LL-L "Language perception" 2007.12.23 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  23 December 2007 - Volume 02
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Contests" 2007.12.22 (05) [E]

> From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
> Subject: LL-L "Contests" 2007.12.22 (04) [E]
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com <mailto:sassisch at yahoo.com>>
> >
> >     * Most convenient oral language at sub-zero temperatures
>
> Despite the fact, that your post was meant to be fun, I must say, that
> this is an interesting point ;-) We can trace the original home of the
> Indo-Europeans by words which are common through all Indo-European
> languages.  If I remember correctly,  the horse is one of those things
> which link all Indo-Europeans. But there are few agrarian terms common
> to the Indo-Europeans. So we know some things about the lifestyle of
> those people although we have no excavations or something like that.
> It would be interesting to know, whether the language of the Inuit is
> more 'close-mouthed' than the languages of pygmies who have lived for
> tens of thousands years near the equator. Seems a rather pointless bit

Having grown up speaking the central dialect of Scots and then gone on
to live in Wales and learn Welsh, I was at one time struck by a parallel
between Wales and the rest of Britain: in Scots we use a closed "o"
sound, while in English they use an open "o" sound; and then in southern
Welsh they use and open "o" sound while in northern Welsh they used a
closed "o". Did more northerly speakers tend to use more closed vowels
to conserve heat, I wondered? Further comparisons between Scots and
English vowels seem to support the theory. But in learning about other
Scots dialects I found that in more northerly dialects they do use an
open "o", and the whole thing unspooled  :)

I do think, though, that people speak differently when it's really cold:
more firm jaw, more tooth clenching, and less inhalation. Whether this
could affect language, I don't know. I'd guess that people know when
they're using modified speech and will revert right back to their usual
language when they get indoors or the weather gets better.

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Contests
>
> with language. For instance, many people consider German "ugly" mostly
> because they have a blanket prejudice against Germans, and they find

English speakers who are familiar with the song "de Lorelei" seem to me
to strongly agree that "im Abendsonnenschein" is one of the most
beautiful phrases they've heard in any language. As well as flowing
beautifully, it has a resonance that's absent from the contest examples
given, which seem to depend entirely on avoiding everything other than
liquids. If this sort of contest caught on, then liquids would soon
become "so last year" and afficiandos would be looking for something
more phonetoclastic  :)

> As for me personally, a person proclaiming that a given language is
> beautiful or ugly signals that he or she is stuck on a superficial
> level.

But the contest is misnamed, isn't it? It doesn't compare languages, it
just compares phrases that occur in languages.

Phrases from Scots? Either:

"Aa ae oo."

or:

"It's a braw bricht muinlicht nicht the nicht."   :)

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org >
Subject: LL-L "Contests" 2007.12.22 (05) [E]

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com <mailto: sassisch at yahoo.com>>

> Subject: Contests
>
> Marcus,
>
> There's pointless and there's pointless, and then there's dangerously
> pointless.
>
> "Most beautiful language" is a concept that is better left in the
> past, not only because beauty is in the eye of the beholder but also
> because, by virtue of its very focus, this particular contest will in
> great part be based on prejudices that have little or nothing to do
> with language. For instance, many people consider German "ugly" mostly
> because they have a blanket prejudice against Germans, and they find
> French and Italian "beautiful" because they have been taught to love
> Paris in the Springtime, operatic art written for Italian, and to
> dream of summers in Tuscany. What is to be learned from that and from
> the fact that speakers of many languages find "guttural" sounds
> unpleasant? Our parents' and grandparents' generations knew little or
> no English and thought the language sounded "ugly," what with those
> diphthongs and those lisps. We and our descendants have come to like
> it because we have learned it and because we associate it with cool
> music, international communication and the like.
>
> Not long ago, someone that grew up with Dutch as a second language and
> likes it well enough told me that she finds German "unpleasantly
> guttural." Think about this one!
>
> As for me personally, a person proclaiming that a given language is
> beautiful or ugly signals that he or she is stuck on a superficial
> level. I would expect further proclamations such as "Language X is
> very grammatical," "... historical," "... phonetic," "... a speech
> impediment," and I have heard all of the above. What does such stuff
> accomplish other than perpetuate stereotypes and ignorance and
> legitimize subjectivity? And then sponsored by a _country_?
>
> To me personally, "most beautiful language" is almost as bad as "most
> beautiful race," or "the beautiful sex."  As I have said time and time
> again, in my world there is not such thing. Comparing languages is
> like comparing apples with oranges, kiwi fruit, cucumbers,
> watermelons, persimmons, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli and parsley.  I
> love them all.
>
> And, yes, I find human beauty contests pretty darn silly, too,
> something that does more harm than good. But that's personal and an
> extraneous can of worms.
I like cucumbers more than lettuce and watermelons more than persimmons.
I am absolutely sure, that women are more beautiful than men and yes, I
would even say, that there are racial features of looks, that I
personally do like better than some other racial features of looks. And
my opinion is, that this is okay, as long as I don't generalise that (or
try to kill all lettuce...). For example broccoli and spinache have a
bad "image". This bad image is propagated by media as a cultural meme.
And that is not okay in my opinion. In some Western media there is a
meme, that sees women from Sweden as especially sexy. And that too is a
thing I am sceptical about. This meme is not dangerous, but it is of no
good to the world too. And there is a whole bunch of cultural memes (or
prejudices) about languages and ethnicities and races, far too much to
count them. The Chinese with a rice straw hat bicycling through a rice
field (or nowadays perhaps thousands of them bicycling through a Mega
city) is one of the more harmless. And also harmless (but disliked by me
as a North German ;-) ): The German sitting in a Bierzelt with Lederhosn
drinking Weißbier, preparing for a Schuhplattler and yodling out of
pleasant anticipation. If it comes to race and not culture, like in the
both aforementioned examples, the things become more bitter. I won't
give examples for that, I guess all of you can think of some.
Well, I think the world needs prejudices. There are 6000 languages on
earth and the number of ethnicities will be of the same magnitude. And
every single language or ethnicity is that diverse that a single human
life is not enough to learn all about it. Nobody can know all about the
diverse regional subidentities in Germany and China and all over the
earth. We need to make generalizations. But of course it is another
thing propagating this generalizations although you know better.
Instrumentalizing them.
Some memes become that strong, they are not questioned at all:
Blumenau in Brazil was founded by Germans and today has one of the
biggest Oktoberfests in the world. But it was actually founded by
Pomeranians... I guess there was never a single real Oktoberfest
celebrated in old Pomerania. But the Pomeranian Germans in Blumenau had
prejudices about themselves: "We are Germans and Germans do celebrate
Oktoberfest, everybody knows that. Let's start celebrating Oktoberfest!"
If a cultural meme becomes that strong, it is dangerous. Because it
alters reality, distorts it.
We always have prejudices and there is no way to live without them. So
prejudices are not dangerous out of itself. But they can start to be
dangerous if they are empowered.
So the question is: Is this contest only a little unimportant subjective
thing without any impact or is it a measure of empowering prejudices? I
have to admit, both perspectives seem valid. Obviously that previous
contest, that made Estonian second, had enough power to create a strong
cultural meme in Estonia (and Finland too...). So even little events can
alter reality. But, hey, a formerly enthreatened language winning
self-esteem by a second place in a long ago contest, that's a positive
outcome! If this time again a lesser-used language will win self-esteem
by making a good position in the Estonian contest, that'd be a great
thing! Well, on the other side, if English and French will make the
first places (from people saying "hey, I know that language and like
it", like Ron indicated), that contest _was_ pointless and useless. I
can't say, whether the outcome will be positive or not, therefore I
asked for further information ;-)

