LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (01) [E]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 21 January 2006 * Volume 01
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From: Tom Carty <cartyweb at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.20 (04) [E]

It is so much like Irish, so much lip service, so little effect!

Tomas O' Carthaigh

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2006.01.15 (02) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> In your particular case, even though you are a native Scots speaker,
> English is dominant/official in ...
>
> (1) Scotland (your native country)
> (2) England (your country of residence)
> (3) the United Kingdom (your super-state of residence)
> (4) the world
>
> I have a feeling, thus, that in the case of English it is not as
> clear-cut as to who does and who does not get to provide input.  I
> wouldn't dream of making proposals pertaining, say, our Gary's Estuary
> English or our Mike's brand of New England English, but I am not so
> sure if I ought to have to leave the room when the topic switches to
> English as a national and international lingua franca.  So, it seems
> to me that "unethical" may be too strong a word across the board.

I think the ethical problem here is that you're separating language from
culture. Although many native Scots are brought up in an
English-speaking culture, I'm not one of them.

So English is used by Italians talking to Germans in Europe, and Scots
speakers talking to English speaking Scots, and Welsh talking to English
and so on and we begin to think of it as a lingua franca. But our
perception of it as a lingua franca doesn't entitle us to ignore the
fact that there are millions of people for whom it's intimately
connected with their whole corpus of culture and tradition through the
ages, just the way Lowland Scots or Saxon is for us. It should still be
up to them rather than us.

I also think that English has become the first language of many
different cultures (eg Australian, North American &c) and the
orthography is one of the major cultural components that connects them
all. The orthography question might be approached through scientific
study or from within the culture, but as relatively foreign elements we
ought to be careful of voicing strong opinions.

Personally, from discussions on this group over the years, I've come to
realise that I only really know what I'm talking about when I'm talking
about Scots - everything else, including English, Welsh and British Sign
Language which I may feel almost like a native in when I'm using them,
still retain an "acquired" feel when I compare them to how I feel about
Scots.

> From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L Orthography
>
> So a native speakers opinions.
>
[...]

> If there will ever be a major spelling reform in
> English, then I would have to get used to it and would
> probably enjoy learning it, as that's the kind of guy
> I am, however, I also kind of think - what's the
> point?
>
There would be a point if we could establish that English orthography is
a problem. But I don't think anyone has established this convincingly.
It's often assumed that it must take up an extra year at school for
English-speaking children to learn the orthography, but as I've said
before, there seems no reason to believe this. Yes, English speaking
children are still learning new things such as the spelling of -tion and
other latinisms later in school, and thus it isn't difficult to provide
evidence of an extra year if a researcher is so motivated. But this
vocabulary doesn't come along until later and then the spelling is
picked up as the vocabulary is learned, so where is the whole extra year
that's supposed to be being wasted?

Again, where are the knock-on effects of this year presumed lost? Do
English-speaking nations run behind in arts, science, technology,
commerce etc due to the problems caused by English orthography?

Where exactly is the problem?

> From: Ian Pollock <ispollock at shaw.ca>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography"
>
> All these misgivings apply only to a reformed spelling working upon the
> phonemic or phonetic principle. I think that a better option would be
> Axel Wijk's Reformed Inglish which iz spelled sumthing like this if I'm
> not mistaken. It makes sounds predictable from spelling if not spelling
> from sounds, and still has that mystically English look. Incidentally,
> in my opinion here is the finest sort of work on English spelling
> reform, done by a Swede. Native speakers can learn a lot from second
> language learners.

Wijk's approach is close to the sort of reform I would propose. It's
based very much on the fact that current English orthography is more
regular than most people realise and it's only certain things that are
problematic.

But don't forget that Wijk and I have one thing in common - we're both
foreigners! Our agreement could be based on the fact that we've both
studied and understood English orthography (most people who voice strong
opinions on the subject haven't a clue, whether they've studied it or
not - indeed, the more I know about it the less opinionated I become),
or it could be based on the fact that we're not in a position to
appreciate the culture behind it!

