naming a language

[Riddle, Elizabeth M.]

As a native (American) English speaker, I have to agree about the connotation of Elfdalian in English.  I had never heard this term before reading the discussion posted here, but the first thing I thought of when seeing it was that it reminded me of  "Elvish," the language of elves.  It's not that English speakers necessarily have a prior association with the name "Elfdalian" itself, but that via folk etymology (even for a linguist), it evokes an association with "elf" and "elves."  

It has been really interesting seeing the range of examples discussed.  

Elizabeth Riddle 

________________________________________
From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Henrik Rosenkvist [Henrik.Rosenkvist at nordlund.lu.se]
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 5:04 AM
To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: [FUNKNET] naming a language

Thanks for all interesting remarks and comments!

As for my initial question, however, I conclude that me and my co-editor
have a number of possible alternatives to think about. Except for
"Oevdalian" and "Övdalian", an alternative is "Upper Dalian". That would
capture the fact that the language varieties in the norther parts of
Dalecarlia are mutually intelligible.

The term "Elfdalian" is however still not an option. The speakers are
struggling for some kind of formal recognition for their language, and
"Elfdalian" just has the wrong connotations. On the net, one finds
statements like "Elfdalian sounds like something out of /Lord of the
Rings/". Therefore, I still think that the term is inappropriate (and
that non-native speakers of English might underestimate this semantic
feature). Furthermore, "Elfdalian" gets about 1 000 hits on Google,
whereas "Oevdalian/Övdalian" gets about 600. Hence there is no huge
difference between these alternatives, and it is not entirely correct to
state that "Elfdalian" is established, I think.

As for endonym/exonym, this particular language is severely threathened
by Swedish, and I see no reason at all why the Swedish term should form
the basis for the English name of the language. We are not striving to
be politically incorrect in this case, but trying to avoid being
politically incorrect. There is a marked difference.

A rose is a rose is a rose – who can deny that? But a language is not
always a language, and I am convinced that if politics and prestige were
of equal importance in the world of roses as in the world of languages,
some of these flowers would be called "icky thorny things" and others
"flowers of heaven". If roses could think and speak, most of them would
probably prefer the latter term.

Henrik