cctimar@watrose.UUCP (Cary Timar) (10/22/86)
In article <8209@watrose.UUCP> rgdutton@watrose.UUCP (Rob Dutton) writes: >I hear that in Iceland the government has some committee set up to >monitor the day-to-day use/development of their language, to ensure >that it doesn't change in any undesirable way. Actually most major languages (except English) have such committees. I do know they exist for French and Hebrew, and I believe that such committees were responsible for spelling improvements in German, Spanish and Hungarian in the 19th century. A text I once used mentioned a tribe whose language had to change rapidly because of taboos. This tribe had a council of elderly women whose function was to decide the new vocabulary as necessary. This institution might have been ancient. At any rate, this leaves English as the (only?) major language which evolves freely as the need arises, rather than being restricted by arbitrary rulings of a governing body. -- -- Cary Timar
michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (10/23/86)
In article <8212@watrose.UUCP> cctimar@watrose.UUCP (Cary Timar) writes: >A text I once used mentioned a tribe whose language had to change >rapidly because of taboos. This tribe had a council of elderly women >whose function was to decide the new vocabulary as necessary. I wish I could remember the reference, but in time-honored usnet tradition I'll just comment out of ignorance. I believe the situation was that people's names were taken from objects in nature (animals, etc.). When someone died, their name became taboo (to avoid angering their spirit, I suppose). But since you needed a word to refer to the thing that person had been named after, someone had to make up a new word for that object. It would be interesting to know how long people remembered that a word was taboo, i.e. whether in the long run the old word or the new one was remembered... It would certainly make a mess of glottochronology! Anyone remember where the tribe was? Australia?? -- Mike Maxwell Boeing Advanced Technology Center ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm
othar@zeus.cs.ucla.edu (Othar Hansson) (10/24/86)
In article <8212@watrose.UUCP> cctimar@watrose.UUCP (Cary Timar) writes: >In article <8209@watrose.UUCP> rgdutton@watrose.UUCP (Rob Dutton) writes: >>I hear that in Iceland the government has some committee set up to >>monitor the day-to-day use/development of their language, to ensure >>that it doesn't change in any undesirable way. > >Actually most major languages (except English) have such committees. >I do know they exist for French and Hebrew, and I believe that such ... > >At any rate, this leaves English as the (only?) major language which >evolves freely as the need arises, rather than being restricted by >arbitrary rulings of a governing body. I'd prefer the arbitrary rulings of a governed body to the inept coinage system that you have in this country: in effect, you let science writers, newscasters, ad-men and the white house press secretary make up new vocabulary as they need it. In Iceland, we try to do it in a more intelligent and thoughtful manner, and this has preserved (somewhat) the language from Americanisms. Of course, there is some lag time, and a lot of times you just can't come up with a better word. However, I think the overall consequence is a much greater command of the language by the average speaker, because the average word has a more intelligent (and native) etymology. Also, this official policy against linguistic borrowing has kept the language close to what it was 1000 years ago (as opposed to Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, which have all changed radically) - but that also has to do with centuries of isolation. This is not to say that Icelanders are particularly xenophobic about language - most of us know 5 languages, or we wouldn't be able to survive in the world. It's just that a "language" is really just a dialect with an army, and as we Icelanders only have a laughable Coast Guard, we have to make sure that our language is defended by other means. Othar Hansson othar@zeus.cs.ucla.edu {randvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!othar
cctimar@watrose.UUCP (Cary Timar) (10/26/86)
In article <2441@curly.ucla-cs.ARPA> othar@zeus (Othar Hansson) writes: >In Iceland, we try to do it in a more intelligent and thoughtful manner, >and this has preserved (somewhat) the language from Americanisms. >average word has a more intelligent (and native) etymology. Also, this >official policy against linguistic borrowing has kept the language close >to what it was 1000 years ago (as opposed to Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, Many introductory texts on historical linguistics begin with a discussion of attitudes. Two pervasive approaches are expressed by calling language change either "corruption" or "evolution". The first supposes that the original language is being corrupted by changes in usage and meaning. This is particularly popular among school teachers and language committees. The "evolution" approach is more rare, but it suggests that the language is continually being improved by people who make necessary changes to it. This is most often seen when discussing the languages used by secluded, non-technological tribes. People say things like "This primitive language does not even allow the speaker to indicate tense!" and ignore the reason that the speakers don't think in terms of tenses per se. It is simply assumed that such primitive technology indicates a primitive tribe which therefore has primitive society, primitive morals, primitive language, ... Neither approach is fair. Languages change by the implicit mutual agreement of their speakers. I personally do not like the words "prioritize" or "utilize", but I understand them, and therefore implicitly accept them. The case where I do not accept a word occurs when somebody says "Please get me a bleeg." and I do not act on it. If he does not achieve the desired results with the word "bleeg" he will eventually have to start saying "apple" instead (no compulsion, but it will make life easier for him). Back to my point. I see no advantage to keeping a language true to its origins. It is nice to be able to read ancient works, I agree, but those who care enough will learn the dead language (which usually isn't that hard). English will continue to evolve randomly, though slower than it would have before printing and audio tapes. Usually, English speakers will be mutually intelligible (I mean, if it gets much worse than it is now, we simply declare it to be more than one language :-) If the language splits and changes radically, the world will nonetheless keep some "lingua franca" (maybe even French again, so that it'd make sense :-) Anyway, _in_my_personal_opinion_ the world requires a lingua franca that can bend any which way in the hands of both the expert and inexpert speaker. English currently fulfills this function. An English Standardization Committee would probably only reduce the currency of the language. -- -- Cary Timar