🚀 go-pugleaf

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