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Hi/high, dear/deer Heather!
>
> Good thing I had my set of little strap-on horns handy (though its
> rubber band is getting a bit tired) ...
>
> Questions:
>
> (1) How many problems do you have with homophones when
>      you speak or listen to someone speak?
>
Can you demonstrate that the analogy between speaking and writing holds?
Speaking and writing styles are very different - speakers have access to
tone, stress, often gesture and so on and listeners often have the
opportunity to interrupt for clarification, while writers generally
depend on other devices, and have textual revision rather than
interruption to make sure the communication is clear. Spoken language is
also generally at a simpler semantic level than written language, and
there's more repetition, where in written language repetition is
generally considered poor form. There's a lot to demonstrate before you
can say that the effect of homophones in spoken language is analogues to
the effect of homographic homophones in written languages.

> (2) Is keeping homophones orthographically apart worth
>      lifelong learning of the spelling of individual words (versus
>      initial short-term *system* learning)?
>
You're always saying that English involves lifelong learning of the
spelling of individual words. Can you demonstrate that this isn't true
of other languages? Can you demonstrate that it's a bad thing?

> Oh, and Gary, me mite, you mentioned the enormous volume of English
> language in the "old" spelling that would be inaccessible or difficult
> to access for future generations.  (Now, I'm still wearing my smart
> little horns, mind.) These days, it would take smart programmers (like
> our Sandy and Kenneth, for instance) all of a few days to write
> programs that convert text in the complex spelling to the simplified
> one.  Why, even I might be able to get it together.

It depends very much on the nature of the reform. Are <sow> [sau] and
<sow> [so:] going to be spelled differently? Are we going to set up a
database of the new and old spellings of the hundreds of thousands of
words in the OED and will every single one behave or will readers still
be finding mistakes for decades? Or we could be cleverer about it but
would every rule we think of work for every word? How would we deal with
texts that use unpredictable conventions for quoting foreign languages
or demonstrating archaic spellings? What about unconventional authors
like James Joyce, Alice Walker or Irvine Welsh? What will our few-days
program do when it hits "V'ger" in Star Trek, will it know that the "g"
is soft, will the necessary plot analogy with the new spelling of
"Voyager" still hold? How will we deal with the huge number of acronyms
in computer science, chemistry and so on: will "Cyclic Catalytic Process
(CCP)" be correctly rendered as "Syklik Katalitik Proses (SKP)"? Will
puzzle books make any sense at all? It's easy until you try it,
scriptkiddie!  :>

The sheer amount of text involved is indeed a factor, because there's no
way of knowing a book will be right until someone reads it.

And anyway, I can't reprogram the people who are going to have to read
it for the rest of their lives.

I read your stuff about Mongolic spelling reforms and so on, but what
are the details? Surely the political motivation in both directions was
enormous and heavily supported by a single government in both directions
in different eras? It's too late for this in English. Danish
recapitalisation is surely a trivial affair no matter how you describe
it, simply because the older books were still perfectly readable?

More importantly, are we just getting the history as written by the
winners of each stage in the competition, while the people who are
having their culture overridden by foreign politicians have no voice?

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

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

Hi, Sandy!

Thanks for your interesting thoughts on the matter.  I wish I had the time 
and wellbeing to think them over and respond in greater detail, but I don't 
at the moment.

On the matter of English, it seems to me that there are several ways of 
looking at it.  The way I hear you talking is that we non-native speakers 
are permanent guests in the territory, that we may use but not keep.  That's 
certainly one way of looking at it.  Another way is to see it as two 
territories: that of a native language and that of a common language, the 
latter subdivided into national and universal lingua franca that belongs to 
all that use it.  So, in a way, as far as usership (if not ownership) is 
concerned, there are two Englishes in my opinion.

The question of ownership is perhaps not as simple as it may appear at 
first, just as the concept "native language" is not as simple as it may 
appear at first.  I know many people who use English, French, Spanish, 
German or Chinese as their *first* languages, but they are not their 
"officially" native languages, not the languages in which their families 
talked to them when they were little.  Most of them started aquiring the 
non-native languages sometime in childhood, and later in life their native 
("mother") tongues took a back seat to them (and their command of them may 
or may not have been stunted at childhood level).  To all intents and 
purposes, they are their main languages, even though they weren't their 
native languages.  Does this mean they do not share ownership of them and 
may not participate in dialogues about their development?

