LL-L "Language use" 2004.07.01 (01) [E]

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From: denis dujardin <dujardin at pandora.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (05) [E]

I am sorry about Jean Duvivier. But he doesn't at all get the point
where this is all about in Belgium.
If you live in an area where you know people have been speaking a
certain language for ages.
The suddenly a generally more wealthy class comes to live in the rural
settings of your village and they do not want to adapt to the local
language, because they take it for granted that their language has to be
understood everywhere (which means the clear depreciation of the local
language), then I consider this as a pretentious invasion of people who
want to impose THEIR social attitude to the people where they immigrate,
refusing to learn the other language as a form of the so called courtoisie.
In Belgium it has allways been the other way up. We as Flemish are
generally bi-lingual. The Walloon or Brussels French spoken people (the
latter is changing) considered dutch as an ugly useless language, so why
would they learn it? (Allthough it is spoken by 22 million people in
Europe: is that a small language?????)
This has nothing to do with a difference of dialects as Jean Duvivier
quotes. It has nothing to do with helpfullness towards tourists. This
mentality of everything changing into English should at first be
explained to those who refuse to speak or learn another language
whatsoever. In the outskirts of Brussels you find countless people of them.

denis dujardin
vlaanderen

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From: jean duvivier <duvassoc at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2004.06.30 (05) [E]

Hi Ron,

I am afraid I did not express myself properly. Recognizing the legitimacy of
people of different regions wanting to retain their local language or
dialect, my point was that this should not be a first language for children
to learn, otherwise they will be left out of major activities in the world
we live in. As a second language if they so desire, why not.
However, I have detected an excessive emphasis placed on the local language
being the most important. This is partly a political issue, and all too
often , a manufactured one, to the detriment of the people themselves,
One can have two or more languages in use. For instance Switzerland. They
even have a fourth, Romanche, in a small valley. But all the Swiss I have
ever met spoke usually French and/or German but dealt with foreigners in
English.
We can remember the various attempts in the past 200 years to artificially
construct an international language, for instance Esperanto. But this was
artificial and did not become widely accepted.
I have no particular love for English of any kind, although I learned it and
know it well. But in the increasingly interactive and interconnected world
we live in, a single language that can be used widely is a benefit to
society. English  is happening anyway from necessity and ease of use,
whether one likes it or not.
My point about the local languages was not to disparage them but to keep a
sense of balance and not get carried away.
Thank you for your comments.

Dank U wel. Vielen Dank. Merci beaucoup. Muchas gracias. Muito obrigado.
Mille grazie. Ephaisto. Shukran. Domo arigato.

John

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language use" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn
> Subject: Language use
>
> In such cases I can see "activists" (preferably many of which come from
> various walks of life with which other speakers can identify) playing the
> role not only of language assertion agents but also of moral support
agents,
> convincing the defeatist average speaker that the language *is* worthy of
> status and preservation, and that its extinction is *not* inevitable.

I don't think activists of any kind actually manage to do this.

I also don't think the average language speaker is defeatist either. They're
not trying to achieve anything in the first place because they don't see the
point. Defeatism would be if you wanted to achieve something and gave up.

The question "What can we do to make Scots speakers speak Scots?" used to be
asked amongst Scots activists but I think most of them (or at least the ones
that have been around long enough) have accepted that you can't _make_
anyone speak it.

Activists appeal to government, education boards, broadcasting companies and
so on for more recognition of the language, or provide more resources such
as disctionaries (the old SNDA), grammars (Colin), literature (me :) or
everything (Andy). What they don't do is appeal to language speakers to
"speak the language more". This wouldn't work because in the Scottish
Lowlands, for example, most speakers speak the language all the time at home
and amongst friends and relatives, but would feel like a fish out of water
doing this with people in the streets and in shops. They're already speaking
it in every situation they feel comfortable with and to get them to speak it
in the shops, you would have to raise the status of the language in their
eyes (or lower the status of the shopkeeper :)

Successful language activism consists of appealing to (or setting up)
organisations that are capable of raising the public profile of the
language, ie, capable of raising its status. If this is done well, then the
speakers of the language may take up on it at some critical mass.

