Tagalog-10

[Paz B. Naylor]

N.B.  French and English are not only IE languages, they also share a great
deal of the same Latin and Latin-Greek-based vocabulary particularly in
scientific/technological terminology.  This would be why native French
coinages could succeed where native Tagalog coinages couldn't.
----- Original Message -----
From: "potet" <POTETJP at wanadoo.fr>
To: " AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS" <AN-LANG at anu.edu.au>
Cc: "Ausronesian Languages" <AN-LANG at anu.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 9:26 AM
Subject: Tagalog-10


>
> "1.  I'm afraid you mistook a "couple of branches" for the "tree." T.
RAMOS
>
> Many branches are still missing: mathematics, physics etc. - the list is
> very long. Isn't it obvious? :-)
>
> "4.  Del Rosario's Maugnaying of ..... was an attempt to force language
> change towards a certain direction.  As linguists we know that it doesn't
> work that way." T. RAMOS
>
> I am afraid this is a generalisation that is stultified by recent history.
> The extremely large numbers of scientific and technical coinages in
English
> and French have caught on because specialists (scholars, engineers,
> technicians, scientific journalists) learned them and used them in their
> publications. Just think of words like photograph and telephone.
>
> Decades ago, I remember reading an article in _Le Monde_ (the newspaper of
> the elite - the one that gives yesterday's news under tomorrow's date)
> regarding French coinages in computer sciences - a field almost foreign to
> us then. The journalist claimed nobody would ever use terms such as
> _ordinateur_ "computer", _informatique_ "computer science", _logiciel_
> "program", _octet_ "(8 bit) byte"  etc.  etc. etc. Yet, nowadays, every
> French person dealing with computers knows these terms, and does use them.
> :-) Even those who still don't have a computer know what an _ordinateur_
is.
>
> I used to know the director of the Panthéon-Sorbonne computer center, a
man
> of the older generation, by the end of his career. He had been through the
> whole development of computer science in France. What was interesting with
> him was that sometimes - naturally enough - he relapsed into using the
word
> _computeur_, because this was the term he used before _ordinateur_ was
> coined.  I suppose that if he, and his colleagues, had carried on using
the
> _franglais_ term _computeur_ with their students, the latter would have
used
> it, and so would have the following generations of specialists, and
> _ordinateur_ would be unknown. This didn't happen, though, because they
> learned all the new terms as they were coined, and used them. The same
> happened in the English-speaking world.
>
> If Filipinos use _kompyuter_, and have never heard of the coinage
_panuós_,
> it is just because specialists never ever tried to learn the latter, and
use
> it. It is their right to adopt such a language policy. It is not my
problem.
> As an observer of the language, I merely record the fact. :-)
>
> On the other hand, many Filipinos do know the artifical terms _balaríla?_
> "grammar" <  _balanang_ "[?]" + _díla?_ "tongue", _tatsulók_ "triangle" <
> tatló "three" + súlok "corner" [stress shift unaccounted for], because
they
> were "forced" upon them by authors.
>
> "5.  Anthropology, History, Political Science, and others, have been using
> Filipino as the medium of instruction for several years now.  Several
> conferences I have attended had papers read in Filipino." T. RAMOS
>
> Well - I thought I had made it clear that the problem was not with law,
> humanities ans social sciences. :-)
> The problem is with mathematics, physics etc.
> Why is everybody sending me to the social sciences department when all I
ask
> for is at least one college-level title in mathematics or physics? This is
> really amazing. :-)
>
> Best
>
> Jean-Paul G. POTET. B. P. 46. 92114 CLICHY CEDEX. FRANCE.