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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">===============================================<br>
<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 05 April 2010 - Volume 07</b><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br>
<a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com">lowlands.list@gmail.com</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a><br>
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<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Marcus Buck</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:list@marcusbuck.org">list@marcusbuck.org</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L "Language politics" 2010.04.05 (05)
[EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">From: M.-L. Lessing <<a href="mailto:marless@gmx.de" target="_blank"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">marless@gmx.de</span></a>> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);" lang="FR">Subject: LL-L "Language
politics" 2010.04.05 (02) [EN]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);" lang="FR"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">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.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: times new roman,serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><span style="font-family: times new roman,serif;">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? ;-</span>)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">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".<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
Marcus Buck</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Hellinckx Luc</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L
"Language politics"</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span class="gi"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Beste Marcus,</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">You wrote:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><span style="word-spacing: 0px;">And every country in the world
has some laws that stop you from yelling "asshole" to a cop.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">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 ;=)<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">But I don't know of any law ever where there was a list of words
whose use is unlawful independant from context.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Yesterday evening on
national TV a report about the language situation in Québec. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">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. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Kind greetings,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(136, 136, 136);">Luc Hellinckx,
Halle, Belgium</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
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