LL-L "Language treatment" 2005.01.22 (03) [E/LS/German]

Sun Jan 23 03:19:20 UTC 2005

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.01.21 (05) [E]

> From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.01.21 (02) [E]
>
> I find many other usages hideous, too, so I might as well get them all out
> in one go. Reading the Australian papers online I see "telco" (a sort of
> contraction / abbreviation / garbling of "telecommunications company", I
> think) imported from the United States, and I have seen similar
> abbreviations such as "mindef" and "singov" (for "Ministry of Defence" and
> Singaporean Government) in Singaporean English and "legco" (for
> "Legislative
> Council") in Hong Kong English.

I think these shortenings are called "portmanteau words".  These sorts of
words are quite common in Russian: "komsomol" for "kommunisticheskiy sovet
molodezhi" ("communist youth league"); "MinFin" for "Ministerstvo Finansov"
(Ministry of Finance").  They are also fairly common in American government
circles: SECDEF for Secretary of Defense; NAVSECGRUACT for Naval Security
Group Activity, etc. (they seem to be really popular in the US Navy).  I've
also seen things like "telco" in the US.  And of course they are a common
way of forming the names of companies (e.g., Qualcomm) and other
organizations (e.g., Interpol).

Kevin Caldwell

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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: Language Treatment

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language treatment

.....
Reinhard/Ron

..

P.S.: And some linguistic advice for the wise:

* Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly
superfluous.
* Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
* The passive voice is to be avoided.
* Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
* It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
* Avoid clichés like the plague.
* Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
* Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
* Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
* Be more or less specific.
* Never utilize big words when diminutive ones would suffice.
* Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
* Use words befittingly, irregardless of how others avail them.
* Understatement is always the absolutely superior way of putting forth
earth-shaking ideas.
* Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
* Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
* Who needs rhetorical questions?
* Alwayz uze yor wurd processir's spellchick.
* And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

=====
Goethe schrieb zum Beispiel:

"Zu einem liebevollen Studium der Sprache scheint der Niederdeutsche den
eigentlichsten Anlaß zu finden. . Ja wenn er ans Meer tritt, wenn
Schiffer des Auslandes ankommen, tönen ihm die Grundsilben seiner
Mundart entgegen, und so empfängt er manches Eigene, das er selbst schon
aufgegeben, von fremden Lippen zurück, und gewöhnt sich deshalb mehr als
der Oberdeutsche, der an Völkerstämme ganz verschiedenen Ursprungs
angrenzt, im Leben selbst auf die Abstammung der Worte zu merken."
====

Entspricht das auch Ihren Regeln?
Mir scheint,mit Hochdeutsch kann man schier nicht besser verfahren-
selbst nach  mehr als 200 Jahren sprachlicher Veränderung und
Fortentwicklung. Kein Fremdwort dabei; er mochte sie im reiferen Alter
einfach nicht.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jonny

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language treatment

Leve Jonny,

… un ik snack Di driest maal so an, wieldat Lowlandsch, internatschonaal un
ook mang "Plattdüütsche" so begäng is, ook wieldat wi so üm un bi in't lieke
Öller sünd un ik as de "Oldbaas" hier dat Seggen heff … ;-)

Nä, dat sünd nich *mien* Rägeln. Dat is man bloots so 'n Spijökenkraam, den
wen tohoopkleit hett, 'neem de Rägeln veruutzt wardt.

Tja, wat wäät de Goethe nu vun us Spraak af?

Kumpelmenten na Bremerhaven (or Bremerhoben, as Ji un wi Hamborgers dat
seggt)!
Reinhard/Ron

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language treatment" [E]

> From: Mike Morgan <Mike.Morgan at mb3.seikyou.ne.jp>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2005.01.21 (05) [E]
>
> Japanese uses borrowings or hybrid-borrowings for such words as internet
> (?
> ?????) and email (?????),  and the mostly well-educated Japanese
> Sign Language (JSL) users (like the Deaf newscasters on the NHK Sign
> Language news, or the Japanese National Deaf Association "research" groups
> that get together regularly in Tokyo and Kyoto (and also in Hokkaido?) to
> make up new signs, that they publish in book-form and promote nation-wide
> every couple years) who I imagine see themselves as language promoters
> tend
> to borrow such new vocabulary from (via) Japanese (in the latter case),
> and
> less commonly from American Sign Language (in the former), or make up
> altogether new signs, often with at least a bit of influence from the
> Japanese written language (in a variant for the latter). And generally
> speaking it is an "etymologically" correct process.

