LL-L "Language politics" 2009.09.27 (02) [EN]

Sun Sep 27 18:52:33 UTC 2009

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L O W L A N D S - L - 27 September 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics"

Beste Ron,

You wrote:

*All* languages, like *all* cultures, are valuable and can do what they are
supposed to do, as long as they are given the freedom and respect to do so.

Agree...but...what are languages and cultures under the jurisdiction of a
higher entity then "supposed to do" exactly?

Does freedom include the freedom to break away unilaterally from a central
government?

If so, let me propose a deal: let Sachsenland go its own way and allow
Niederfrankenland to enter the German union. Berlin and Brussels remain the
political capitals, and MÃ¼nchen and Amsterdam get a new status.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/NiederfrÃ¤nkisch<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederfr%C3%A4nkisch>

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium

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

Luc,

I suppose you're trying to tease me here ...

By "supposed to do" I meant "function as languages and cultures", not "take
political action" or "secede" or anything like that. The latter types of
things are what some speakers might consider doing. Languages and cultures
can't do that.

When I said "*All* languages, like *all* cultures, are valuable and can do
what they are supposed to do, as long as they are given the freedom and
respect to do so," I was addressing the types of mindset in which some
languages and cultures are considered "better" and "more developed" than
others. My argument is that languages and cultures will, given the social
and political freedom to do so, adapt to changing circumstances in order to
do what they are meant (= supposed) to do as languages and cultures.

As for languages specifically, their vocabulary will adapt and grow and
their grammatical structures might change to accommodate it's speakers'
changing "reality", such as in technology and environment, sociopolitical
order, and spirituality and philosophy. Also, its structure might change on
account of substantial foreign influence (very often because it is adopted
by large numbers of speakers of another language, such as in the case of Low
Saxon and German on West Slavic substrata). Such changes come about
naturally over time, sometimes faster than at other times, depending on
need, urgency and levels of restriction or opposition. Sometimes this
happens not so "naturally" but is pushed along by conscious, concerted
efforts (some would say "interference").

A remarkable example of this is the reinstatement of Hebrew as an everyday
language. Contrary to popular belief, Hebrew was never "dead," was not only
used for liturgy. It was and is an international lingua franca of Jewish
learning (side by side with Judeo-Aramaic). It was always used in publishing
new literature, and learned people have always been able to converse in it
in the absence of a common Diaspora language. But its area of functionality
had come to be restricted to religion, philosophy and the areas of life
directly based on these (which to very devout people was pretty much all
their was, anyway). It was in the wake of European Jewish emancipation in
conjunction with the development of Zionism in the 19th century that people
began advocating the reassertion of Hebrew as a language to be used in all
walks of life. The Belarusian Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman)
tends to be given all the credit, but there were others, modern authors
using Hebrew, drawing new expressions from Biblical and Medieval Hebrew
texts. By the time European Jews began to settle in Palestine they were able
to speak Hebrew with each other, and the language took it from there. It is
now a fully functioning language on any subject, has millions of native
speakers, and there is an unmistakable Hebrew accent when native speakers
use other languages. The resulting language is in some regards (especially
phonologically) a far cry from the ancestral language, but it is by no means
a newly created language.

This is not all that different from the case of Sanskrit and Pali, two
Indo-Aryan languages that tend to be regarded as being languages of Hindu
and Buddhist learning and liturgy (Sanskrit of both Hinduism and Buddhism).
Both of them are in fact spoken by sizable populations in South and
Southeast Asia, most of them in monasteries and other types of religious
institutions. In India there are now efforts to use Sanskrit as a first
language in a few villages. This is similar to the history of Latin as an
international lingua franca in Roman Catholic institutions and, in the
Middle Ages, among scholars. (Imagine a village in, say, Spain or Italy
deciding to switch to Latin from Spanish or Italian.)

What these cases have in common is a religious base. Without it it such
"resurrection" may be difficult, because the "spiritual" or rather emotional
foundation is missing among the (potential) speakers. An alternative might
be strong nationalistic consciousness and fervor (which sounds a bit scary).
But in many cases ethnic consciousness has been "sucked out of" minorities,
such as speakers of Low Saxon, Occitan speakers of Southern France, and
Slavic speakers of Northern Greece, and many have been conditioned into
despising their own languages.

My basic argument is that, given all the "right" circumstances, a language *
can* rise to the challenge of becoming fully functioning. One of the most
common obstacles is nay-saying, the old "can't be done" and "let's not mess
with it" attitude.

Regards, and best wishes for Yom Kippur wherever it applies.
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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