ILAT Digest - 20 Oct 2010 to 21 Oct 2010 (#2010-218)

[Richard Zane Smith]

MJ,
so sorry to hear about your illness ...i hope you're recovering well?

Yes i think its a much different question (and problem) than simply
about whether to freeze frame a language in a perceived "language purity
phase"
or to push forward a "backward" language to "get with the times."

It has to do with the survival of once sustainable culture/world views.
These views are desperately needed for survival of our planet,
NOT to put on museum shelves as artifacts of by-gone primitives.

I assume views of reality are always evolving/changing in any culture,
but some paradigms like capitalism is based on *competition and unlimited
growth*,
an untested sustainable concept that's eventually irrational and
destructive.
To interpret/imprint/imbed this kind of "get with it" capitalism into/upon
an ancient
culture is like building a McDonalds in Mecca or on Machu Picchu .

Ok...so lets use McDonalds as an example:

Because McDonalds seeks Omnipresence on earth  (capitalistic systems ideal)
It will twist its way in to pretend to satisfy any culture to gain foothold.
But with it comes a price. It will in effect distorts cultural norms.

Are we doing the same by interpreting/bringing in concepts like
 "processed-cow-parts-ground-and-mixed-from-
thousands-of-unknown-cattle-from-massive-filthy-stockyards-where-once-grass-eaters-are-filled-with-processed-corn-and-growth-hormones-and-shipped-thousands-of-miles-from-people-you-don't-know"
and yet hiding Its true description by giving it a nice friendly name like *
 "Hamburger?"*

Wouldn't it be better to allow a culture access to the truth about
these strange foreign customs and allow the people themselves to call it a
more
appropriate and culturally astute description :

*foreign-spirit-dead-animal-shreds    'tween-airy-white-breads*

Here see, the deeper more sustainable cultural perspective is preserved
from people who KNOW what THEY have been eating and might have even had
just butchered that morning.

sorry to ruin anyones lunch!
bon appetite !

ske:noh
Richard Zane Smith
Wyandotte Oklahoma



On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 11:19 AM, MJ Hardman <hardman at ufl.edu> wrote:

> What you say is true, and I don't think any of us are asking that the
> languages be "museumized", but working only from texts specifically
> translated from another language does destroy a language.  Change must come
> from within, and it does, and I have lived long enough to see internal
> change in Jaqaru, and the elders rant about it just like ours do (the young
> are corrupting the language -- I myself so say to my young'uns who leave
> the
> aspiration off of where so it sounds like wear).  But that is different.
> ALL complain about the translated texts.  Think about trying to read the
> instructions in English from an imported gadget, directly translated from,
> say Japanese.
>
> The two problems are quite different & I heard Richard referring to the
> latter, not the former.  Did I mishear?  MJ
>
> On 10/22/10 3:36 AM, "Rudy Troike" <rtroike at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:
>
> > Richard,
> >
> >     Very interesting thoughts -- but haven't ALL languages always been
> > adapted by their speakers to meet the needs of culture change? When
> > agriculture was adopted and replaced purely nomadic ways, new ways
> > of living and interacting were developed and communicated about. The
> > Cahokia mounds even show the presence of an incredibly organized and
> > presumably hierarchically structured society in the midst of North
> > America, requiring new and different modes of communication.
> >
> >    I've always been impressed by the way the code-talkers were
> > transported from the midst of a traditional way of life to the front
> > lines of the most modern mechanized culture of the time, and figured
> > out how to communicate about it effectively, incorporating all of the
> > advanced technology into their normal language. The structure of a
> > language does not have to be affected by culture change, and the
> > structure can change even with no change in culture. If a language
> > is "museumized", it will no longer function for its speakers to cope
> > with communicating about and in a changed cultural landscape, and
> > will stop being used.
> >
> >     Rudy
> >
> >     Rudy Troike
> >
> >
> > [No message body text]
> >
>
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