Sounds like they're really butchering the language? I mean borrowing from
spoken Japanese as a matter of pronciple is hardly going to produce signs
that can be used with JSL grammar, is it?

> But the question of language is: What about the "common man", "Joe Blow on
> the street"? MY Deaf friends, who are mostly blue collar workers .. if
> they
> even have a job ... (as opposed to my Deaf colleagues at the Japanese
> Association of Sign Linguistics, and the NHK newscasters, etc. who are
> decidedly NOT blue-collar workers) neither use nor understand a good deal
> of
> these new "etymologically correct" signs. And when you look at THEIR signs
> for "email "(most don't have access to the internet; email is by mobile
> phone), they are morphologically much more in harmony with the structure
> of
> JSL.

Yes indeed. I think the newscaster etc need to realise that sign languages
are often very large - certainly I would expect this of a language as
important as JSL, and if they were proper researchers they'd be going out in
the field and finding out what signs were actually being used for
everything.

I just started my B(ritish)SL Level 3 course today. These courses are harder
to find than the lower level courses and I have to make the two-hour drive
to Eastleigh (near Southampton, Hampshire) for it. Similarly, some of the
other students had made long drives from Oxford, Yeovil, Bath and so on, and
one was from Sunderland, though living locally. It's interesting to be in
such a group because when speaking to a local group it's quite common to ask
what the sign for something is, and nobody knows ("just fingerspell it"),
while in a far-flung group like this there seems to be hardly a word in
English you can ask about that somebody doesn't know a sign for, or a
grammatical feature that makes the word unnecessary.

In fact there's very often more than one sign for any given noun, adjective
or verb. Sometimes this is due to dialectical variation: just as English has
"holiday", "vacation" and "break", BSL has signs, all meaning "holiday"
corresponding roughly to "pack", "idle-partying" (two variants) and
"hotelling" (similarly at least two signs for "Internet", ar least two for
World Wide Web, and so on); sometimes it's related to the way sign languages
are visually specific: for example I knew only one sign for "dragon",
defining it in terms of its claws, today I learned another defining it in
terms of fire-breathing. On the other hand, there can be a great deal of
consistency, even with new signs: everybody seemed to sign "digital",
"satellite" and "email" in exactly the same way. On the other hand again, I
was suprised to find the Sunderland woman using a different sign for "car" -
instead of the simple "hands-on-steering-wheel" sign that I thought must be
universal, she used a sign li
 ke "hands-on-steering-wheel-fingers-on-lights-and-wipers-controls"!

All this follows a current trend in the UK wherein interpreters (and hence
people in advanced BSL classes with interpreting aspirations) are expected
to know exactly what a deaf person is saying. You can imagine how dangerous
it is for a deaf person in hospital if the interpreter doesn't fully
understand everything they're saying - so the emphasis in advanced classes
is now on students learning and remembering every possible sign, no matter
how many signs they already know for something.

There is also now a growing concern that an interpreter is not enough in
legal and similarly important situations: rather a deaf person should have
an interpreter and a communication support worker, who both know BSL. This
is because professional interpreting ethics forbid an interpreter from
interfering in the communication in any way: they should only translate
exactly what's said as accurately as possible. Problems arise here because
of the fact that the hearing person (eg a judge) doesn't understand that
sign languages are visually specific where in oral languages visual
information is often derived from context. For example, where it's being
discussed that a deaf person may have thrown a brick at someone, the
conversation might go like this:

Judge: [English] "Did you throw the brick?"
Intepreter: [BSL] "Did you throw the brick?"
Deaf person: [BSL] "Yes."
Comminication support worker: [BSL] "Wait. Describe how you threw the
brick."
Deaf person: [BSL] "I threw-down-on-ground the brick."

Here, the English depends on the context of the argument, and the
interpreter has signed as unspecifically as the English requires. The deaf
person, however, doesn't know that in English the context is carrying the
real meaning, and answers the question as if asked in isolation. The
communication worker, knowing both BSL and English, is monitoring both the
English speaker's and the BSL speaker's understanding of the situation to
ensure that they match.

Of course, your description the newscasters' way of going about their
business for JSL is rather the opposite of all this - instead of trying to
get at the heart of how JSL is really used, they're making up a fantasy
language, causing more confusion - I think!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Roger Hondshoven <roger.hondshoven at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language treatment" 2005.01.22 (01) [E]

Hi all e-mail users,

Just one remark. In Dutch 'email', instead of 'e-mail', is absolutely
unacceptable. 'Email' is an existing word meaning "enamel".

Roger Hondshoven

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