Sounds

[Guest guest]

I can't tell whether Tom approves, or disapproves, the fictional

Calpurnia's knowledge of two varieties of English (together with her

competent strategy for deciding when to use each). To me, Calpurnia's

competent bi-dialectism seems as logical as (say) writing in UK

English when writing for a UK publisher (even if one writes American

English at other times) — as logical as speaking French to a

Frenchman.

To say that Calpurnia (or anyone else) " should in theory " know and

use only one variety of her language makes (to me) as little sense as

saying that a person or animal " should in theory " have the ability to

use only one hand or paw. Calling one variety of a language inherently

a wrong variety (something that one should " in theory " lack the

ability to use) makes (to me) as little sense as calling a left hand

(or a right hand) inherently " wrong. "

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

" Languages (and varieties of languages) differ from currencies, in

that two or more can coexist. Just as knowing English does not keep

you from learning Chinese, knowing your mother's language does not

prevent you from learning your teacher's language. "

Languages can certainly co-exist side by side. We can see this in

Europe where each country may have its own language but many

countries abut each other. But within a single country that uses a

single language, varieties of one language can obstruct

communication.

Also, I believe, within one country, it is better to have a single

language, or, if two or more languages are in constant use, then

every person living in that country should be able to speak all

languages so that no miscommunications ensue.

Given that most people have trouble learning even ONE language, it

is unreasonable to expect that multi-lingual societies can co-exist

side by side without problems coming up from time to time due to

ignorance of certain words that should have been learned by the

users but weren't.

Further, accidental problems are not the ONLY problems to ensue in

multi-lingual societies. While traveling through a primarily

Hispanic neighborhood, a couple of men were talking pleasantly to me

in English to my face, but then disdainfully about white people in

Spanish. They were unaware that I understood their language.

I have seen people make the comment in fast food restaurants that

suddenly the multi-lingual person behind the counter doesn't

understand English when you have a problem.

To avoid this problem, I think each country ought to declare a

national language and then require that all citizens therin learn

and speak only that language in public (Aboriginals in the US and

other countries would be exempted from this rule considering that

the countries inhabited by descendents of the settlers is really the

land inhabited by the FIRST settlers - the Aboriginals). If

immigrants want to retain their native language, no problem, but

they should keep it and speak it in private to avoid

miscommunication in public.

And now that I have re-read the previous paragraph, perhaps when all

my ancesters came over to this country from Europe, we all should

have started speaking Native American languages instead of English.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

Re: Re: sounds

" I can't tell whether Tom approves, or disapproves, the fictional

Calpurnia's knowledge of two varieties of English (together with her

competent strategy for deciding when to use each). To me, Calpurnia's

competent bi-dialectism seems as logical as (say) writing in UK

English when writing for a UK publisher (even if one writes American

English at other times) — as logical as speaking French to a

Frenchman. "

I see your point. However, when one lives in England, one expects to

speak and write English English. Or if one is writing for an

employer based in Egland, one would expect to use English English if

the employer requires it.

But if you live in the US, and you circulate in American society,

and you work for an American employer who requires that you speak

and write using the American version of English created by Noah

Webster, then you should be required to speak it and write it

without a qualm.

" To say that Calpurnia (or anyone else) " should in theory " know and

use only one variety of her language makes (to me) as little sense as

saying that a person or animal " should in theory " have the ability to

use only one hand or paw. Calling one variety of a language

inherently a wrong variety (something that one should " in theory "

lack the ability to use) makes (to me) as little sense as calling a

left hand (or a right hand) inherently " wrong. "

Well, at present, people are free to choose to speak however they

wish, just as you assert they should....

And look at the trouble this causes.

It became the " in " think back in my high school for those of African

American descent who were born in my predominantly white suburb to

abandon their " white " English in favor of African American dialect

so as to maintain their cultural identity. The also got rid of T-

shirts and started wearing dashikis. When that happened, suddenly

the black kids in our school became incomprehensible to us white

folks since they absolutely refused to speak American English that

we could understand, even though they were fully capable of doing

so. This created a divide that was never circumvented while I was

there. (If you cannot communicate with someone, how can you hope to

get to know them or get along with them?)

I truly do believe than one way to eliminate racism is to get rid of

dailects (either regional or cultural) and speak one common language

that everyone agrees upon and can understand.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

Re: Re: sounds

" I can't tell whether Tom approves, or disapproves, the fictional

Calpurnia's knowledge of two varieties of English (together with her

competent strategy for deciding when to use each). To me, Calpurnia's

competent bi-dialectism seems as logical as (say) writing in UK

English when writing for a UK publisher (even if one writes American

English at other times) — as logical as speaking French to a

Frenchman. "

I see your point. However, when one lives in England, one expects to

speak and write English English. Or if one is writing for an

employer based in Egland, one would expect to use English English if

the employer requires it.

But if you live in the US, and you circulate in American society,

and you work for an American employer who requires that you speak

and write using the American version of English created by Noah

Webster, then you should be required to speak it and write it

without a qualm.

" To say that Calpurnia (or anyone else) " should in theory " know and

use only one variety of her language makes (to me) as little sense as

saying that a person or animal " should in theory " have the ability to

use only one hand or paw. Calling one variety of a language

inherently a wrong variety (something that one should " in theory "

lack the ability to use) makes (to me) as little sense as calling a

left hand (or a right hand) inherently " wrong. "

Well, at present, people are free to choose to speak however they

wish, just as you assert they should....

And look at the trouble this causes.

It became the " in " think back in my high school for those of African

American descent who were born in my predominantly white suburb to

abandon their " white " English in favor of African American dialect

so as to maintain their cultural identity. The also got rid of T-

shirts and started wearing dashikis. When that happened, suddenly

the black kids in our school became incomprehensible to us white

folks since they absolutely refused to speak American English that

we could understand, even though they were fully capable of doing

so. This created a divide that was never circumvented while I was

there. (If you cannot communicate with someone, how can you hope to

get to know them or get along with them?)

I truly do believe than one way to eliminate racism is to get rid of

dailects (either regional or cultural) and speak one common language

that everyone agrees upon and can understand.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

Re: Re: sounds

" I can't tell whether Tom approves, or disapproves, the fictional

Calpurnia's knowledge of two varieties of English (together with her

competent strategy for deciding when to use each). To me, Calpurnia's

competent bi-dialectism seems as logical as (say) writing in UK

English when writing for a UK publisher (even if one writes American

English at other times) — as logical as speaking French to a

Frenchman. "

I see your point. However, when one lives in England, one expects to

speak and write English English. Or if one is writing for an

employer based in Egland, one would expect to use English English if

the employer requires it.

But if you live in the US, and you circulate in American society,

and you work for an American employer who requires that you speak

and write using the American version of English created by Noah

Webster, then you should be required to speak it and write it

without a qualm.

" To say that Calpurnia (or anyone else) " should in theory " know and

use only one variety of her language makes (to me) as little sense as

saying that a person or animal " should in theory " have the ability to

use only one hand or paw. Calling one variety of a language

inherently a wrong variety (something that one should " in theory "

lack the ability to use) makes (to me) as little sense as calling a

left hand (or a right hand) inherently " wrong. "

Well, at present, people are free to choose to speak however they

wish, just as you assert they should....

And look at the trouble this causes.

It became the " in " think back in my high school for those of African

American descent who were born in my predominantly white suburb to

abandon their " white " English in favor of African American dialect

so as to maintain their cultural identity. The also got rid of T-

shirts and started wearing dashikis. When that happened, suddenly

the black kids in our school became incomprehensible to us white

folks since they absolutely refused to speak American English that

we could understand, even though they were fully capable of doing

so. This created a divide that was never circumvented while I was

there. (If you cannot communicate with someone, how can you hope to

get to know them or get along with them?)

