is hardly a revolutionizing idea, but as we delve deeper and deeper into Accounting, we come to the scary realization that “asset” is not the first word to be hijacked. Credit, debit, stock, share; each word evolves a new and sometimes paradoxical meaning that is useful in the realm of accounting, if now where else, and I begin to wonder, is Accounting its own language?
The answer is an obvious yes. Every skill or field has its own language. Mathematicians, and they’re associated relatives in the field, use a symbolic language to express what the common word cannot. What I find confusing is whether or not Accounting needs such deeply segregated language? Surely some buzzwords and jargon are necessary to each field, but you dont see fields like Psychology reform the language to shape their needs; they usually just create new, fancier words. Perhaps the point is in and of itself moot, but I am not yet convinced that Accounting’s hijacking of rather innocent terms is altogether justified. At least not this early into it.