Marcus Buck

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

Hi, Marcus!

What's relevant and important about individuals' personal preferences? Well,
I suppose it's important information for industry and marketing, and it's of
interest to certain branches of demographic statistics, which would probably
be funded by private enterprise.

As for language, well ... perhaps you could sneak the winner into commercial
advertising, perhaps even subliminally, to sell sparkling wine, hydrating
lotion or adult toys. But beyond that? Formalization and thus legitimization
of "the most beautiful language" would set in motion peer pressure (a.k.a.
the herd instinct) and tell undecided individuals what language the majority
finds cool (for whatever reason) and as a result *they *should find cool
unless they are stuck on being uncool geeks. Had this contest not taken
place, they might have preferred the sound of another language. But in the
contest that language ended up on, say, the 27th place, and so much for
that.

In other words, the contest removes a good deal of open-mindedness. It's
like many men preferring their women more "voluptuous" but being afraid of
admitting it and of acting on it because contests and media representations
have led them to believe that the "skeletal" look is where it's at, which is
also why more and more young women end up dying from eating disorders.

My personal "problem" appears to be that I don't even subscribe to some of
the categories within which comparisons are supposed to be made, leave alone
contests be held. For instance, while I am aware that as a result of
one-time isolation certain genetic traits tend to predominate in certain
geographic regions, I am not alone in not subscribing to the notion of human
"races," or acknowledging it only as a make-believe categorization (just as
dog "races" are the result of engineered genetic constructs that have been
legitimized as opposed to illegitimate random constructs, a.k.a.
"mongrels").

Marcus, I believe you are confusing "stereotyping" and "prejudices."

Yes, we tend to simplify the world so we can deal with it, and stereotyping
is our method of choice. In other words, we categorize everything more or
less roughly so as to end up with the smallest possible number of pigeon
holes of stuff cramped into them, and because we don't have the time or
inclination to learn all the detailed ins and outs (since, after all, it's
really more important to find out what Britney Spears' latest antic is) we
end up with lots of unlikely assortments that we think are just fine and
dandy if they don't involve us. You can't really argue with that, since all
of us have our own ways of making sense of this seemingly senseless,
illusory world in which we have landed. For the laziest among us
stereotyping is to be done by country, regions, while ethnicities and other
"details" are considered irrelevant details. This is how for instance North
Germans end up with *lederhosen* overseas. It may seem silly to you and me,
but, hey, it could be worse, and many people would consider you and me silly
if we made a big to-do about it.

When we pass value judgment within perceived categories we ... well, we *
judge*, decide what one thing is better, more beautiful, more worthy, more
desirable, more sophisticated, more unsightly, more unseemly, more scratchy,
more mellow, more itchy, more ... more ... than other supposedly comparable
things. And we create, reinforce and pass on our prejudices. If we go beyond
an individual's prejudices to determine what the prejudices of the majority
of a given sample population are, then ... what then? Well, in a way we
legitimize these prejudices, be they positive or negative. In other words,
these prejudices become socially OK, and other people will adopt them,
because most people are afraid of being in the minority. And where there are
winners there are losers. So how do you think people feel when their
language ends up way down the list of most beautiful <> ugliest language? If
taken seriously, what might this do for the language?

So, to side with our Paul, "the point being ...?"

Regards and Merry Christmas!

Reinhard/Ron
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