I truly do believe than one way to eliminate racism is to get rid of

dailects (either regional or cultural) and speak one common language

that everyone agrees upon and can understand.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

When I hear people say that a global currency and/or language wouldn't

work, I always remember that (in various times and places) people once

said that a natiional currency and/or language could never work.

And I can remember my " Computer Science " teacher (in college, about

1978) giving a whole list of reasons why a global computer network

could never work — not among civilians, at any rate ...

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

When I hear people say that a global currency and/or language wouldn't

work, I always remember that (in various times and places) people once

said that a natiional currency and/or language could never work.

And I can remember my " Computer Science " teacher (in college, about

1978) giving a whole list of reasons why a global computer network

could never work — not among civilians, at any rate ...

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

When I hear people say that a global currency and/or language wouldn't

work, I always remember that (in various times and places) people once

said that a natiional currency and/or language could never work.

And I can remember my " Computer Science " teacher (in college, about

1978) giving a whole list of reasons why a global computer network

could never work — not among civilians, at any rate ...

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

Re:

>

> To avoid this problem, I think each country ought to declare a

> national language and then require that all citizens therin learn

> and speak only that language in public

I agree as far as having to learn it goes. I disagree with your

proposal on having to speak only the selected language.

You've given (as your reasons for one-language-per-country) unifying

people, ending dislikes and misunderstandings between different groups

of people, etc. ... reasons which could equally justify selecting one

" official national " meal, type of clothing, form of transport, genre

of music, art., etc in order to compel people to eat only the

nationally approved symbol-of-unity food item, wear only the

nationally approved uniform, rperform only the nationally approved

type of music and art, etc., etc., etc., whenever they ventured beyond

the walls of their homes.

How would you enforce this, anyway? From what little I know, efforts

to prevent the public use of non-national languages have usually

included (and/or devolved into) very serious child-abuse, eerily

resembling the worst of curebie brainwashing ... for more on this,

read the excellent book " Spoken Here " by Mark Abley (a study of

non-national/unofficial languages in nations that heavily prioritize

or aim for a national language). I suspect that Raven, too, can tell

you a bit about how " speak-English " policies impacted the First

Nations (Native Americans) ... something I know only a little about,

from Mark Abley's book. (He describes truly horrific

language-extinguishing techniques as standard operating procedure, for

literally centuries, in Native-American-targeted missions/publicly

funded boarding schools throughout the USA and Canada — also in other

countries, against other populations.)

As you yourself very perceptively note: if you really believe in

forbidding all but the already established language in public, you'd

have to believe that the first Caucasian settlers did wrong by using

English (or Spanish or French) anywhere but behind closed doors in

utter privacy And I suppose the Romans (when they went anywhere beyond

*their* homeland) did wrong by not keeping their Latin behind closed

doors, too, and using only Gaulish or Basque (or whatever else

prevailed locally) whenever outside the walls of a Roman household ...

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

Re:

> I see your point. However, when one lives in England, one expects to

> speak and write English English. Or if one is writing for an

> employer based in Egland, one would expect to use English English if

> the employer requires it.

>

> But if you live in the US, and you circulate in American society,

> and you work for an American employer who requires that you speak

> and write using the American version of English created by Noah

> Webster.

Nobody, Tom — neither you nor any other American — speaks or writes

that version. The English created in Noah Webster's dictionary differs

far (as an earlier message of mine pointed out — check your

spam-bucket?) from what the public accepted then, or would accept now.

Take a look sometime at his first edition (and every printing before

Merriam bought the company) — Webster prescribed (though his readers

refused to accept) " soop " as the spelling for a liquid food, " aker " as

the spelling for a unit of land, " zebber " as the pronunciation for

" zebra " (although he spelled this word as we do), and " danger " with

its first syllable pronounced identically with " Dan. "

Let me know if you want me to (re-)send some of the web-sites on how

Webster's spelling diverges from standard American spelling then (or

now: historical and current USA spelling accepts some but not all of

Webster's changes. About half of the spellings that Webster invented

will fail you on a spelling test in the USA as anywhere else in the

English-speaking world: the USA goes to Webster's " theater " but

refused to drink his " soop. " )

I'll accept Webster's own usage as my standard when the rest of the

nation spells " soop " and " aker " — not before.

> then you should be required to speak it and write it

> without a qualm.

Calpurnia could, and did, speak the standard variety without a qualm

when the situation called for (and permitted) it — and a non-standard

variety, when the situation called for that. I consider this

comparable with having the good sense to write UK English for a UK

editor and USA English for a USA editor. Why do you disapprove (it

seems) Calpurnia's flexibility, while recommending (correctly) a

similar flexibility when dealing with USA versus UK differences?

>

>

> Well, at present, people are free to choose to speak however they

> wish, just as you assert they should....

>

> And look at the trouble this causes.

You might think otherwise, if some governmental committee defined a

" standard USA English " ... and defined it as some variety other than

yours.

> ... suddenly

> the black kids in our school became incomprehensible to us white

> folks ...

When someone speaks a language (or a variety of a language) that you

don't understand, you have two alternatives:

/a/ remain partly or wholly ignorant of that speech (and submit

to all the trouble and embarrassment that your ignorance causes),

or

/b/ learn that speech yourself.

If they can speak your way and understand you, but you cannot speak

their way or understand them, just whom shall we call ignorant?

> since they absolutely refused to speak American English that

> we could understand, even though they were fully capable of doing

> so.

Before I venture an answer to this point:

Were you (and your own friends) capable, or not capable, of learning

the variety of English that the other group preferred to use?

This created a divide that was never circumvented while I was

> there. (If you cannot communicate with someone, how can you hope to

> get to know them or get along with them?)

The black kids understood your English perfectly well (they simply

didn't want to use it). You, on the other hand, could not understand

them. So on whose side lies the failure to communicate?

>

> I truly do believe than one way to eliminate racism is to get rid of

> dailects (either regional or cultural) and speak one common language

> that everyone agrees upon and can understand.

The nations and regions that have most effectively imposed an official

language (e.g., Spain under Franco, " Russian Poland " under the tsars)

saw some of the fiercest and most destructive increases in

ethnic-group/racial unrest. When Franco outlawed the Catalan language

(spoken around Barcelona), many formerly peaceable Catalans became

terrorists: specifically because he had outlawed their language.

If you ever have charge of a country and you want people to hate you,

your government, all you stand for — and to hate the national

language, too — criminalize their own language.

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

" Webster wrote no dictionary. You mean Noah Webster. "

Yup. Sorry. My bad.

" ... and equally many people (on both sides of the Atlantic)

considered it very ridiculous: partly because Noah Webster believed

in simplified spelling to an extent that no American (or other)

mainstream publisher since his day has followed. "

True. However, the final lexicon was eventually established and

agreed upon. The folks in Britain didn't like the initial change,

incidentally, because it was a snub toward them and another

assertion of ur independence.

" Until the the early 19th century, Webster's dictionary

prescribed (as correct American spellings, the new standard he wished

to establish here) " soop " (for " soup " ) and " aker " (for " acre " ), which

Americans ignored while accepting certain of his other spellings

(such as " center " and " color " and " plow " ) "

Yep. But now what can be found in the dictionary and what is taught

in school are the same and have remained so for decades (with the

exception of certain insertions of new words and deletions of

archaic ones that have come to be accepted as standard).

Had you looked up " terrific " at one time, you would have

seen " causing terror " as the primary definition. Now it has become

the secondary meaning behind such things as " excellent, of great

size or intensity, and excessive. "

" By your logic, the instant that Noah Webster's dictionary set a

standard for American English (complete with " soop " and " aker " and

hundreds more of that sort), we should all instantly have followed

that standard and should still follow it today. "

Yep.