Even if language activists could _make_ people speak the language, it
doesn't mean it would change the fortunes of the language. A few centuries
ago almost every native of the Scottish Lowlands spoke Scots, but that
didn't mean it was considered suitable for use in schools, nor in print,
unless the orthography made it look like a dialect of English.

A language can be spoken by everyone in a country, but that doesn't mean it
has high status.

As I said before it's all about status. This is what makes someone decide on
which language they want passed on to their children, spoken in public
situations &c.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language use

Hi, guys!

Thank you for your interesting responses.

Jean:

> Recognizing the legitimacy of
> people of different regions wanting to retain their local language or
> dialect, my point was that this should not be a first language for
children
> to learn, otherwise they will be left out of major activities in the world
> we live in. As a second language if they so desire, why not.

Why as a *second* language and not as a first, as a native language, being
their ancestral language, the language of their parents and of their
forebears?  Why would it have to be relegated to second or lower rank and
the non-native language of the state or of some state conglomeration be
imported into the home as the overriding one?  Simply because the home
language is nationally and internationally considered insignificant by
certain people?  Should it not be the family's language that comes first and
the language of the state second where they are not the same?  It tends to
be native languages that are utilized in language arts.  Does this mean that
after a while we'll have poetry, shortstories, novels and songs only in a
handful of languages in the world, eventually to be whittled down to English
only (as it has been in rock and pop music already)?  Apparently the
frequently offered argument that children who grow up with two or more
languages are held back educationally does not hold water.  On the contrary:
while there may or may not be some initial delay, bi- or multilingual
children, on the whole, have been known to do better in the long run, to
have "a leg up" on monolingual children.

Does it mean that now, that the number of the European Union member states
has increased again, the people of Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and Greek
Cyprus should stop teaching their children Maltese, Estonian, Latvian,
Livian, Lithuanian, Polish, Kashubian, Czech, Slovak, Rusyn, Hungarian,
Romanian, Gagaus, Slovenian, Croatian, Yiddish and Romany because these are
"insignificant" in the great scheme of things, should just adopt English (or
French or German if they must) and be done with it, though they can still
have grandma and grandpa teach the kiddies some ditties in the old and soon
to be forgotten languages?   And what about some of the "older" member
states?  Should Danes, Swedes, Finns, Dutch, Italians and Greeks just "get
with it," because their languages fall into the same "insignificant"
category, leave alone the minorities in their countries (Rom, Jutes,
Faeroese, Kalallisut, Skanians, Saami, Low Saxons, Limburgers, Frisians,
Zeelanders, Tatars, Karelians, Albanians, Catalans, Corsicans,
Franco-Provençals, Slovenians, Croatians, Friulians, Ladins, Occitans,
Sardinians, Bayuvarians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Arumansh (Romanian) and
Turks), and the minority languages of the EU states with the more
"significant" languages English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German
(Romany, Cornish, Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Shelta, Basque, Catalan,
Galician, Breton, Flemish, Occitan, Italian, Asturian, Miranda do Douro,
Hungarian, Croatian, Slovenian, Danish, Frisian, Lowlands Saxon, Polish and
Sorbian)?

Again: interregional and international language(s) is/are definitely needed.
But does this mean that linguistic (and cultural) diversity needs to be
sacrificed to that end?

Sandy:

> Even if language activists could _make_ people speak the language,
> it doesn't mean it would change the fortunes of the language.

I wasn't suggesting that they could or should.  I totally agree that
speakers can only be motivated to use of and loyalty to low-prestige
languages by means of creating incentives.  This includes raising language
profile, prestige and pride, including also the development of language arts
with broad appeal.

Again, thanks for sharing, guys!

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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