This seems similar, albeit it not identical, to citizenship.  Is an 
immigrant who becomes naturalized (i.e., becomes a citizen of the "new" 
country) a co-owner of the country or is he/she a quasi-co-owner.  Most 
officials would answer that he/she is as much a co-owner as are native-born 
citizens, hence "naturalization."  In theory, at least, he or she ought to 
have all the same rights.  In the United States this is certainly the case, 
at least officially, and quite a few immigrants became leading politicians. 
This is why legal exclusion of them as presidential candidates is seen as 
discriminatory and will eventually have to be changed.  (It was designed to 
exclude possible English-born snakes in the grass out to reverse the 
American Revolution.)  I certainly feel that as a new citizen I have at 
least as many rights as a native-born American that lived abroad since an 
early age.  It all boils down to the question "How important and relevant 
are birth rights in this day and age?"

Similarly, I don't see myself totally out in the cold regarding English as a 
lingua franca, as the main/official language of Australia, the USA and the 
British Commonwealth (of which I am a legal member, though not a native 
one), and as the universal lingua franca.  Similarly, does a born Londoner 
who has Punjabi as his or her home language have to be excluded from 
discussions about English language planning even though he or she considers 
English his or her most important and preferable language, and whose English 
is better than his or her Punjabi?  In other words, should accident of birth 
hamper our personal developments and exclude us from certain circles 
forever?

So it seems to me that the ethics you are talking about depend on one's 
personal views and definitions.  Yes, it is bound up with ethnicity (and 
even "race") in many or most cases.  (In the 1970 an English lady told me 
about her Indian neighbors, "They may have that piece of paper and speak 
excellent English, but that doesn't mean they are *really* English or 
British.")  But I feel that these days many of these things don't apply as 
much anymore, that our concepts about these things will have to keep up with 
the changes around us, now that borders, boundaries and places of birth are 
becoming less and less relevant.

Perhaps I feel this more here in the United States.  One thing I have much 
welcomed in the United States is that most people here are not territorial 
and chauvinistic in this respect, and I suspect that this has something to 
do with their belief in and respect for personal development and achievement 
(in the spirit of the Australian concept of "fair go"), in addition to 
less-than-usual cultural relevance being placed on place of birth.  And this 
is one of the things I appreciate most about American culture (at least in 
the Western States).  There are plenty of American professors of English for 
whom English is not a native language.  Despite knowing that English is not 
my first language, native English speakers, including academics, ask me to 
edit their written work or to answer questions about English grammar.  It's 
more about what I know (i.e., have learned) than what my mother spoke to me 
when I was an infant.  Likewise, I occasionally turn to a certain non-German 
Germanistics professor for questions about German dialects and linguistic 
history.  I consider this (which I find similar in Canada and Australia) one 
of the main distinguishing features between the "Old" World and the "New" 
World, it is certainly one of the main reasons for which I decided to join 
the club, and it is one of the things I cherish most as an American citizen 
(and, yes, there are plenty of things of which I do *not* cherish).

> Can you demonstrate that the analogy between speaking and writing holds?

I consider semantic, syntact and stylistic contexts most important in 
distinguishing homophones/homographs.  Intonation would be next, followed by 
gestures and the like.  In most contexts people can distinguish them when 
they listen to the radio, audio recordings and the like.  Similarly, I 
believe our Finnish and Hungarian friends and others whose writing systems 
are more phonemically based will support me in asserting that 
homophone-based misunderstandings are rare in their languages as well. 
Similarly, the Chinese languages, especially Mandarin, abound with 
homophones, and yet their meanings are usually understood in, say, radio 
broadcasts.  (Chinese character subtitles are provided in movies and on TV 
only for the sake of those with no or little Standard Mandarin proficiency.) 
An even better example is Vietnamese in audio form, since Vietnamese has 
discarded Chinese characters long ago and is written with Roman letters and 
pretty darn phonemically so, and yet it can be understood well despites lots 
and lots of homophones (including tonal correspondence).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron 

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