" (And I haven't even touched on Webster's notions of proper American

pronunciation: he decreed that Americans must pronounce " zebra " as

" zebber " and that we must pronounce " danger " with the first syllable

equal to " Dan. " Again, the literate world ignored him.) "

Yep. But these days, his dictionary in its present form is now

regarded as the authority on American English.

" For all your admiration of Webster, I very much doubt that you spell

" soop " and " aker " —that you would consider it proper, patriotic,

American English if someone else spelled these words in Webster's own

fashion and required schoolchildren (or others) to do likewise.

Probably, even fewer patriotic, Webster-adoring Americans

write " soop " and " aker " than follow Webster's other vast and

forgotten attempt at culture-change: changing the Bible. "

I am refering to the current version of his dictionary which has

long since standardized the spellings we see today.

" Non-conformity in speech has always existed in every English-

speaking nation (and, as far as I know, in every nation). If writing

governed speech, all who write alike would speak alike. However,

writing does not govern speech: writing one variety of a language

gives the written variety no mystic power to kill the other, equally

old (non-written) varieties. "

This is because social situations tend to govern the type of speach

that is used. But I adhere to the idea that society would be much

better if people adhered to formal speech and pronounced words

correctly. Fewer misunderstandings would occur.

I said...

" Would that we all used standard American English in America rather

than what we are used to hearing and what we have come to take for

acceptable usage. "

Kate asked:

" Why? What (in your opinion) would make the existence of a single

variety better (somehow) than the co-existence of more than one

variety? "

It would save northerners from calling southerners " hicks " . It would

save white people from calling black people certain slurs that I

won't mention. It would ensure that meaning and intent was more

specific and less interpretive. It would discourage cliches and

encourage social harmony.

" And then you might learn a new word. Ignorance of someone else's

vocabulary does not make your variety better than his — any more than

my ignorance of Chinese makes English a better language than

Chinese. "

But if you knew the word to begin with, or if your patron used

proper English to begin with, then no misunderstanding would take

place in the first place and no ill will would have been perceived

or interpreted by either party.

" The Chinese themselves increasingly regard the different varieties

of Chinese as differing Chinese languages (and call them so) —

rather as we regard French, Spanish, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese,

etc., as different Romance (Latin-descended) languages. "

Umm...

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Confucius-says-its-time-to-learn-

Mandarin/2005/03/04/1109700672609.html

In this article it says...

" China is beginning a very different cultural revolution with the

launch of language centres around the world.

" Long resentful of being the target of " cultural imperialism " , China

is embarking on an ambitious plan named after the great sage

Confucius to spread the use of its language around the world.

" The Government is setting up language and cultural institutes in

major foreign cities and dispatching modestly paid volunteers to

teach in small communities. "

" Dialects don't exist of " necessity " — they simply exist. "

No. They exist out of necessity. By then end of my high school

years, any black kid that was speaking white English instead of the

African American dialect was getting beat up by his African American

brothers.

" The need for a standard variety (in America or anywhere) shouldn't

mean an end to other varieties, any more than the existence of Latin

(in the Roman Empire) meant an end to all other languages of Western

Europe. We can (and should) master the standard variety alongside

whatever we speak locally — just as (in your example) citizens of

the Roman Empire mastered Latin alongside whatever they spoke at

home. "

We can. But I don't think it is necessary that we should.

" Every argument you've given for having one and only one variety of a

language (within a nation) could equally require having one and only

one language throughout the world. Do you want that, too? "

Nope.

" If some international committee voted to make everyone learn a

particular language (if the UN voted to make us all learn Esperanto,

for instance), would you decide that there now existed

no " necessity " for English, and call for its abolition? "

I'd fight it. But if I, for example, moved to france I would learn

french. If I moved to Italy, I would learn Italian. If I moved to

Spain, I would learn Spanish.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" Webster wrote no dictionary. You mean Noah Webster. "

Yup. Sorry. My bad.

" ... and equally many people (on both sides of the Atlantic)

considered it very ridiculous: partly because Noah Webster believed

in simplified spelling to an extent that no American (or other)

mainstream publisher since his day has followed. "

True. However, the final lexicon was eventually established and

agreed upon. The folks in Britain didn't like the initial change,

incidentally, because it was a snub toward them and another

assertion of ur independence.

" Until the the early 19th century, Webster's dictionary

prescribed (as correct American spellings, the new standard he wished

to establish here) " soop " (for " soup " ) and " aker " (for " acre " ), which

Americans ignored while accepting certain of his other spellings

(such as " center " and " color " and " plow " ) "

Yep. But now what can be found in the dictionary and what is taught

in school are the same and have remained so for decades (with the

exception of certain insertions of new words and deletions of

archaic ones that have come to be accepted as standard).

Had you looked up " terrific " at one time, you would have

seen " causing terror " as the primary definition. Now it has become

the secondary meaning behind such things as " excellent, of great

size or intensity, and excessive. "

" By your logic, the instant that Noah Webster's dictionary set a

standard for American English (complete with " soop " and " aker " and

hundreds more of that sort), we should all instantly have followed

that standard and should still follow it today. "

Yep.

" (And I haven't even touched on Webster's notions of proper American

pronunciation: he decreed that Americans must pronounce " zebra " as

" zebber " and that we must pronounce " danger " with the first syllable

equal to " Dan. " Again, the literate world ignored him.) "

Yep. But these days, his dictionary in its present form is now

regarded as the authority on American English.

" For all your admiration of Webster, I very much doubt that you spell

" soop " and " aker " —that you would consider it proper, patriotic,

American English if someone else spelled these words in Webster's own

fashion and required schoolchildren (or others) to do likewise.

Probably, even fewer patriotic, Webster-adoring Americans

write " soop " and " aker " than follow Webster's other vast and

forgotten attempt at culture-change: changing the Bible. "

I am refering to the current version of his dictionary which has

long since standardized the spellings we see today.

" Non-conformity in speech has always existed in every English-

speaking nation (and, as far as I know, in every nation). If writing

governed speech, all who write alike would speak alike. However,

writing does not govern speech: writing one variety of a language

gives the written variety no mystic power to kill the other, equally

old (non-written) varieties. "

This is because social situations tend to govern the type of speach

that is used. But I adhere to the idea that society would be much

better if people adhered to formal speech and pronounced words

correctly. Fewer misunderstandings would occur.

I said...

" Would that we all used standard American English in America rather

than what we are used to hearing and what we have come to take for

acceptable usage. "

Kate asked:

" Why? What (in your opinion) would make the existence of a single

variety better (somehow) than the co-existence of more than one

variety? "

It would save northerners from calling southerners " hicks " . It would

save white people from calling black people certain slurs that I

won't mention. It would ensure that meaning and intent was more

specific and less interpretive. It would discourage cliches and

encourage social harmony.

" And then you might learn a new word. Ignorance of someone else's

vocabulary does not make your variety better than his — any more than

my ignorance of Chinese makes English a better language than

Chinese. "

But if you knew the word to begin with, or if your patron used

proper English to begin with, then no misunderstanding would take

place in the first place and no ill will would have been perceived

or interpreted by either party.

" The Chinese themselves increasingly regard the different varieties

of Chinese as differing Chinese languages (and call them so) —

rather as we regard French, Spanish, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese,

etc., as different Romance (Latin-descended) languages. "

Umm...

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Confucius-says-its-time-to-learn-

Mandarin/2005/03/04/1109700672609.html

In this article it says...

" China is beginning a very different cultural revolution with the

launch of language centres around the world.

" Long resentful of being the target of " cultural imperialism " , China

is embarking on an ambitious plan named after the great sage

Confucius to spread the use of its language around the world.

" The Government is setting up language and cultural institutes in

major foreign cities and dispatching modestly paid volunteers to

teach in small communities. "

" Dialects don't exist of " necessity " — they simply exist. "

No. They exist out of necessity. By then end of my high school

years, any black kid that was speaking white English instead of the

African American dialect was getting beat up by his African American

brothers.

