LL-L "Lexicon" 2007.11.20 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  20 November 2007 - Volume 03
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon"

Beste Paul,

You wrote:
> My feeling is that this worship of Classical speech has watered down
> English from the strong Lowlands Germanic it once was. The belief that
> you have to use such words ("big words") to seem wise is a blow to our
> forbears. Read Winston Churchill's "fight them on the beaches" speech
> to see what strength lies in true Lowlands English.
> That I write and say such Greekish and Latinish myself doesn't make it
> otherwise (You'll see I've tried not to here).
> I'd rather light a fire than ignite a conflagration, or precipitate
> pyrotechnics.

Of course you're right...but still...you did turn on your "(com)puter"
or "machine" in order to read all this, didn't you?

Aah Mister Churchill! The chap loved a good fight now and then it seems.
Pretty logical since his opponent was a little too keen on purifying the
Germanic "race", whereas Winston was definitely much more civilized and
courteous and merely wanted to cleanse the English language, getting rid
of those foreign, exotic terms. All in all, they were both hung up on
purification (sorry for this "nicht bodenständiges" word).
Sign of the times?

In my view, acceptance of loanwords, doesn't immediately diminish the
value of native words. It's not as if they want to rule each other out
as soon as possible. New words will usually be bent and shaped till they
fit (and vice versa, forces work both ways). Many of those newcomers
will soon vanish, no problem with that, and the ones that are able to
stay for a thousand years or so will eventually prove that there's a
niche in that vocabulary. But you have to give that exogenous :-D
material a chance I think, no need for knee-jerk reactions. Don't worry,
our ancestors have done just the same when (technical) innovations swept
their world and eventually stuck around.

I do understand though that if phonetically a loanword is very hard to
pronounce for the receiving language, the latter may resort to
using/creating a native term, like 电脑 (diànnǎo) for computer in Chinese.

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

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

Thanks, Luc.

Here's just a footnote for the edification of everyone.

电脑 (traditional 電腦) Standard Mandarin *diànnǎo, l*iterally "electro-brain".

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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