LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 05.MAR.2000 (03) [E]

Mon Mar 6 01:26:44 UTC 2000

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"Ian James Parsley" <parsley at highbury.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L: "Language politics" LOWLANDS-L, 05.MAR.2000 (02) [E]

Roger, Ron and other Lowlanders,

Thanks for some very interesting mails regarding standardisation of minority
languages. The case for standardisation of any language is obvious, but we need
to be clear what we mean by that and how best we go about it.

The key, in my view, is a standard grammar. Minor orthographical and lexical
differences mixed with a healthy dose of common sense are not likely to provide
too many problems. However, without a standard grammar nobody will be able to
understand what anybody else actually means.

The question then is how to go about it. I must confess I'm not too sure about
"merging" dialects. Most major languages have standards based on the dialect of
a single area. In 1947 a "standard Irish" was proposed with a spelling reform
and modern grammar, but many if not most speakers still reject it precisely
because it was an artificial merger. People would rather have a real standard
they can go and hear, rather than an invented one. The result, in the case of
Irish, is that most Irish speakers can't speak or understand the "standard", so
that when they come across enthusiastic learners neither can understand the
other!

It may be, of course, that you end up with two or three standards. In the case
of Scots, you would probably have one for Ulster and one for Scotland (and
possibly even a separate one for NE Scotland as opposed to the south). In time,
the standards themselves may merge.

But, on a practical level, how do you go about getting a standard? My view has
been to encourage creative writing in Ulster-Scots (for example in the magazine
_Ullans_), and then look at the most common usage both in contemporary and
traditional writing, and come up with a standard that way.

But it's a long old task!

Best,
-------------------------------
Ian James Parsley
http://www.gcty.com/parsleyij
"JOY - Jesus, Others, You"

----------

Roger R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language politics

Dear Ian, Lowlanders,

Thanks for your interesting and thought-provoking response (above), Ian.

I don't see any real contradiction between your and my view, certainly no
fundamental contradiction.

I am sure that you and I and the majority of people do not like the idea of
actual, deliberate "language engineering."  By that I mean a situation where a
bunch of "experts" sit down, comes up with an artificial language variety, and
then institutes it--decrees its use, so to speak, in an entirely authoritarian
and prescriptive fashion.  Such an approach would be doomed to instant failure,
if only because of rejection and resistance among the language users.

However, *any* type of standardization comes with *some* element of
artificiality, even *if* you allowed it to take a long time (which most of the
languages we are talking about don't have left if things are left the way they
are).  Someone somewhere will always get to call the shots, laying down the
"law" that states what is right and what is wrong.  If not, the process would
take an indefinite length of time, and nothing will ever be resolved.

You suggested the writing of an authoritative grammar.  While I in no way
disagree with that, let me play the devil's advocate and ask you who would get
to take on that task, and, where there are competing grammars (as any two or
more grammars would be), who would get to decide which one wins the prize of
"rightness."  Also, I need to ask you if this is not also artificial.  Writing a
grammar of any one variety is "natural," but writing one that encompasses more
than one variety, perhaps *all* varieties of the language is a monumental task,
and any supposed standard variety that is supposedly filtered or condensed out
of this process (by combining common elements and rules) would be artificial
too.  I am not saying that I am or am not opposed to that.  I only want to
remind you that an element of artificiality cannot be avoided, especially where
time is of the essence, where the survival of a language may indeed depend on
some sort of "glue" as which a standard variety functions.  It would also
symbolize true independence from the related power language that had
overshadowed it and had served as its koiné (i.e., English in the case of Scots,
and German and Dutch in the case of Low Saxon [Low German]).

Indeed, coming up with one standard variety for each major dialect group would
be a logical intermediate step.  The hope would be that those standard varieties
would gradually merge, as you suggested.  However, what could, in theory, happen
instead is that those dialect groups would then develop into separate languages,
at least as far as the perception of the ordinary speaker is concerned.

Personally, I feel that the task of standardization tends to look more
formidable than it really is.  This is so when there is no standard
orthography.  By "standard orthography" I mean a system that can be used for all
varieties of the same language.  This is not tantamount to standardizing the
*language*.  It only means coming up with one system to be used to write all
varieties of this language.  At the moment, in the case of Low Saxon, due to
lack of phonological knowledge among those involved, the tendency is to want to
write not only German-like but also "phonetically," i.e., "the way it sounds."
This includes writing a good deal of redundant phonetic detail.  This written
phonetic detail tends to disguise what all the varieties have in common, namely
in most cases the same underlying phoneme that ought to be represented by the
same character(s) in all the varieties.  For instance, the long phonemic /ee/ is
pronounced as [e:], [E:], [i.e], [i.E], etc., depending on the dialect, and
people write it as _ee_, _eh_,  _{e,}{e,}_, _{e,}h_, _ää_, _äh_, _iä_, _iäh_
etc., and this makes the dialects *look* more different from each other that
they really are.  All you really need to know is that what is written as, say,
_ee_ is pronounced as, say, [e:] in dialect X and as [i.E] in dialect Z.  Coming
up with a standardized orthographic system would be a major step in the
direction of creating a standard language variety, because people would realize
that most differences they see in written dialects other than their own are
superficial and minor.  A relatively small number of underlying differences
would then become more apparent and could be discussed; e.g., retention vs
dropping of final /-e/ (e.g., /brüge/ _Brügge_ vs /brüg/ _Brügg_ ~ _Brüch_
'bridge').  A standard language variety would then seem more attainable.

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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