" The need for a standard variety (in America or anywhere) shouldn't

mean an end to other varieties, any more than the existence of Latin

(in the Roman Empire) meant an end to all other languages of Western

Europe. We can (and should) master the standard variety alongside

whatever we speak locally — just as (in your example) citizens of

the Roman Empire mastered Latin alongside whatever they spoke at

home. "

We can. But I don't think it is necessary that we should.

" Every argument you've given for having one and only one variety of a

language (within a nation) could equally require having one and only

one language throughout the world. Do you want that, too? "

Nope.

" If some international committee voted to make everyone learn a

particular language (if the UN voted to make us all learn Esperanto,

for instance), would you decide that there now existed

no " necessity " for English, and call for its abolition? "

I'd fight it. But if I, for example, moved to france I would learn

french. If I moved to Italy, I would learn Italian. If I moved to

Spain, I would learn Spanish.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" Webster wrote no dictionary. You mean Noah Webster. "

Yup. Sorry. My bad.

" ... and equally many people (on both sides of the Atlantic)

considered it very ridiculous: partly because Noah Webster believed

in simplified spelling to an extent that no American (or other)

mainstream publisher since his day has followed. "

True. However, the final lexicon was eventually established and

agreed upon. The folks in Britain didn't like the initial change,

incidentally, because it was a snub toward them and another

assertion of ur independence.

" Until the the early 19th century, Webster's dictionary

prescribed (as correct American spellings, the new standard he wished

to establish here) " soop " (for " soup " ) and " aker " (for " acre " ), which

Americans ignored while accepting certain of his other spellings

(such as " center " and " color " and " plow " ) "

Yep. But now what can be found in the dictionary and what is taught

in school are the same and have remained so for decades (with the

exception of certain insertions of new words and deletions of

archaic ones that have come to be accepted as standard).

Had you looked up " terrific " at one time, you would have

seen " causing terror " as the primary definition. Now it has become

the secondary meaning behind such things as " excellent, of great

size or intensity, and excessive. "

" By your logic, the instant that Noah Webster's dictionary set a

standard for American English (complete with " soop " and " aker " and

hundreds more of that sort), we should all instantly have followed

that standard and should still follow it today. "

Yep.

" (And I haven't even touched on Webster's notions of proper American

pronunciation: he decreed that Americans must pronounce " zebra " as

" zebber " and that we must pronounce " danger " with the first syllable

equal to " Dan. " Again, the literate world ignored him.) "

Yep. But these days, his dictionary in its present form is now

regarded as the authority on American English.

" For all your admiration of Webster, I very much doubt that you spell

" soop " and " aker " —that you would consider it proper, patriotic,

American English if someone else spelled these words in Webster's own

fashion and required schoolchildren (or others) to do likewise.

Probably, even fewer patriotic, Webster-adoring Americans

write " soop " and " aker " than follow Webster's other vast and

forgotten attempt at culture-change: changing the Bible. "

I am refering to the current version of his dictionary which has

long since standardized the spellings we see today.

" Non-conformity in speech has always existed in every English-

speaking nation (and, as far as I know, in every nation). If writing

governed speech, all who write alike would speak alike. However,

writing does not govern speech: writing one variety of a language

gives the written variety no mystic power to kill the other, equally

old (non-written) varieties. "

This is because social situations tend to govern the type of speach

that is used. But I adhere to the idea that society would be much

better if people adhered to formal speech and pronounced words

correctly. Fewer misunderstandings would occur.

I said...

" Would that we all used standard American English in America rather

than what we are used to hearing and what we have come to take for

acceptable usage. "

Kate asked:

" Why? What (in your opinion) would make the existence of a single

variety better (somehow) than the co-existence of more than one

variety? "

It would save northerners from calling southerners " hicks " . It would

save white people from calling black people certain slurs that I

won't mention. It would ensure that meaning and intent was more

specific and less interpretive. It would discourage cliches and

encourage social harmony.

" And then you might learn a new word. Ignorance of someone else's

vocabulary does not make your variety better than his — any more than

my ignorance of Chinese makes English a better language than

Chinese. "

But if you knew the word to begin with, or if your patron used

proper English to begin with, then no misunderstanding would take

place in the first place and no ill will would have been perceived

or interpreted by either party.

" The Chinese themselves increasingly regard the different varieties

of Chinese as differing Chinese languages (and call them so) —

rather as we regard French, Spanish, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese,

etc., as different Romance (Latin-descended) languages. "

Umm...

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Confucius-says-its-time-to-learn-

Mandarin/2005/03/04/1109700672609.html

In this article it says...

" China is beginning a very different cultural revolution with the

launch of language centres around the world.

" Long resentful of being the target of " cultural imperialism " , China

is embarking on an ambitious plan named after the great sage

Confucius to spread the use of its language around the world.

" The Government is setting up language and cultural institutes in

major foreign cities and dispatching modestly paid volunteers to

teach in small communities. "

" Dialects don't exist of " necessity " — they simply exist. "

No. They exist out of necessity. By then end of my high school

years, any black kid that was speaking white English instead of the

African American dialect was getting beat up by his African American

brothers.

" The need for a standard variety (in America or anywhere) shouldn't

mean an end to other varieties, any more than the existence of Latin

(in the Roman Empire) meant an end to all other languages of Western

Europe. We can (and should) master the standard variety alongside

whatever we speak locally — just as (in your example) citizens of

the Roman Empire mastered Latin alongside whatever they spoke at

home. "

We can. But I don't think it is necessary that we should.

" Every argument you've given for having one and only one variety of a

language (within a nation) could equally require having one and only

one language throughout the world. Do you want that, too? "

Nope.

" If some international committee voted to make everyone learn a

particular language (if the UN voted to make us all learn Esperanto,

for instance), would you decide that there now existed

no " necessity " for English, and call for its abolition? "

I'd fight it. But if I, for example, moved to france I would learn

french. If I moved to Italy, I would learn Italian. If I moved to

Spain, I would learn Spanish.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" And I can remember my " Computer Science " teacher (in college, about

1978) giving a whole list of reasons why a global computer network

could never work — not among civilians, at any rate ... "

A global computer network doesn't work.

If you think we have one, you are kidding yourself.

If we had a global computer network, then everything which is

censored worldwide would be available for consumption by every user

just as a global currency would mean that every denomination could

be used by every user.

If we were hooked up to censored portions of Russia, then

1) You could access what we call child porn since the age of consent

over there is 12, if I am not mistaken.

2) The Chinese people could access more of the American internet,

much of which has been blocked from them by their government.

3) Many Arab and Communist governments censor access to western

internet, and

4) (Sometimes) we cannot access the internets of other countries

when we are at war with them and they cannot access our internet

when they are at war with us.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" And I can remember my " Computer Science " teacher (in college, about

1978) giving a whole list of reasons why a global computer network

could never work — not among civilians, at any rate ... "

A global computer network doesn't work.

If you think we have one, you are kidding yourself.

If we had a global computer network, then everything which is

censored worldwide would be available for consumption by every user

just as a global currency would mean that every denomination could

be used by every user.

If we were hooked up to censored portions of Russia, then

1) You could access what we call child porn since the age of consent

over there is 12, if I am not mistaken.

2) The Chinese people could access more of the American internet,

much of which has been blocked from them by their government.

3) Many Arab and Communist governments censor access to western

internet, and

4) (Sometimes) we cannot access the internets of other countries

when we are at war with them and they cannot access our internet

when they are at war with us.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" And I can remember my " Computer Science " teacher (in college, about

1978) giving a whole list of reasons why a global computer network

could never work — not among civilians, at any rate ... "

A global computer network doesn't work.

If you think we have one, you are kidding yourself.

