LL-L "Contests" 2007.12.22 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  22 December 2007 - Volume 05
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Contests" 2007.12.22 (04) [E]

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com <mailto:sassisch at yahoo.com>>
>
>     * Most convenient oral language at sub-zero temperatures

Despite the fact, that your post was meant to be fun, I must say, that
this is an interesting point ;-) We can trace the original home of the
Indo-Europeans by words which are common through all Indo-European
languages.  If I remember correctly,  the horse is one of those things
which link all Indo-Europeans. But there are few agrarian terms common
to the Indo-Europeans. So we know some things about the lifestyle of
those people although we have no excavations or something like that.
It would be interesting to know, whether the language of the Inuit is
more 'close-mouthed' than the languages of pygmies who have lived for
tens of thousands years near the equator. Seems a rather pointless bit
of knowledge at first, but if it turns out to be true, you can use it,
for example to look, whether the native languages in America are more
close-mouthed than the average. That could proof, that they stem from
languages imported from Siberia. If they are more open-mouthed they
perhaps stem from very early immigrants from Africa. Well, I guess,
languages have changed too much over time to find any such evidence, but
the idea is not that silly, so researching it may be of worth. Maybe

It seems, my post about that contest provoked answers making fun of it.
I know, it is a pointless contest. But, is not most of our whole live
pointless? I really sought for an answer ;-)

Marcus Buck

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

Marcus,

There's pointless and there's pointless, and then there's dangerously
pointless.

"Most beautiful language" is a concept that is better left in the past, not
only because beauty is in the eye of the beholder but also because, by
virtue of its very focus, this particular contest will in great part be
based on prejudices that have little or nothing to do with language. For
instance, many people consider German "ugly" mostly because they have a
blanket prejudice against Germans, and they find French and Italian
"beautiful" because they have been taught to love Paris in the Springtime,
operatic art written for Italian, and to dream of summers in Tuscany. What
is to be learned from that and from the fact that speakers of many languages
find "guttural" sounds unpleasant? Our parents' and grandparents'
generations knew little or no English and thought the language sounded
"ugly," what with those diphthongs and those lisps. We and our descendants
have come to like it because we have learned it and because we associate it
with cool music, international communication and the like.

Not long ago, someone that grew up with Dutch as a second language and likes
it well enough told me that she finds German "unpleasantly guttural." Think
about this one!

As for me personally, a person proclaiming that a given language is
beautiful or ugly signals that he or she is stuck on a superficial level. I
would expect further proclamations such as "Language X is very grammatical,"
"... historical," "... phonetic," "... a speech impediment," and I have
heard all of the above. What does such stuff accomplish other than
perpetuate stereotypes and ignorance and legitimize subjectivity? And then
sponsored by a *country*?

To me personally, "most beautiful language" is almost as bad as "most
beautiful race," or "the beautiful sex."  As I have said time and time
again, in my world there is not such thing. Comparing languages is like
comparing apples with oranges, kiwi fruit, cucumbers, watermelons,
persimmons, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli and parsley.  I love them all.

And, yes, I find human beauty contests pretty darn silly, too, something
that does more harm than good. But that's personal and an extraneous can of
worms.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

•

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