LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.22 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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   L O W L A N D S - L * 22 January 2006 * Volume 01
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (04) [E]

> From: Henry Pijffers <henry at saxnot.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (01) [E]
>
> Sandy wrote:
>
>>
>> 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.
>>
> I'm sure school was in English, wasn't it? But isn't that part of your
> culture too then?
>
> I mainly grew up speaking only Saxon, until I went to school. In the
> class room speaking Saxon was more or less forbidden (although in the
> school yard everybody spoke Saxon and the Hollanders would just have to
> adapt). From the age of 5, Dutch became part of everyday life for me,
> and so part of my culture, whether I'd like to or not.
>
> Other than that, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

No, the Dutch language becomes part of your culture, but the connection
between Dutch language and culture doesn't - at least not to anywhere
near the extent that it does for a child living Dutch language and
culture in tandem all day every day, even when they're at home.

> From: Ben J. Bloomgren <Ben.Bloomgren at asu.edu>
> Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (01) [E]
>
> Gary Taylor wrote:
>
> Do English-speaking nations run behind in arts, science, technology,
> commerce etc due to the problems caused by English orthography?
>
> Gary, I'm blind, and I have never actually seen or written any of
> these, but I do ask this question. How is it that Egypt, China and the
> ancient "Near Eastern" cultures were titans in commerce, language and
> science? The ancient Mesopotamians used Cuneiform. China used and
> still uses complex pictographs and Egypt used similarly complex yet
> different pictographs. I almost wonder as a layman if these complex
> orthographies actually cause science, commerce and technology to
> improve because the cultures have to place higher amounts of effort on
> the acquisition of their writing systems. Again, I'm not a scholar of
> any of these three systems or any others, and I'm blind. I cannot
> print my name in English, and my signature is doctorish!

It was actually me who said what you quoted Gary as saying.

I sometimes wonder about the effect the writing system can have on the
other things people do with pen and paper.

In Asia, the square root of 10 (about 3.16) was commonly used for pi
(about 3.14). A Chinese father and son team calculated the value of pi
to many more decimal places than had ever been calculated in the West,
and yet Asian mathematicians went right on using the "beautiful" value
of pi in spite of the ugly engineering disasters looming on the horizon!
Why would they do this, we ask in the West? Is it possibly because their
writing system is maintained as beautiful and they automatically think
other things committed to paper should follow the same principle?

I think this sort of thing happens in the West even now. You might
consider the way linguists seem to glorify the IPA because it can be
used to express sounds in any language. They miss the fact that it's
completely incapable of doing this to anywhere near the accuracy
required for modern linguistic research, but it has the one advantage
that it's an alphabet, and that's what Western linguists are used to.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (01) [E]

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

You keep connecting language and politics and forgetting the connection
between language and culture. Native tongues may take a back seat,
people may achieve outstanding proficiency in acquired tongues, but it's
the connection between native language and native culture I'm suggesting
is the crucial factor in determining whether a person is sensitive to
the effect language interference has on culture. If this doesn't matter
for the writing system, then where do we stop?

>> 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).

You assert many things about many languages but you never make the
comparison with English. The discussion is supposed to be about whether
homograph/homophone merging would be a good idea, you can't demonstrate
this without making a comparison.

OK so Vietnamese can be "understood well" but what if English can be
understood better?

So homophone-based misunderstandings are rare in Hungarian and Finnish,
but does this mean they're easier to read than English?

I hope you accept that English literature conversion isn't the simple
holiday weekend task you originally imagined, and that
homograph/homophone merging should be properly researched.

The fact that it works doesn't mean it works better.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language planning" 2006.01.18 (08) [E]

> From: Clarkedavid8 at aol.com <Clarkedavid8 at aol.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Language planning" 2006.01.18 (05) [E]
>
> In the 19 century when the modern Italian state was created, modern
> standard Italian was recreated from the 13 - 14 century Italian of
> Dante, rather than from the 19 century dialects. This means that some
> lines of Dante still read like modern Italian. I dont hink you could
> find any lines in Chaucer that read like modern English, even though
> Chaucer is a couple of generations after Dante.
>
> Also, modern Hebrew and Cornish have been resurrected from ancient
> dead languages. The same could be said of written Scots, in so far as
> it exists at all.

What's your experience of written Scots? Why do you think it barely
exists? What dead language is written Scots based on, considering that
Scots is still spoken by about two million people today, in Scotland
alone? Have you clicked on the link below?

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (04) [E]

On Sun, 22 Jan 2006 16:34, Lowlands-L wrote:
>
> From: Henry Pijffers <henry at saxnot.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (01) [E]
>
> Sandy wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I'm sure school was in English, wasn't it? But isn't that part of your
> culture too then?
>
> I mainly grew up speaking only Saxon, until I went to school. In the
> class room speaking Saxon was more or less forbidden (although in the
> school yard everybody spoke Saxon and the Hollanders would just have to
> adapt). From the age of 5, Dutch became part of everyday life for me,
> and so part of my culture, whether I'd like to or not.

FWIW, I grew up speaking English with my parents and other "Europeans" -
mostly Australians and the occasional New Zealanders, US citizens, English,
Dutch and Germans - and speaking Tok Pisin with the Papua New Guineans.
Immersion in an English-speaking environment inevitably came as a shock at
age seven when I had to go to a children's hostel to get some education.

Until then, I would have to say culturally I was Neo-Melanesian, speaking 
Tok
Pisin - Neo-Melanesian - as a native speaker.  But English had much much 
more
prestige and I came in for a lot of flack for being Neo-Melanesian.

Which was my "first language"?  I don't think it's a useful question to ask
under those circumstances.  Which was my culture?  Neo-Melanesian, that is
something between two vastly different cultures, one stone-age, one
space-age.

FWIW, YMMV.

Wesley Parish

> Other than that, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
>
> regards,
> Henry
>
> ----------
>
> From: Ben J. Bloomgren <Ben.Bloomgren at asu.edu>
> Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2006.01.21 (01) [E]
>
> Gary Taylor wrote:
>
> Do English-speaking nations run behind in arts, science, technology,
> commerce etc due to the problems caused by English orthography?
>
> Gary, I'm blind, and I have never actually seen or written any of these,
> but I do ask this question. How is it that Egypt, China and the ancient
> "Near Eastern" cultures were titans in commerce, language and science? The
> ancient Mesopotamians used Cuneiform. China used and still uses complex
> pictographs and Egypt used similarly complex yet different pictographs. I
> almost wonder as a layman if these complex orthographies actually cause
> science, commerce and technology to improve because the cultures have to
> place higher amounts of effort on the acquisition of their writing 
> systems.
> Again, I'm not a scholar of any of these three systems or any others, and
> I'm blind. I cannot print my name in English, and my signature is
> doctorish!
> Ben 

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