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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">===========================================<br>
L O W L A N D S - L - 04 November 2008 - Volume 04<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
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===========================================</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
From: <span class="ep8xu"><span><span style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Luc Hellinckx</span></span></span><span class="hccdpe"> </span><span class="ldacoc"><<a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span class="hccdpe">LL-L "Language politics"</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL">Beste Ron,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL">You wrote:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL"> </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL"><span style="word-spacing: 0px;">Ek glo ons
moet hierdie basiese vraag beantwoord: <br>
<br>
Wat het beter oorlewingskanse, 'n dialek of 'n (offisieël herken) onafhanklik
taal?</span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 40px; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL"> </span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: black;" lang="NL"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Moenie vergeet nie: Ek respek jou opinie,
maar ek is skepties aangaande sy uitgangspunt.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="NL"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Suppose
Malaysian English would get official status in Malaysia: would that enhance its
position?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Look at the
case of Singapore:
It isn't quite obvious what should happen with Singlish, is it? At least not
according to the government. They fear that promotion of the language would
alienate speakers from the rest of the world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Wouldn't
the creation of a third official language in Israël (English next to Hebrew and
Arabic) give rise to more problems than it would solve?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">If the
almost extinct Macau Creole Patúa would nowadays become official (next to
Cantonese Chinese and Portuguese), would it survive? Maybe the Dóci Língu
just prefers to die in peace and beauty instead of upheaval?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Is the US federal
government ready to give some "dying" (non-English based) languages/dialects
official status?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Mind you, I
don't mind supporting any endangered language myself...quite the contrary...but
formalizing it, can sometimes be a bridge too far methinks.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Ek is ook
wat skepties...maybe it's just the time of the year.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Kind
greetings,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(136, 136, 136);">Luc
Hellinckx</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">PS: Even
though Halloween is kind of a non-event around here *s*.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
----------<br>
<br>
<br>
From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>
Subject: Language politics<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Hi and
thanks, Luc!<br>
<br>
I know what you are trying to get at, but I don't think your analogies work.<br>
<br>
Not talking about immigrant communities, Afrikaans and Dutch are official in two
countries on two continents respectively, not in the same country. Besides,
Afrikaans is used natively by a mixture of ethnic groups none of which considers
itself Dutch.<br>
<br>
A more apt analogy might be "Hindi" varieties (predominantly Bhojpuri, with various
names) used in Fiji, Suriname, Mauritius
and the West Indies in relation to Hindi of
India. All of them are uniquely adapted to their environments, have developed
their own grammars and have been infused with numerous Indian and non-Indian
influences.<br>
<br>
Malaysian English, like Singaporean and Indian English, is a widely recognized
English dialect. Despite loan expressions and some Chinese- and Malay-derived particles
it can hardly be considered a language in its own right.<br>
<br>
But even within the same country a European language and its local derivative
can coexist quite well and the officially recognized derivative (creole)
language enjoys official status, use in education and the media and therefore a
measure of prestige. Examples are Morisyen next to French in Mauritius (<a href="http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/morisyen-info.php">http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/morisyen-info.php</a>),
Seselwa next to French in the Seychelles,
Tok Pisin next to English in Papua New Guinea
(<a href="http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/tokpisin-intro.php">http://lowlands-l.net/anniversary/tokpisin-intro.php</a>), Cape Verdean Creole
next to Portuguese in Cape Verde,
and Haitian Creole next to French in Haiti). Without official
recognition there tends to be no prestige and therefore poor chances of
survival, especially where low prestige is involved.<br>
<br>
Despite a high degree of mutual comprehensibility, I do not believe that
Afrikaans and Dutch should be considered one language. Afrikaans grammar is
highly idiosyncratic, as is much of its lexicon and idiom. Even though it started
off as a form of Dutch, I feel it came into its own at the latest when Dutch came
to be abandoned as the "high" language in Southern Africa
and the notion of independent "Afrikanerdom" came to be embraced, at which time
uniquely Afrikaans features and development came to be preferred. So there is a
history of endeavor to be independent from the Dutch-speaking world. <br>
<br>
This is just <i>my</i> opinion, mind you. I just feel that it's ultimately up
to Afrikaans speakers to decide, not to the outside, including Dutch speakers.<br>
<br>
You asked:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Wouldn't the creation of a third official language in Israël
(English next to Hebrew and Arabic) give rise to more problems than it would
solve?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
English <b>is<i> </i></b>official next to Hebrew and Arabic in Israel, has
been so since the foundation of the state. It may well be just a matter of time
that Russian will officially join them, since it is already <i>de facto</i> a
major language in Israel.
There are in fact predominantly English-speaking communities in Israel, some of
which I have visited myself, and individuals there do in fact communicate with
administrative bodies in English. Multilingualism is not much of a problem in
that country.<br>
<br>
You asked further:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">If the almost extinct Macau Creole Patúa would nowadays
become official (next to Cantonese Chinese and Portuguese), would it survive?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
It might, if official recognition came with real action, such as promotion and use
in education and the media. However, "almost extinct" is not exactly a fair
argument case, because you are talking about a small miracle here. The case of
Afrikaans can not be compared with that. Besides, as far as I know, the
majority of Afrikaans speakers do not consider their language a subset of
Dutch, nor is the language close to extinction at this juncture.<br>
<br>
And:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Is the US
federal government ready to give some "dying" (non-English based) languages/dialects
official status?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
Again, this not a fair comparison, since the US federal government has no
language policy and no official language (aside from the fact that Afrikaans is
not a moribund language). No, English is <b>not</b> the official language of
the US,
though some, especially Hispanophobes, want to make it such, and make it
exclusively English in the "English Only Movement". English is only the <i>de facto</i> lingua franca. Some states have enshrined English
as their official language, though. If English did become the official language
of the entire US (on a federal level), then, I bet you, there would be minority
language recognition demands, definitely from Spanish speakers (who make up a
very large portion of the population). Since reservations are independent from
the states in which they are located they have their own governments, laws and
law enforcement authorities and are only under the supervision of the federal
government (United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs).
I believe it's up to each Native nation to decide what languages, if any, are
official within its territory, or whether or not it wants to have language
policies. They are semi-independent (colonized) nations; in other words, they
have limited national sovereignty. If I am right, then this would be a
non-issue within the national arena. However, I would expect demands from autochtonous language communities such as those of Spanish, Louisiana
Regional French (Cajun French), Pennsylvania German ("Pennsylvania Dutch"),
Gullah (Sea Island Creole English), Hawaiian, Samoan, Chamorro, Carolinian, and
perhaps even those that have developed American dialects of Low Saxon in the Midwest.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
Regards,<br>
Reinhard/Ron</span></p>
(with one eye on the so far empty election result boards)<br>