LL-L 'Language maintenance' 2007.01.12 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 12 January 2007 - Volume 01

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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L 'Lexicon' 2007.01.11 (06) [LS]

Beste Heiko,

ick schall 't woll inns versoyken!

Greutens/Regards

Johannes "Jonny" Meibohm

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From: Aleta Turner <aletamosquito at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L 'Language maintenance' 2007.01.11 (03) [E]

With respect to language preference and fluency in different spheres,
I have an anecdote that always seemed interesting to me.  A professor
of mine in graduate school came from Argentina.  He did not learn
thermodynamics, however, until he was in grad school here in the US.
Consequently, while Spanish is his first language, English is his first
language for that particular topic, and he found that when he went to
Spain and lectured, he had to think thermodynamics in English first
then translate it into Spanish.

What this implies to me for language maintenance then is that
if it's just easier to switch languages for particular topics, then
simple laziness can contribute to (be a major reason for) a
language's decline.

Aleta

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

Thanks, Aleta.

That sort of experience is very, very common among individuals that move
into other language communities.  I, too, learned certain things after I
left Germany and therefore am more confident and fluent to talk about them
in English.  In case of immigrant communities this is a group experience
that typically results in the development of immigrant-specific dialects of
the shared ancestral language, usually with masses of loanwords from the new
country's language and also very often back-and-forth code switching as
changes in topic require.  Here in the United States you find evidence of
this everyday and everywhere if you pay attention to it.  Yes, you could
call it "laziness."  I try as much as possible to find out how to say things
about, say, computers in German, and it is work. Communities with their
shared experiences may not go that far, especially those in which most
people didn't start off with much formal education in their native
languages.  It is more "natural" for them to borrow words.

This is undoubtedly what the English people experienced after Norman rule
ended and the task was to adapt English to the post-French era. Borrowing
from French was the rule of the day.  I'm sure there were purists that
objected to it.  The end result was that English changed into quite a
different creature.  A French creature?  No.  It's still English, and it's
been serving its users just fine -- thank you very much.  Perhaps it's
thanks to the very "impurity" that it acquired a great deal more
flexibility, adaptability and resiliency, and this may be one reason for its
success (the other ones being British colonization and global US
dominance).

Were the "refurbishers" of English lazy?  I guess you could try to make that
argument.  What would have been the alternative?  Creation of neologisms
from native (Germanic) English stock, the way Icelandic keeps being adapted
on an Old Norse basis in order to keep it "pure."  Yes, there is a (minor)
movement that proposes "cleaning up" English in like manner, but hardly
anyone pays attention to this.  Under Nazi power, there was a similar
movement to rid German of foreign elements.  The Alliance Française keeps
trying to keep French "pure," being especially opposed to English
influences.  In post-Soviet Latvia, some sort of language police ran around
in the streets telling people to remove any signs with non-Latvian words and
names on them.  Europeans in general have been rather obsessed with
"purity," and their obsession has led to failure or has been stunting the
development of their languages.  I am not proposing a total
laissez-fairattitude, just a bit of relaxing with the realization that
purity is an
illusion and at the end of the day development of a language depends on
actual usage "out there."

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Reinhard/Ron

***

"When I hear the word 'pure' I keep expecting the sound of jack boots to
follow right after."
                     Anthony Bourdain in a 2006 TV program about Iceland
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