If we had a global computer network, then everything which is

censored worldwide would be available for consumption by every user

just as a global currency would mean that every denomination could

be used by every user.

If we were hooked up to censored portions of Russia, then

1) You could access what we call child porn since the age of consent

over there is 12, if I am not mistaken.

2) The Chinese people could access more of the American internet,

much of which has been blocked from them by their government.

3) Many Arab and Communist governments censor access to western

internet, and

4) (Sometimes) we cannot access the internets of other countries

when we are at war with them and they cannot access our internet

when they are at war with us.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" As you yourself very perceptively note: if you really believe in

forbidding all but the already established language in public, you'd

have to believe that the first Caucasian settlers did wrong by using

English (or Spanish or French) anywhere but behind closed doors in

utter privacy And I suppose the Romans (when they went anywhere beyond

*their* homeland) did wrong by not keeping their Latin behind closed

doors, too, and using only Gaulish or Basque (or whatever else

prevailed locally) whenever outside the walls of a Roman household ... "

I think I may have already covered this. If not, you will have to take

my word for it that I was typing it while you posted this.

I have left the draft of a lengthy prior e-mail out on the computer for

an hour.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

Re: Re: sounds

" Nobody, Tom — neither you nor any other American — speaks or writes

that version. The English created in Noah Webster's dictionary

differs far (as an earlier message of mine pointed out — check your

spam-bucket?) from what the public accepted then, or would accept

now. "

And as I stated, the Websters dictionary that we have today is

considered THE authority on American language. That is the one to be

used.

" Calpurnia could, and did, speak the standard variety without a qualm

when the situation called for (and permitted) it — and a non-standard

variety, when the situation called for that. I consider this

comparable with having the good sense to write UK English for a UK

editor and USA English for a USA editor. Why do you disapprove (it

seems) Calpurnia's flexibility, while recommending (correctly) a

similar flexibility when dealing with USA versus UK differences? "

The US as a nation determined that American English, as opposed to

British English was what was to be used whenever English was spoken.

This resolution makes no concessions for any ethnicity to allow

their language or dialect to usurp American English as we see it in

Websters. That ethnicities choose to use their own languages and

dialects is understandable, and acceptable, but it does nothing to

facilitate communication with anyone else who shares the country

with them if their fellow countrymen are rightfully and dutifully

speaking American English.

" You might think otherwise, if some governmental committee defined a

" standard USA English " ... and defined it as some variety other than

yours. "

Nope. I'd be required to learn it and I would.

" When someone speaks a language (or a variety of a language) that you

don't understand, you have two alternatives:

" /a/ remain partly or wholly ignorant of that speech (and submit

to all the trouble and embarrassment that your ignorance causes),

or

/b/ learn that speech yourself.

" If they can speak your way and understand you, but you cannot speak

their way or understand them, just whom shall we call ignorant?

Them.

I and the rest of the kids in my district were taught, even in the

high school that we attended, that American English was the version

of English that we use in the US, and while anyone can still choose

to speak whatever language they please, their refusal to learn

American English works against them as it prevents understandable

communication. In college we were taught in teacher training that

Webster's dictionary was recognized as being THE authority on

American English and that ITS contents were what we were to refer

back to when spelling and pronounciation needed to be affirmed and

confirmed.

So, given that this version of American English is the version of

American English we are taught to use and that those of us who were

in the teaching profession were taught to teach, and seeing as our

government has mandated that if English is to be taught in our

schools, it is to be American English that is taught, I see no

reason to learn any form of English that is not American English if

I am going to be speaking and reading and spelling in America.

That other people would like to speak their version of the language

whilst asserting their right NOT to speak American English should

not be cause for me to learn to communicate with them, nor should

they be angry when they are excluded from any conversations in which

the speakers use American English.

" Before I venture an answer to this point: Were you (and your own

friends) capable, or not capable, of learning the variety of English

that the other group preferred to use? "

Yep.

" The black kids understood your English perfectly well (they simply

didn't want to use it). You, on the other hand, could not understand

them. So on whose side lies the failure to communicate? "

Theirs. As I have explained above. If every culture chose to use

their own language in public and not what was commonly accepted to

be the language of choice, communication would require that every

person alive would have to learn every language and every dialect of

every language to ensure that they could communicate with every

person they met.

This is quite unnecessary given that we have a language in place

that has been specifically defined and which is being taught in

neraly all, if not all, American schools.

" The nations and regions that have most effectively imposed an

official language (e.g., Spain under Franco, " Russian Poland " under

the tsars) saw some of the fiercest and most destructive increases in

ethnic-group/racial unrest. When Franco outlawed the Catalan language

(spoken around Barcelona), many formerly peaceable Catalans became

terrorists: specifically because he had outlawed their language. "

Terrorists? Or freedom fighters. If they feel so strongly about

their native languages, then they have a right to fight to have

those languages kept. I applaud their attempts to keep their

language.

" If you ever have charge of a country and you want people to hate

you, your government, all you stand for — and to hate the national

language, too — criminalize their own language. "

If America made it law that American English was its national

language, I don't see how that would cause any problems.

In Quebec, French appears in big letters on all public signs - no

English.

French (Canadian French) is the language of choice there, and

everyone living there must learn it - It's the law.

If you want services, you must ask for them in French, not in

English. If you ask for them in English, you will be denied them.

If you are a business, you business name has to be in French, and it

has to be three times the size of the English equivalent on your

business sign.

If you get stopped speeding by the Quebec Provincial Police, if you

don't speak French, they can detain you at their detachment until

you get English representation. If it is a French speaking person,

they would be given the ticket and sent on their way.

In Canada, Quebec is granted distinct society status, and that is

what enables them to enforce French only or French first.

I firmly believe that this is what we should do in America, and I

think that any ethnicity that doesn't comply with the law once it

has been implemented, should be thrown out.

It works for the people living in Quebec, and the Canadians are fine

with it. No reason it can't work in the US.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

How do you decide, Tom, whether to deem a particular change acceptable

or unacceptable?

For instance, what (in your view) makes it okay for " terrific " to

change its meaning

(a change considered a " corruption " when it began, and long afterwards),

but not-okay for " office " to change its sound?

Do all changes suddenly switch from " not-okay " to " okay " the minute

that some definite percentage of people (such as 50% or 100%) have

" voted with their mouths " for the new way rather than the old? Or do

some changes somehow remain " not-okay " forever, even after the last

mouth that spoke the old version has, centuries ago, turned to dust?

Thanks, in any case, for admitting that American spelling follows only

about a half of Webster's spelling: most people don't know that — some

who do know that, consider it their professional duty to lie about it.

(I know a kid — probable undiagnosed Aspie — who failed an English

class because of reporting on Noah Webster and mentioning his advocacy

of " ake " and " wimmen " and " definit " so on: as documented by Webster

bios found in the school library. The teacher gave a zero for the

report, calling it " nonsense " to say that anyone, anywhere, could have

prescribed such spellings — and later privately admitted to the child

and parents: " The information [in the report] is correct, but in this

school the policy is to believe that Webster invented exactly the

spelling we now use. It would be too confusing to the children to let

them be aware that the wrong spelling almost won. " )

!!!!!

>

> " By your logic, the instant that Noah Webster's dictionary set a

> standard for American English (complete with " soop " and " aker " and

> hundreds more of that sort), we should all instantly have followed

> that standard and should still follow it today. "

>

> Yep.

Great — then I fully expect to see you begin the grand crusade to get

us all spelling the way that Webster *really* spelled: either that, or

to get us all speaking the language of the nearest Native Americans

whenever we go out in public: keeping English behind closed doors.

You, if anyone, have the " zeel " that could make you successful in one

or both of these august missions.

> This is because social situations tend to govern the type of speach

> that is used. But I adhere to the idea that society would be much

> better if people adhered to formal speech and pronounced words

> correctly. Fewer misunderstandings would occur.

