LL-L "History" 2009.11.09 (03) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 09 November 2009- Volume 03
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.08 (05) [EN]

> From: Danette Howland <dan_how at msn.com>
 > Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.01 (02) [EN]

> From the author's introduction here is a quote from a voice (or pen)
> of another century:
>           To improve our language in spelling and self-explanatory
>         words, will have more educational influence throughout the
>         land than could be obtained from the building of a hundred new
>         colleges. Only a small per cent. of boys and girls could
>         attend them for a few terms; but a clear, self-explaining
>         language would be the grand National schoolmaster--the common
>         American boy's and girl's friend. Such a lanuage would be
>         constantly explaining and reminding and defining from
>         childhood to manhood, in every place and relation. No
>         dictionary would be needed, Dentist would be called
>         toothhealer; aurist, earhealer; surgeon, woundhealer; botany,
>         plantlore; zoology, deerlore; astronomy, starlore; sternum,
>         breastbone; humerus, armbone; petiole, leafstock; peduncle,
>         flowerstock; phenogamia, fruitbearing; mutton, sheepflesh;
>         veal, calfflesh; venison, deerflesh, etc. Ideas which American
>         children and common people can not understand now, are as
>         clear as sunlight to our Gothic cousins, the Germans, Dutch,
>         and Scandinavians. This does not appear to be just to American
>         children.

To me, "plant lore" would mean something quite different from "botany"
as would any "-ology" from any "lore".

"Armbone" is vague, but of the things it could refer to, "humerus" is
the last I would think of. Things like this would probably take more
teaching than just having separate words for separate concepts.

Again, a "healer" is quite outside of the medical profession, and a
surgeon does many things, healing wounds being more the housekeeping
part of the job.

Leafstock and flowerstock? I'd never guess, I usually only make beef,
chicken, ham, fish or vegetable stock.

It seems to me that Molee is choosing his examples, but doesn't make a
good job of it even so. Words like "ominous", "ancestor", "descendant",
"ancestral" and so on aren't considered difficult words in English, but
they are difficult to think of reasonable saxonised equivalents for.
There are an awful lot of new terms to think up and teach, and they're
not going to be nearly as transparent as he pretends.

A big advantage of having vocabulary streams from more than one language
is that they tend not to interfere with one another. You can say an
"armbone" as a generality and yet still refer to the humerus, radius,
ulna and so on as specifics. If you're concerned about the cost of
education, you don't need to teach the latinate words to students who
aren't studying anatomy (not that I recommend cost-cutting in education,
so I'm not necessarily saying not to teach them).

Similarly fruitbearing isn't quite the same thing as phenogamia, and
some of the words such as deerlore aren't in step with modern English at
all: unless you actually learn some other Germanic language, it becomes
hard to learn saxonised English.

I can't see how this project could be implemented without impoverishing
English, considering that the saxonisations often seem to correspond to
a phrase that already means something a bit different in English.

It would be a bit like saying let's go back to old pulse phones where
you just dial a number and speak over the phone, and save all the
expense of modern phones that take so much learning and training and
manufacturing! Sometimes the stuff you can do with a thing (including
modern English) is worth the expense.

Let's save money instead by abolishing the teaching of useless subjects
like history!  :)

> Molee suggested that a self-descriptive language using common words to
> replace borrowings from Norman, Latin, Greek and French would improve
> education, save taxpayers' money and make for more beautiful writing,
> speech and poetry.

An impoverished language would make for worse writing, speech and
poetry, surely?

Schwarzenegger suggested abolishing books and just using the Internet to
save money on education, maybe we could do that instead!

> However emotional, futile or misguided his stance may seem today, I
> admit that I agree with his sentiments.

His sentiments, maybe, but what about his reasoning?

More seriously, I do cast a suspicious eye at the idea of saving money
on education. It's a stupid argument for anything.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

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