Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watrose.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watrose!cctimar From: cctimar@watrose.UUCP (Cary Timar) Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: Re: Language committees Message-ID: <8223@watrose.UUCP> Date: Sun, 26-Oct-86 00:00:15 EST Article-I.D.: watrose.8223 Posted: Sun Oct 26 00:00:15 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 26-Oct-86 04:10:51 EST References: <3489@utcsri.UUCP> <8209@watrose.UUCP> <8212@watrose.UUCP> <2441@curly.ucla-cs.ARPA> Reply-To: cctimar@watrose.UUCP (Cary Timar) Distribution: net Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 51 Keywords: progress, regress Summary: about language change in English In article <2441@curly.ucla-cs.ARPA> othar@zeus (Othar Hansson) writes: >In Iceland, we try to do it in a more intelligent and thoughtful manner, >and this has preserved (somewhat) the language from Americanisms. >average word has a more intelligent (and native) etymology. Also, this >official policy against linguistic borrowing has kept the language close >to what it was 1000 years ago (as opposed to Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, Many introductory texts on historical linguistics begin with a discussion of attitudes. Two pervasive approaches are expressed by calling language change either "corruption" or "evolution". The first supposes that the original language is being corrupted by changes in usage and meaning. This is particularly popular among school teachers and language committees. The "evolution" approach is more rare, but it suggests that the language is continually being improved by people who make necessary changes to it. This is most often seen when discussing the languages used by secluded, non-technological tribes. People say things like "This primitive language does not even allow the speaker to indicate tense!" and ignore the reason that the speakers don't think in terms of tenses per se. It is simply assumed that such primitive technology indicates a primitive tribe which therefore has primitive society, primitive morals, primitive language, ... Neither approach is fair. Languages change by the implicit mutual agreement of their speakers. I personally do not like the words "prioritize" or "utilize", but I understand them, and therefore implicitly accept them. The case where I do not accept a word occurs when somebody says "Please get me a bleeg." and I do not act on it. If he does not achieve the desired results with the word "bleeg" he will eventually have to start saying "apple" instead (no compulsion, but it will make life easier for him). Back to my point. I see no advantage to keeping a language true to its origins. It is nice to be able to read ancient works, I agree, but those who care enough will learn the dead language (which usually isn't that hard). English will continue to evolve randomly, though slower than it would have before printing and audio tapes. Usually, English speakers will be mutually intelligible (I mean, if it gets much worse than it is now, we simply declare it to be more than one language :-) If the language splits and changes radically, the world will nonetheless keep some "lingua franca" (maybe even French again, so that it'd make sense :-) Anyway, _in_my_personal_opinion_ the world requires a lingua franca that can bend any which way in the hands of both the expert and inexpert speaker. English currently fulfills this function. An English Standardization Committee would probably only reduce the currency of the language. -- -- Cary Timar