LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.05 (01) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 05 November 2009
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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.04 (03) [EN]

Hi all, Ron you write: Isn't it just that words that came from Latin, French
and Norman are thought of as more "learned," "serious" or "high-level" and
are therefore often used and played with to make things sound "classy," "
scientific," "legal" and overall "better"? Compared with them, most
Germanic-rooted words sound "simple" and "everyday" to most English
speakers. This would make clear much of what you and I think of as needless
use of such words (that are known as "Latinate").

So do you mean that only after Robin Hood and 1066 Saxon society in England
became classy? Jacqueline BdJ/Seattle
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Lexicon

Jacqueline:
So do you mean that only after Robin Hood and 1066 Saxon society in England
became classy?

Absolutely not!

Social classes existed prior to 1066. So I assume that there were
perceptions of "classiness" associated with use of language then. This may
have favored certain dialects of Old English over others, and there was
Latin, or smatterings thereof for effect, as symbols of both piety and
higher education which in medieval Europe were considered inextricably
linked.

What I was trying to suggest was the likelihood that the Norman occupation
introduced new features to the socio-linguistic landscape of England and
parts of what is now Scotland. Norman constituted a medium of political
power and as such was perceived as prestigious. It came to be "classy" (=
"high-class" = prestigious) and therefore gained new speakers among people
of English-speaking background. Many knew it as a second language (which
afforded access and admission to the power elite) and among many of these it
eventually became the first language.

It may have been similar to the use of French in 17th- and 18th-century
Europe. Many aristocrats used French as a prestige language, because
everything seen as novel, fashionable, stylish and "worth-while" was coming
from France then. Some aristocratic families even cultivated French as their
first language. If you weren't quite up there or were an aristocrat in a
"backward" region, you at least peppered your German, Dutch, Czech or
whatever with as many French expressions as possible. This then trickled
down to the urban middle class. In the Low-Saxon-speaking region, some of
that trickled down from then already more powerful German language. The
Napoleonic occupation of a large portion of that region then brought Low
Saxon into direct contact with French speakers, and many of them tried to
communicate with the occupation forces in French. (They had no choice since
they were forced to host French soldiers in their homes.) This reinforced
the use of already existing French elements and new French elements crept
in, many of which remain and have no commonly used equivalents in German.

Back to Britain. So the post-1066 upper classes came to consist of Normans,
part-Normans and Norman-speaking English. Norman remained prestigious after
the end of Norman rule, though English made a comeback. In the beginning,
many members of the elite had to learn English and often knew it poorly.
Norman influence and loanwords in English apparently continued to be
perceived as prestigious because of their elite connection. I am sure that
ordinary folks, especially in rural areas, spoke quite differently and
retained older English elements much longer. It is only that such dialects
were not written down because they were seen as low-class and were thus
perceived as coarse.

Well, at least this is *my* birds-eye view of that historical period. I
don't know as much about it as many of you.

I don't think you can turn back the clock. "It is what it is," as one of my
dearest friends likes to say. Norman strata in English are very strong and
in large part are also what is called "nativized", i.e. no longer perceived
and treated as foreign but are quite ordinary (words such as "use",
"simple", "sound" and "serious"). Other Norman-derived English words are
more concise than equivalent English expressions and are considered less
"clumsy". And then there is the apparently debatable, seemingly gratuitous
use of Latinate expressions which adds another level.

On a personal note, I cherish the Germanic strata of English and Scots and
think of them as making for fine insular (i.e. somewhat removed) relatives
of Low Saxon, Dutch, etc. By the same token, I feel that especially the
Norman strata and influences have added to these languages a special
"dimension" that I would not want to miss. It has introduced a type of
flexibility that is quite unique among the Germanic languages. I love this
about them, and I feel it stands English in good stead as an international
lingua franca. While I also love Low Saxon, German and in fact all the other
Germanic languages, English with its greater degree of flexibility and its
larger palette of choices allows me much more room for expressive "play",
and I particularly love this in creative writing.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

----------

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.04 (01) [EN]

Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.04 (01) [EN]
 From: Lowlands-L List <lowlands.list at GMAIL.COM>
 Date: 2009-11-04 5:52 pm

From: DAVID COWLEY <DavidCowley at anglesey.gov.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.03 (03) [EN]
 out, EX. We
also find Exit being used as a verb in computer-speak: 'are you sure you
want to exit the application?' - what's wrong with 'leave' I wonder?

Only a few decades ago computers didin't have much core memory and the
amount of space taken up by messages in English to the user was simply too
much. Instead each messag had a number and you saw some thing like 'Error
24' and looked up error number 24 in the manual to see what that meant.
Later machines had larger memories and it gradually became feasible for the
machine to use English, but space was still at a premium so shorter words
came to be favoured over longer in computer-human interaction.

Many professionals would say this process has gone too far, the English used
in computer messages running to whole paragraphs. This gets really annoying
if you use the computer eight hours a day and have to look at the same text
over and over again. And I certainly don't want to be asked questions by a
cartoon dog!

 Many words have special meanings in the computer industry. For example if
you quit a program then you'll lose your data, if you exit then you won't.
Again, these days a full explanation tends to be given so it matters less.

In computing there is often the problem of running out of variants of a
word. Currently I'm writing a program who's main purpose ( not 'the main
purpose of which' :) is to change files into different forms. What do I call
this process? 'Edit' means to use an editor to change thing by hand or batch
commands, 'transform' refers to changes made by XSLT, 'morph' means to alter
an image by repositioning points on surfaces, 'alter' suggests only a minor
change and 'change' makes the user wonder if he has to do the change
himself. While casual computer users may be oblivious to all that, many of
my customers are themseves programmers and a new term has to be chosen in
the face of restrictions imposed by many previous and often well-established
usages.

I won't try to speak for the medical or advertising professions, but I
expect their usages match their needs.

Sandy Fleming
Http://scotstext.org/ <http://scotstext.org/>

•

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