I don't know: some of the non-standard varieties decrease ambiguity

(hence decrease the likelihood of misunderstandings) by making

distinctions of meaning that the standard variety opposes and ignores.

(E.g., the standard varieties of English use the same word for the

singular and plural of an important pronoun: " you. " Many non-standard

varieties distinguish singular and plural of this pronoun: e.g., " you "

for one person, " youse " for two or more. The difference between " you "

and " youse " surely decreases ambiguity as much as the difference

between " he " and " they. " )

> [Making publicly illegal all varieties of American English but one] ... would

save >northerners from calling southerners " hicks " . It would

> save white people from calling black people certain slurs that I

> won't mention.

No, it wouldn't. If people didn't call each other " hicks " (or worse)

because of language variation, they'd do it because of food-habits or

clothing-styles or living on the north vs. the south side of some

remote valley, or because of the cars each group drives, or because of

any of the zillion-and-one other things that people use as excuses for

insulting each other (and worse). Nations that have (and enforce) an

official language have sectional hatreds as bad as ours, or worse.

Even if making people more alike really did create national unity,

making people speak alike would still leave myriad other things to

dis-unify over. To forbid any possible cause of disunity and dispute

over personal habits, you would have to make 300,000,000 people (in

the USA) not only talk alike but also dress alike, eat alike, and even

walk alike and look alike (If, by some miracle, every black person in

the USA woke up sounding exactly like a white person — white people

who call them " n-gg-rs " now would still call them " n-gg-rs " no matter

what they sounded like.)

If you succeed — what will you do when you DO get everyone speaking

English of one particular variety, all the time, and they *still* call

each other " hicks " or " n-gg-rs " or worse? Will you look for some other

difference to take away: put us all in identical uniforms, perhaps?

That doesn't sound like any country I'd care to live in — unified or

not.

> But if you knew the word to begin with, or if your patron used

> proper English to begin with,

I regard " lagniappe " (which you seriously misspelled) as part of

proper English. I grew up very far from New Orleans, but the

unabridged dictionary includes the word. Therefore, I must presume

that English properly includes this very useful word: why else would

the dictionary record it?

Your argument (forbidding lesser-known words because they can

cause misunderstandings) could equally well forbid anyone, anywhere,

to use any word not already guaranteed known to everyone else

(anywhere in the nation) who might possibly see or hear it. In other

words, your argument (in my view) amounts to a call for " dumbing down "

the language by shrinking its vocabulary: much like the " Newspeak " of

Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.

> then no misunderstanding would take

> place in the first place and no ill will would have been perceived

> or interpreted by either party.

One could more easily (and more usefully) teach people to deal with

misunderstandings in some other way than by assuming ill will.

>

> " The Chinese themselves increasingly regard the different varieties

> of Chinese as differing Chinese languages (and call them so) —

> rather as we regard French, Spanish, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese,

> etc., as different Romance (Latin-descended) languages. "

>

> Umm...

>

> http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Confucius-says-its-time-to-learn-

> Mandarin/2005/03/04/1109700672609.html

>

> In this article it says...

>

> " China is beginning a very different cultural revolution with the

> launch of language centres around the world.

>

> " Long resentful of being the target of " cultural imperialism " , China

> is embarking on an ambitious plan named after the great sage

> Confucius to spread the use of its language around the world.

>

> " The Government is setting up language and cultural institutes in

> major foreign cities and dispatching modestly paid volunteers to

> teach in small communities. "

Okay, obviously they don't all feel the same way about this. Some of

my Chinese contacts agree with the policy you've described, others say

(rather cautiously!) that they don't.

Re:

> " Dialects don't exist of " necessity " — they simply exist. "

>

> No. They exist out of necessity. By then end of my high school

> years, any black kid that was speaking white English instead of the

> African American dialect was getting beat up by his African American

> brothers.

Then the beating (the necessity) came after the dialect, not before.

Causes don't come after their effects.

Most varieties of a language (including the nonstandard varieties that

people call " dialects " ) didn't come into existence because of people

getting beaten up for not speaking them. Do you really think that (for

instance) the English of Yorkshire (or the very different English of

New York) originated because somebody beat up all the people who

didn't use it?

Re:

> I'd fight it. But if I, for example, moved to france I would learn

> french. If I moved to Italy, I would learn Italian. If I moved to

> Spain, I would learn Spanish.

I would, too. Of course, to fight a language imposed worldwide (if one

existed), you would have to learn and use that language too: in order

to stay alive long enough to fight it. (After all, if some " new world

order " group had the power to make the world adopt one language, they

would probably also make laws against using every other language

anywhere in public. National laws against public use of a non-official

language have, historically, meant laws against books and newspapers

in any non-official language: because books and newspapers appear

publicly for sale, and people often read books and newspapers in

public ... today, enforcing such laws could also mean forbidding

websites to use non-official languages, because one can access the Net

in public places. If the USA had an English-only-in-public law, people

could easily go to jail for straying into the " wrong " web-sites ... )

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

Re:

> " And I can remember my " Computer Science " teacher (in college, about

> 1978) giving a whole list of reasons why a global computer network

> could never work — not among civilians, at any rate ... "

>

> A global computer network doesn't work.

>

> If you think we have one, you are kidding yourself. ...

I see your point: however, when my teacher said " global computer

network " she meant " any system by which one computer routinely

'talked' with other computers in other countries, perhaps thousands of

miles away. " In other words, she would have said that the Internet

couldn't exist. (If she still lives, I assume she knows better now.

However, in 1993 or 1994 I knew a few folks who actually didn't

believe the Internet existed AFTER all their friends and neighbors had

gotten on. One of them — a very small-scale textbook-publisher, as it

happened — actually called me " a lunatic " for having mentioned that I

communicated via computer with friends in New Zealand and elsewhere.

Her company failed soon afterwards, partly because she did not believe

such a thing as " e-mail " existed ... and therefore she would not

consider acquiring or using it, no matter how her partner begged ... )

Kate Gladstone

[Guest guest]

Kate, your comments to which your post alludes compared two things

that could not be logically compared, hence the " apples and oranges "

comment I made. You did not seem able to grasp the phrase which is

used in English to demonstrate that one is comparing two items which

do not have a similar basis from which to draw comparisons.

Rather than argue with you, I will leave this alone since you are not

understanding my comments and quite obviously you are not

understanding mine.

Raven

Co-Administrator

>

> Raven, I don't understand why (apparently) you assume that we cannot

> compare one language (or variety of a language) with another.

>

> The same phenomena affect different languages (and their speakers)

at

> different times — just as the phenomenon of gravity affects apples

and

> oranges. Knowing the differences between apples and oranges (and the

> differences between a fruit grown today and its perhaps extinct

> ancestor) does not make it sensible to call " incorrect " the fall of

an

> apple in the year 2007 AD while accepting as " correct " (say) the

fall

> of an orange in the year 207 AD or 2007 BC.

>

>

> Yours for better letters, Kate Gladstone -

> handwritingrepair@... - telephone 518/482-6763

> Handwriting Repair and the World Handwriting Contest

> http://learn.to/handwrite,

http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair

> 325 South Manning Boulevard

> Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA

> Order books through my site!

> (Amazon.com link gets me 5% - 15% commission)

> And sign the " Politician Legibility Act " Petition:

> http://www.iPetitions.com/petition/PoliticianLegibility

>

[Guest guest]

" How do you decide, Tom, whether to deem a particular change

acceptable or unacceptable?

" For instance, what (in your view) makes it okay for " terrific " to

change its meaning (a change considered a " corruption " when it

began, and long afterwards), but not-okay for " office " to change its

sound?

