LL-L "Language politics" 2010.04.05 (07) [EN]

Tue Apr 6 02:57:15 UTC 2010

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*L O W L A N D S - L - 05 April 2010 - Volume 07*
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2010.04.05 (05) [EN]

From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de>

Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2010.04.05 (02) [EN]

Well, dear Marcus, with Nazi Germany I think you have a country that banned
certain words rather successfully. Quite simple, everyday words. I have a
lot of elder relatives (including my mother) who went to school during Third
Reich, and what do they say when doing a subtraction? "17 weniger 5 gibt
12." As a child I wondered, until finding that "weniger" means "minus". Of
course "plus" was substituted by "und". And as to punctuation, "Der
Beistrich steht vor dem Nebensatz." Guess what "Beistrich" is? The Komma.
And all parts of grammar had german names, including Nominativ, Genitiv,
Dativ and Akkusativ, which became Wer-Fall, Wes-Fall, Wem-Fall and Wen-Fall
accordingly. (Once I told this to a friend who was a rather hopeless case of
Legastheniker and grammar flop; his face began to shine with sudden
enlightenment, and he exclaimed: "So kann ich das endlich auch begreifen!
Die waren ja gar nicht so doof, die Nazis!" This was not a political
statement however.)

The Nazis (who were very doof despite all this) began in school and made the
teachers use german terminology consistently. If a child had learned
latin-based terms at home, their use was strongly discouraged. I think in
this way you can substitute words quite effectively.

Is not the same thing happening today in German with many German words being
supplanted by English words (or such that are believed to be English)? It is
media and certain cultural trends that help this on -- not by means of law,
but by, well, psychology (?) and still in a pluralistic society. But if an
influential, trendsetting group goes to work methodically and with
resolution, I think they could exterminate certain words very effectively
and in no more than a few years. Shall we bet? ;-)

Words like "weniger" for "minus" already existed before the Nazis came to
power. But perhaps they were the first who consistently established the
terms in all parts of the Reich and in all schools. But it was no banning on
part of the Nazis. Both terms existed before and both terms existed
afterwards. State-led Newspeak exists since states exist. Think of
"Arbeitsagentur".

I want to put in another interesting example of a replaced word. An example
that does not involve "foreign" words (at least not "foreign" meaning "from
a foreign country or language"). Standard German has two words for
"Saturday": "Samstag" which is used in the South of Germany, in Switzerland
and in Austria and "Sonnabend" which is used in Northern Germany (north of
the river Main) and which corresponds to the Low Saxon word "Sünnavend" (Low
Saxon also has a second word "Saterdag", used in the northwest, which
corresponds to English "Saturday" and Dutch "Zaterdag", but this word is not
known in Standard German). Both words coexisted, each one restricted to
their respective regions. But in the last few decades "Sonnabend" lost
ground. Nowadays in the north older people never use "Samstag", while
younger people always use "Samstag". "Sonnabend" is still in very wide use,
but the generational bias is so strong that I have few doubts that
"Sonnabend" is moribund and will fall out of use in some decades when the
older people have died.

"Samstag" is not pushed by any agenda, and it has no advantages or anything
like that which would make it a "better" word than "Sonnabend". The only
reason "Samstag" is winning is an urge for uniformity and removing redundant
words (this "removing redundant words" is no controlled process but is
happening unconsciously) in a society where the language of the TV has much
more influence on a child's language than the language of mother and father,
thus rendering the German term "Muttersprache" antiquated.

Marcus Buck

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From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>

Subject: LL-L "Language politics"

Beste Marcus,

You wrote:

And every country in the world has some laws that stop you from yelling
"asshole" to a cop.

Unless it can be proved it's true? But not to any other citizen? Wonder how
a Québec cop would take this? If you don't say it in French, it may again
become acceptable, 'cause it comes from a minority language anyway ;=)

 But I don't know of any law ever where there was a list of words whose use
is unlawful independant from context.

Yesterday evening on national TV a report about the language situation in
Québec.

I thought many Belgians could behave pretty silly regarding language
matters...but apparently Québec has beat us. Advertising is
legally strictly regulated, the French font should be twice as "big" as the
English subfont. They even have some sort of language police, who is
patrolling the streets with a ruler, measuring characters. Go figure!
There's loads of complaints, thriving business for lawyers.

Some shop owner was selling "stained glass", "vitraux" in French. He was
complaining that because the English translation was roughly twice as long
as the French version, he would have to scale down the translation so much
that it became barely readable. I don't know if "twice the size" applies to
the length of the word or the area it occupies, whether bold font counts
double or if there are any exceptions for words that are much longer in the
other language...but clearly, this is becoming pathetic! Sadly, the
"Sprachpolizei" was telling the reporter that they were trying to learn from
the Belgian situation...sic. Mind you, all of the English speakers thought
that French in Québec did deserve some sort of extra protection...but not
along these lines and to this extent.

This may not yet be a case of outright "banning", but it does boil down to
systematic discrimination. Like Sandy remarked earlier on, in a subcultural
or tabloid context, such a policy can indeed trigger the opposite effect,
but in a very competitive, economic environment I have my doubts.

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium

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