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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 06</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(121, 6, 25);">Michael Everson</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:everson@evertype.com">everson@evertype.com</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 style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">In fairness part of the
background that led to things like "Beistrich" and
"Wes-Fall" was a perceived abuse in some 18th- and 19th-century
German to borrow needlessly from French, using words like
"scherschieren"/"cherchieren" instead of
"suchen".<br>
<br>
Google these...<br>
<span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"><br>
Michael Everson * <a href="http://www.evertype.com/" target="_blank">http://www.evertype.com/</a></span></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(121, 6, 25);">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 (03)
[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: Sandy Fleming <<a href="mailto:sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk" target="_blank"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk</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);">Originally on this thread Roger spoke of French words being
"banned",</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><br>
eg, say "ramdam" instead of "buzz".<br>
<br>
On Le Soir's technically rather irritating site:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.lesoir.be/culture/airs_du_temps/2010-03-30/parlez-francais-ne-dites-plus-buzz-dites-ramdam-761799.php" target="_blank"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">http://www.lesoir.be/culture/airs_du_temps/2010-03-30/parlez-francais-ne-dites-plus-buzz-dites-ramdam-761799.php</span></a><br>
<br>
it's talking about conversation rather than the law: "Don't say this,<br>
say that."<br>
<br>
It seems to me that the newspaper article is just a joke in retaliation<br>
to Alain Joyandet's suggestion:<br>
<br>
buzz > ramdam<br>
tuning > bolidage<br>
chat > éblabla or tchatche<br>
newsletter > infolettre or sagement<br>
talk > débat<br>
<br>
I'm thinking about the way telling a person not to say or do something<br>
can be not only ineffective, but the wrong approach can draw their<br>
attention to it and make them decide to do it.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">I don't speak French, but
Google Translate says it's a competition to propose new words that can be used
instead of foreign words. I think that's completely acceptable and far away
from "banning" words.<br>
Foreign words _are_ harder to understand than native constructions. Let's take
the linguistic term "Ausbausprache". To a person with English as native
language with no knowledge of German the word is meaningless. There's no clue
in the word that tells you anything about the meaning. If you come across the
word in a text and you don't already know it, you are lost. If the author
instead had used the term "umbrella language" you would have an idea
about the meaning of the word even if you haven't ever heard the term before.<br>
<br>
Much language purism is rooted in nationalism and that's a bad thing. But
language purism has also positive sides because it can make language easier to
understand. It depends on the individual case. E.g. the idea of some German
language purist to replace the word "Nase" (nose) with
"Gesichtserker" (face + bay window) was ridiculous cause every child
knows the word "Nase" while the word "Erker" is much less
widely known. The proposal was only based in xenophobia against the supposedly
Latin loan. Modern linguistics has even proven that "Nase" is no
Latin loan but based on a common Germanic root which further proves how
ridiculous the idea was. But language purism has also produced many words that
are in wide use nowadays. Words like "Tagebuch",
"Briefwechsel", "Anschrift" or "Verfasser" were
coined by language purists. Their work clearly improved the German language.<br>
<br>
Icelandic and Estonian also had interesting phases of language development.
Icelandic is strongly puristic (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_Icelandic" target="_blank"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_Icelandic></a>)
and Estonian had a phase of language Ausbau in which words were created out of
thin air (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_language#Ex_nihilo_lexical_enrichment" target="_blank"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_language#Ex_nihilo_lexical_enrichment></a>).<br>
<br>
And about the converse effects of forbidden words: This kind of Streisand
effect (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect" target="_blank"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect></a>)
happens every day at our schools. When I was still in primary school I once
called my sister a "Nutte" (whore). My mother asked whether I
actually knew the meaning of the word. I did not. I just knew that the word was
a "bad" word and effective profanity.<br>
<br>
Marcus Buck</p>
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