LL-L "Language politics" 2007.10.13 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  13 October 2007 - Volume 02
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: "M.-L. Lessing" <marless at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics"

Hello,

as to the success of English and French in spite of their weird spelling: I
found this recently:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,510913,00.html (German)

In short it says that words survive the better the more they are used. They
"prove" is with irregular verbs. Can the same be valid for queer spelling?
The more it is used, the more natural it may seem. Humans seem to see widely
used words as given wholes and do not question their spelling. The power of
habit :-)

Hartlich Gröten!

Marlou

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From: "heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk" <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2007.10.12 (03) [E]

Ron wrote:
Regarding French, I think you support my argument; despite being one of the
"worst" European languages for matching sounds with spelling, it has a wide
currency - because France was powerful.
Wasn't it more that French was used as the language of diplomacy because it
is the language least likely to produce ambiguities? I had understood that
English produced too many or needed copious circumlocutions to avoid them
but French has a precision not least because of its lack of synonyms -
something one could NOT say about English.
And didn't it adopt the role from Latin once that lost out as a lingua
franca?
Heather [Randall]
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