LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.09.17 (09) [E]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2004.09.17 (08) [E]

Dear John, & All:

Subject: Language varieties

> Mark Dreyer wrote:

> >Welll? I was assuring someone, I forget whom, that there were people
known
> as Fries around at that time. I will allow I got distracted by ships & the
> sailing of them, a subject I also love.

> Isn't this what we call chutzpah? The reference to the AS Chronicle was
> spurious

No, it wasn't spurious. I appealed to the authority of the AS Chronicle that
there were Fries around, a point that you substantiated too, on the same
authority

> and when queried it was not checked but repeated. The "Welll?"
> suggests that none of this matters.

I own I should make myself clearer. By "Welll?" I meant to suggest that I
had answered the question (or responded to the query).

As to 'repeated'; I refer to my answer to Henry, in which I gave chapter &
verse. I can send it to you especially, if you missed it.

> On the other hand it's rather amusing to imagine that the Frisians didn't
know about ebb tides till they came to > England.

I wouldn't say that. However the Fries didn't use keels, but flat-bottomed,
extremely shallow & fast boats with leeboards instead. The last survivors of
this tradition gave birth to a whole slew of shallow-draught vessels on both
sides of the Channel. I have here before me in 'Schepen die Verdwijnen' by
PJVM Sopers, an essay on the 'Friesche Jacht', a kind of 'tjalk'. I reckon
they gave the Duke of Alva Hell.

These are extremely sea-kindly vessels capable of long long passages over
blue-water. On your side of the Channel they are the ancestors of the Humber
Keel, showing in every line of it's construction the enduring Northern
shipbuilding craft. & a later development of the tradition gave birth to the
Thames barge. This was a highly efficiant vessel capable of transporting 120
tons of cargo, wind-powered, crewed by only two men & a dog (to bark in
fog), & reputed to be able to sail over a 'heavy dew'.

The men nurtured to these vessels must have found sailing keel vessels in
their accustomed shallows a baad shock!

Yrs,
Mark.

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

> From: Tom <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
> Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.09.14 (06) [D/E/Esperanto]
>
>  From a humanistic point of view it is interesting that the very
> precision of Esperanto hasn't led it into universal domination.
> Possibly it is because we humans are just so culture-stuck that we
> prefer to stick with a foggy universal language that has a cultural
> background.

I used to learn Esperanto from a book of my grandmother's when I was a kid -
every Saturday while waiting for my cousins to visit us!

I thought at the time that the regularity of the grammar was immensely
clever and easy to learn - you could tell whether everything was male or
female, plural or singular right away. However, this was before I knew any
Latin and I ran into a huge stumbling block with the accusative case. Why on
earth is it there?

I've heard the "precision" argument for having the accusative case - I think
it's nonsense. It seems to me that Zamenhof felt more comfortable with it
and came up with a lame argument in defense of it, so we're stuck with it.

I now know, or at least used to know, many more languages and no longer
think the plural, gender or tense inflections are a good idea for a
universal language. Rather than admire their regularity as I at first did, I
wonder why they're there at all.

> Everyone knows that the precise universal language is mathematics, and
> also that we humans are not precise enough to speak it.

Not everyone knows this, Tom, certainly not me :)

I've read many books on set theory and suchlike fundamentals, and one of the
most enlightening I've found is A G Hamilton's "Numbers, sets and axioms:
the apparatus of mathematics" (Cambridge University Press, 1982, reprinted
1992, ISBN 0 521 28761 8). A paragraph from it:

"The axioms for set theory are tentative. Most of them are apparently true.
Some of them are currently argued about. Some of them are dismissed as false
by some mathematicians. Nobody knows whether they are consistent (i.e.
whether any contradictions can be derived from them). They are a starting
point. Zermelo initiated a continuing process by enumerating his list in
1908, which has been modified several times since then. Each modification is
made in the light of careful consideration of the logical consequences of
the currently accepted axioms, or perhaps even in the light of changing
intuitions, possibly brought about by such consideration. It should be
emphasised that foundations of set theory is a dynamic subject, for set
theory comes at the interface of formal mathematics with intuitive ideas,
with psychology and the nature of language in the background, and in these
areas knowledge can never be complete."

It's a house built on sand, so it is!

> I think we should question the criterion of "precision" as a yardstick
> for language and accept diversity as our fate. We are not machines - yet!

Well, since it's so long ago since I studied Esperanto, I'm curious to know:
does idiom exist in Esperanto? If it does, then is it different in some way
from idiom in natural languages, in order to preserve precision? If it
doesn't, is this a good or a bad thing?

Does idiom exist in Middelsprake? (question asked to steer us back on topic
:)

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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