Call for Papers -- Toulouse Conference on Copntemporary English

[James A. Landau]

I looked at the website http://iclce.toulouse.free.fr and found it interesting that the authors of the website keep referring to "the linguistic phenomenon (or phenomena) known as English".

I'm probably reading a good deal into this that isn't there, but to me the word "phenonemon" has the connotation of "something extraordinary impressive" rather than "something ordinary that happens", e.g. the sportwriters' use of "phenom" to describe an extraordinary athlete. Under the influence of this connotation, I am hearing the authors imply that the English language (and not the socio-cultural-political influence of English speakers) is somehow extraordinary among languages.

This strikes me as an unusual attitude from the organizers of a conference to be held in France, a country whose natives are, shall we say well-known, for their chauvinistic pride in their own tongue.  (It might be noted that the English word "chauvinistic" comes from French).

As far as I know, the only thing "extraordinary" about English is its large supply of synonyms, e.g. kingly, royal, regal.  Everything else that seems idiosyncratic to English can be matched by other languages:\
- English spelling is horrible, but it actually makes at least as much sense as French spelling
- English is rare among Indo-European languages in having a positional grammar, but so does Farsi and if you're a fan of positional grammars, learn Chinese
- English has limericks, but Latin has epigrams
- English has over 40 phonemes, but some Slavic languages have more
- etc.

Does anyone else feel the same bafflement that I do?

I might add that Toulouse, the site of the conference, is currently devoting much attention to the grim struggle of the multicultural Airbus against the evil monolingual Boeing empire.

OT: my nephew, who is in med school, malapropped that he was intending to go into "gastroneurology".  An MD at the table immediately informed him that he had invented a new specialty, and someone else suggested that a gastroneurologist helped people who suffered from nervous tummies.  (The same person also said that "unipolar" meant "you don't attract iron filings".)

    James A. Landau
    Test Engineer
    Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
    8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
    West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA


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