" Do all changes suddenly switch from " not-okay " to " okay " the minute

that some definite percentage of people (such as 50% or 100%) have

" voted with their mouths " for the new way rather than the old? Or do

some changes somehow remain " not-okay " forever, even after the last

mouth that spoke the old version has, centuries ago, turned to dust? "

Whether you know it or not Kate, you have touched on a raging

argument that takes place in academic circles.

Some say that language is fluidic, like an organism, and changes

with time, and that this change ought to be reflected in the

dictionary. Others say that the language as it is should remain

unchanged and all should follow it. I fall into this second camp in

terms of my thinking, the reason being that I feel as does,

(i.e. that with each generation, the number of words people actually

know seems to fall off), and the ways in which people express

themselves sounds increasingly more ignorant and less specific to my

ears. What shall we have in a few more decades? Grunts and growls?

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

Re:

> Whether you know it or not Kate, you have touched on a raging

> argument that takes place in academic circles.

>

> Some say that language is fluidic, like an organism, and changes

> with time, and that this change ought to be reflected in the

> dictionary. Others say that the language as it is should remain

> unchanged and all should follow it.

Which schools of thought in linguistics follow the second camp?

As far as I know, ALL living languages have changed and continue to

change: even the ones with regulatory agencies (such as French),

recent dates of invention (such as Esperanto), and/or lengthy and

highly conservative literary traditions (such as Icelandic, Greek, and

Gaelic — languages often cited as " unchanging, " but which in fact have

undergone major vowel-shifts, and [in the cases of Greek and Gaelic]

also major consonant-shifts and grammar-shifts along with some change

in spelling since the days of their classical literature)

To stop a language changing, Tom, you have to kill it. Life means

change, for languages as for organisms.

> I fall into this second camp in

> terms of my thinking, the reason being that I feel as does,

> (i.e. that with each generation, the number of words people actually

> know seems to fall off)

New words come along, too. Shakespeare's vocabulary did not (for

instance) include the word " balcony " (the " balcony scene " in Romeo and

t nowhere uses that word, which entered English about a century

later. Since the word entered English from another language, Italian,

writers on English often condemned it as an unnecessary and ignorant

word to have in the language: because English already had the word

" gallery " — borrowed from yet another language, French, just a few

centuries earlier. The writers condemning " balcony " never explained

what, in their view, made a linguistic change — such as word-borrowing

— permissible in one year but not in another.)

In fact, until a fairly late date, the English language did not even

include the word " its " — material written before the first half of the

sixteenth century always uses the word " his " or even the word " it "

wherever we would use " its " (even one Shakespeare play — KING LEAR —

still has a character saying that a foolish bird " had it head bit off

by it young. " ).

When people started saying and writing " its, " respected authorities

condemned this as an unnecessary word: unnecessary (they said) because

language should not change: therefore, any new words (such as " its " )

could arise only from laziness, stupidity, and/or disregard for

tradition.

The first written occurrences of " its " in English, in fact,

appear in the writing of an Englishman known to have had an Italian

mother: one could argue (and the day's opponents of change did in fact

state as truth) that " its " had arisen only because some ill-informed

person did not know the full range of meanings covered (then) by " his "

and " it. "

Over time, certain important grammatical distinctions (not used in

earlier English) have also become more complex and meaningful.Until

1750 or so, English made no firm distinction in meaning between " he

runs " and " he is running " — grammarians, in fact, generally considered

the present progressive ( " to be ______-ing " ) an unwelcome and

unwarranted innovation, and therefore (in their eyes) ignorant: they

deemed it useful only for a distinction of meaning that (in their

eyes) should not exist because it had not existed.

Similarly, until the earliest decades of the twentieth century the

grammarians routinely condemned a form which had arisen in the

mid-to-late nineteenth century: the form " ___ is being ____-ed " (as in

" the house is being built, the child is being fed, the bird is being

watched. " Nineteenth-century grammarians (whom Tom probably admires

and wishes to emulate) considered " is being " entirely and forever

wrong, because (as they said) it had not always existed and therefore

(in their view) it should never exist. In their view, since it should

not exist it could not and should not mean anything: in their view,

English ought not to express verbally the difference in meaning

between " the house is built " and " the house is being built " because

English had (until the mid/late nineteenth century) expressed both

these meanings with only " the house is built " ) and therefore — in the

view of grammarians opposing change — must forever continue to do so.

In the mid/late nineteenth century, saying " the house is being built "

(because you had in mind a meaning that differs from " the house is

built " ) could get you flunked at Eton and expelled from Oxford.

Tom, if you really oppose all changes in a language, then I must

wonder whether you practice what you preach: do you indeed carefully

avoid (for instance) " the house is being built " ?

Since you do not speak and write (say) the English of the year 1066, I

presume that you in fact do not oppose language changes that occurred

before some particular date (while continuing to oppose the changes

that occurred after the designated moment).

May I therefore ask: What date you regard as the latest

permissible date for a change in English or any other language? May I

also ask the criterion whereby you chose that date as the latest

permissible date for a change?

In order not to end this letter on a note of asperity, I'd like to

recommend to you an instructive and perhaps amusing essay by a

well-known English writer who shared your fierce opposition to change

in the English language: Swift. His 1712 essay ( " A Proposal

for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Language "

appears online (with other eighteenth-century writers' essays on

proper and improper English) at

http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/anglist1/HS0506Reader18thcentury.doc

Keep in mind, of course, that " ascertain " in the year 1712 had

not yet become a synonym for " discern " — in 1712, " ascertain " still

meant " bring to a state of fixity. " (Given your opposition to changes

in languages, I would of course like to know whether you, yourself,

use the word " ascertain " as people used it in the year 1712, or as

people normally use it in the year 2007.)

> , and the ways in which people express

> themselves sounds increasingly more ignorant and less specific to my

> ears. What shall we have in a few more decades? Grunts and growls?

No language — in the long history of language — has ever turned into

" grunts and growls. " In every age, though, those trying to prevent or

undo the ongoing changes in their language have predicted that the

grunts and growls would inevitably take over.

For example: in 17h-century France, many grammarians and

lexicographers believed that ongoing changes in French pronunciation

and grammar would (if not halted) reduce French to a non-language

sometime before the 18th century. They objected (among other things)

to people changing the pronunciation and spelling of the word for

" chair " — they had begun saying and writing " chaise " (the modern

French word) instead of the earlier " chaire " which the 17th-century

complainers saw as the only allowable and correct name of this item of

furniture. So the complainers predicted that, if this horrible

horrible innovation ( " chaise " ) remained in use, eventually the

Frenchmen would stop speaking actual words altogether, and resort to

the buzzing of bees. Similarly (in the early/mid 18th century)

upper-class Frenchmen complained that lower-class Frenchmen would

inevitably soon turn the French language into the grunting of swine,

forcing the French nation to lose the ability to communicate in

language. The upper class claimed this would inevitably happen, and

soon, because upper-class Frenchmen (of the 18th century) pronounced a

certain sound as " weh " while lower-class Frenchmen had started

pronouncing the same sound instead as " wah. " The " wah " pronunciation

eventually prevailed (even among the upper crust) — probably the

French Revolution had something to do with it, because appearing

" upper-crust " in public could get you stoned by a vicious, unorganized

mob ... or guillotined by an organized one.

In any case, the " weh " pronunciation became extinct, except in

one or two dying, seriously despised, and remote " hick " dialects — to

this very day, if you want to fail French class and make your French

teacher ridicule you forever, just once pronounce the word for " me " as

" mweh " instead of " mwah. " Tom, since you so fiercely oppose change in

the language, I presume you would have opposed the sound-change in the

18th century ... if you lived in France today, would you lead some

kind of crusade to bring back pre-Revolutionary pronunciations, I

wonder ... ?

Yours for better letters, Kate Gladstone -

[Guest guest]

Re:

> Whether you know it or not Kate, you have touched on a raging

> argument that takes place in academic circles.

