LL-L "Language politics" 2004.12.16 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 16.DEC.2004 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: jpkrause <jpkrause at sunflower.com>
Subject: Language Politics

>Ben Bloomgren schreew
>Well, we are doing it here in America by our media. Only the dialect spoken
>by black/African Americans(?) is accepted as "cool." If somebody comes on
>MTV who is from Boston, and he talks about wea he paaks his caa, they'll
>laugh him off the set.
>
Ben, I think where a Bostonian "paaks his caa" is properly called an
accent.  Gullah is a dialect spoken by a few Americans of African
descent.  It has it's own sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary.
The Bostonian uses the same sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary
as I do.  Whereas the Bonstonian is quite understandable to me with my
Midlands American accent, the speaker of Gullah would be a little
difficult for me to understand in the particulars.

Jim Krause

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From: <kt4nn at juno.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.12.15 (06) [E]

Ben,

If you got a good radio, there is plenty of New England dialect.
Peter [Sorensen]

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From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language Politics

Hi Criostóir and all

I did say:
"Being a tax payer within the European Union, I feel there are a lot more
things of greater importance within Europe that I'm willing to pay for "

I did not say:
"[than official status for the Irish language or others]."

What I was trying to say, but didn't express perhaps as well as I wanted,
was the following.

I can't imagine that translators/interpreters working for the European
Parliament are particularly badly payed. I've done translation work and I
know you can get quite a lot of money for it, I've never done interpreting,
but I'm pretty sure that interpreters will be very highly paid.

If they introduce interpreting in the European parliament, they will need
say five interpreters -
probably more. For these five they will pay for their relocation and
training etc. These five will be doing a service for a handful of MEPs who
can just as easily understand English - sad as it is, but a fact - and so
are a superfluous cost.

The money that will be invested for their work could easily be used to train
and employ 10 native Irish speaking teachers. These ten would conservatively
reach 40 children each per year - so 400 children. If they stay in teaching
each for an average of 10 years then in all they will reach 4000 children.
Which I think would be a much more worthwhile use of money, than to reach a
handful of MEPs who don't really need this service anyway. The same would go
for Low
Saxon/Scots/Frisian etc. teachers.

Alternatively the money could be invested in local media services - perhaps
training native speaking journalists, news presenters or whatever.

These steps all provide a local service where it is needed. To provide a
service in a minority language in far off Brussels and Strasbourg doesn't in
my view boost the image of the language as much as it could.
This has to be done locally to make the people who already have a knowledge
of the language aware that it can be used in education and media and that it
is a worthwhile language. I would much sooner spend money in this area than
in providing interpreters for MEPs.

Criostóir, you wrote:
"Thirdly, the increasingly disregarded guiding principle of the EU is meant
to be unity in diversity. People seem to like diversity while it is not
threatening their own languages, but raise hackles
when the logical conclusion of the diversity principle applies to Irish.
Yes, Irish people
speak English as well. So do the Maltese. There are actually more speakers
of Irish than Maltese. Catalans speak Castillian as well as Spanish, as  do
the Basques, Galicians, Valencians and so on. Why is Irish singled out for
remarks about wasting precious tax money? As I mentioned in my other
missive, Ireland's problem is it self-defeating pragmatism. We should
have secured the status of Irish back in 1973, but we were too busy trying
to appear to be good Europeans and not rock the boat. No we do raise the
issue, we're accused of getting a bit above our station."

I wasn't picking on Irish - I was being quite damning of all minority
languages ;) In Ireland and your example Malta English is an official
language and so as such should be understood by officials from the two
countries. As English happens to be a language that is official in more than
one country, it makes a lot more sense to use this at a fraction of the cost
than hiring interpreters in Maltese and Irish. I understand the emotive
feelings behind the use of English but negative feelings against a certain
language because of historical reasons should have no place in a
unified Europe.

I did also state that I think all official papers which are available to the
general public should be
available in whatever European Union language the reader wants. My objection
was to interpreters, not to translators.

"Irish is a national language of an EU member state; because of that alone,
it deserves recognition and a lot more basic respect than it is getting."

I quite agree, but be sensible about how money can be best spent to further
the Irish language cause.

"So, please, a little more thoughtfulness and a little less panic about tax
profligacy. Our languages are Europe's cultural treasure and inheritance."

I have thought this one through... I know there is corruption in Europe and
that a large part of my taxes are probably wasted anyway, but don't waste
more of them - put my taxes to better use so that we can support Europe's
language diversity, instead of making unnecessary token gestures.

Go raibh maith agaibh, (I say this back - I don't know what it means, and I
hope you haven't been insulting us with this all these years...)

Gary

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