LL-L "Language maintenance" 2007.08.07 (09) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  07 August 2007 - Volume 09

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language maintenance" 2007.08.06 (06) [E]

Ron wrote:
...
 Let me throw a few possibilities your way. These are based on my own
observations. (The names assignations are mine.)

   - Linguistic tribalism ("Language is part of 'us against them (the
   power majority and outside)'.")
      - Linguistic exclusivity ("It's our language, our secret code,
      and nobody else should touch or even use it.")
   - Linguistic chauvinism ("Only we are the keepers of the proper
   language.")
   - Linguistic purism ("Only we can use the language properly because we
      live and grew up in the God-given place and belong to the appropriate
      ethnicity and class." If it turns out that there is a transported enclave
      somewhere else, this tends to be shrugged off as impure or
debased, thus as
      irrelevant. The assumption here is that language should never change.)
      - Linguistic racism ("No one that doesn't look like us can
      possibly speak like us and understand our culture.")
   - Linguistic insecurity ("So it happens to be what I leaned as a
   child. But ...")
   - Linguistic self-loathing ("What good is this language these days
      anyway? It would be an albatross around the children's necks. Away with
      those outsiders that want to turn things around!")
      - Linguistic suspiciousness ("They used to despise us and used
      to want to get rid of our language and culture. So what are they up to,
      those outsiders trying to learn it? Are they trying to ridicule
      us")

I wonder if this was an issue when Norman power over England had withdrawn
and scores of English, part-English and Norman people switched from their
native French to the reemerging, albeit still teetering English language
that was very much susceptible to further French influence.  If it was an
issue, I suppose that, had the other camp come out victorious, the English
language would now be extinct rather than globally dominant.

Just my thoughts ...

Reinhard/Ron
The ironic thing is that much of the "English Oppression" in other parts of
the United Kingdom had little to do with the English anyway.  The
Plantagenets who exerted English rule over Wales were no more English than
Charles Aznavour.  The various later linguistic and cultural rules applied
were under the administration of the United Kingdom, in which
representatives from the other countries are proportionately more
influential than English members.

Most English people, during this period of  imposition, were largely unaware
that there was such a thing as Welsh, and had more than enough to worry
about in their own lives without telling other people what to speak.

It should be noted that the English last had any specific say in what
happens in England in 1707 (and they didn't have much then, as they weren't
a democracy in anything like the modern sense).  Unlike Wales, Scotland or
Northern Ireland, England has no Assembly or Parliament, and any suggestion
that this should be recitified is vigorously opposed by all leading parties.

Paul Finlow-Bates

•

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