>

> Some say that language is fluidic, like an organism, and changes

> with time, and that this change ought to be reflected in the

> dictionary. Others say that the language as it is should remain

> unchanged and all should follow it.

Which schools of thought in linguistics follow the second camp?

As far as I know, ALL living languages have changed and continue to

change: even the ones with regulatory agencies (such as French),

recent dates of invention (such as Esperanto), and/or lengthy and

highly conservative literary traditions (such as Icelandic, Greek, and

Gaelic — languages often cited as " unchanging, " but which in fact have

undergone major vowel-shifts, and [in the cases of Greek and Gaelic]

also major consonant-shifts and grammar-shifts along with some change

in spelling since the days of their classical literature)

To stop a language changing, Tom, you have to kill it. Life means

change, for languages as for organisms.

> I fall into this second camp in

> terms of my thinking, the reason being that I feel as does,

> (i.e. that with each generation, the number of words people actually

> know seems to fall off)

New words come along, too. Shakespeare's vocabulary did not (for

instance) include the word " balcony " (the " balcony scene " in Romeo and

t nowhere uses that word, which entered English about a century

later. Since the word entered English from another language, Italian,

writers on English often condemned it as an unnecessary and ignorant

word to have in the language: because English already had the word

" gallery " — borrowed from yet another language, French, just a few

centuries earlier. The writers condemning " balcony " never explained

what, in their view, made a linguistic change — such as word-borrowing

— permissible in one year but not in another.)

In fact, until a fairly late date, the English language did not even

include the word " its " — material written before the first half of the

sixteenth century always uses the word " his " or even the word " it "

wherever we would use " its " (even one Shakespeare play — KING LEAR —

still has a character saying that a foolish bird " had it head bit off

by it young. " ).

When people started saying and writing " its, " respected authorities

condemned this as an unnecessary word: unnecessary (they said) because

language should not change: therefore, any new words (such as " its " )

could arise only from laziness, stupidity, and/or disregard for

tradition.

The first written occurrences of " its " in English, in fact,

appear in the writing of an Englishman known to have had an Italian

mother: one could argue (and the day's opponents of change did in fact

state as truth) that " its " had arisen only because some ill-informed

person did not know the full range of meanings covered (then) by " his "

and " it. "

Over time, certain important grammatical distinctions (not used in

earlier English) have also become more complex and meaningful.Until

1750 or so, English made no firm distinction in meaning between " he

runs " and " he is running " — grammarians, in fact, generally considered

the present progressive ( " to be ______-ing " ) an unwelcome and

unwarranted innovation, and therefore (in their eyes) ignorant: they

deemed it useful only for a distinction of meaning that (in their

eyes) should not exist because it had not existed.

Similarly, until the earliest decades of the twentieth century the

grammarians routinely condemned a form which had arisen in the

mid-to-late nineteenth century: the form " ___ is being ____-ed " (as in

" the house is being built, the child is being fed, the bird is being

watched. " Nineteenth-century grammarians (whom Tom probably admires

and wishes to emulate) considered " is being " entirely and forever

wrong, because (as they said) it had not always existed and therefore

(in their view) it should never exist. In their view, since it should

not exist it could not and should not mean anything: in their view,

English ought not to express verbally the difference in meaning

between " the house is built " and " the house is being built " because

English had (until the mid/late nineteenth century) expressed both

these meanings with only " the house is built " ) and therefore — in the

view of grammarians opposing change — must forever continue to do so.

In the mid/late nineteenth century, saying " the house is being built "

(because you had in mind a meaning that differs from " the house is

built " ) could get you flunked at Eton and expelled from Oxford.

Tom, if you really oppose all changes in a language, then I must

wonder whether you practice what you preach: do you indeed carefully

avoid (for instance) " the house is being built " ?

Since you do not speak and write (say) the English of the year 1066, I

presume that you in fact do not oppose language changes that occurred

before some particular date (while continuing to oppose the changes

that occurred after the designated moment).

May I therefore ask: What date you regard as the latest

permissible date for a change in English or any other language? May I

also ask the criterion whereby you chose that date as the latest

permissible date for a change?

In order not to end this letter on a note of asperity, I'd like to

recommend to you an instructive and perhaps amusing essay by a

well-known English writer who shared your fierce opposition to change

in the English language: Swift. His 1712 essay ( " A Proposal

for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Language "

appears online (with other eighteenth-century writers' essays on

proper and improper English) at

http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/anglist1/HS0506Reader18thcentury.doc

Keep in mind, of course, that " ascertain " in the year 1712 had

not yet become a synonym for " discern " — in 1712, " ascertain " still

meant " bring to a state of fixity. " (Given your opposition to changes

in languages, I would of course like to know whether you, yourself,

use the word " ascertain " as people used it in the year 1712, or as

people normally use it in the year 2007.)

> , and the ways in which people express

> themselves sounds increasingly more ignorant and less specific to my

> ears. What shall we have in a few more decades? Grunts and growls?

No language — in the long history of language — has ever turned into

" grunts and growls. " In every age, though, those trying to prevent or

undo the ongoing changes in their language have predicted that the

grunts and growls would inevitably take over.

For example: in 17h-century France, many grammarians and

lexicographers believed that ongoing changes in French pronunciation

and grammar would (if not halted) reduce French to a non-language

sometime before the 18th century. They objected (among other things)

to people changing the pronunciation and spelling of the word for

" chair " — they had begun saying and writing " chaise " (the modern

French word) instead of the earlier " chaire " which the 17th-century

complainers saw as the only allowable and correct name of this item of

furniture. So the complainers predicted that, if this horrible

horrible innovation ( " chaise " ) remained in use, eventually the

Frenchmen would stop speaking actual words altogether, and resort to

the buzzing of bees. Similarly (in the early/mid 18th century)

upper-class Frenchmen complained that lower-class Frenchmen would

inevitably soon turn the French language into the grunting of swine,

forcing the French nation to lose the ability to communicate in

language. The upper class claimed this would inevitably happen, and

soon, because upper-class Frenchmen (of the 18th century) pronounced a

certain sound as " weh " while lower-class Frenchmen had started

pronouncing the same sound instead as " wah. " The " wah " pronunciation

eventually prevailed (even among the upper crust) — probably the

French Revolution had something to do with it, because appearing

" upper-crust " in public could get you stoned by a vicious, unorganized

mob ... or guillotined by an organized one.

In any case, the " weh " pronunciation became extinct, except in

one or two dying, seriously despised, and remote " hick " dialects — to

this very day, if you want to fail French class and make your French

teacher ridicule you forever, just once pronounce the word for " me " as

" mweh " instead of " mwah. " Tom, since you so fiercely oppose change in

the language, I presume you would have opposed the sound-change in the

18th century ... if you lived in France today, would you lead some

kind of crusade to bring back pre-Revolutionary pronunciations, I

wonder ... ?

Yours for better letters, Kate Gladstone -

[Guest guest]

" An accent or dialect is ok, but just sloppy speech is something

else. "

I had a drama teacher who happened to believe that the 'Leeds'

dialect was just 'lazy' speech - it was not in my opinion btw.

>

>

> In a message dated 4/20/2007 11:58:44 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,

> handwritingrepair@... writes:

>

> Someone who regards the " f " as a spoken badge of industry could

with

> equal justice and reason call Julius Caesar and his legions a gang

of

> negligent lip-lazy lay-abouts because, after all, where we say

> " father " they said " pater " ...

>

>

> Kate Gladstone

>

>

>

> My comment was specific to the English language, not others

contemporary or

> ancient. I myself have not hired people for jobs due to sloppy

speech. An

> accent or dialect is ok, but just sloppy speech is something else.

>

>

>

>

>

> ************************************** See what's free at

http://www.aol.com.

>