There are 3 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
1.2. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
2a. Re: OT: Language in the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia.
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
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1.1. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" [email protected]
Date: Tue Aug 20, 2013 10:17 am ((PDT))
On Mon, 19 Aug 2013 20:08:19 -0500, George Corley wrote:
>On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 4:48 PM, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
>> Did maybe the Vietnamese change from Chinese-based Chữ nôm to
>> Latin-based quốc ngữ involve less violence than these others? I do not
>> know anything about it but what Wikipedia told me.
>>
>
>I wouldn't know. What about Korean Hangul? Or Japanese introduction of kana
>-- I'm quite sure that one was a slow evolution.
Chances are high, especially since Japanese has kept the kanji.
>> Mind you that after spoken Latin had diverged more and more from
>> written Latin, it took more or less until the time of the of the
>> trobadors until the spelling was "reformed", thus giving way to a
>> number of Latin daughter languages. Give or take, this reform came
>> almost a millenium later, and this in a society that was much less
>> literate than today's.
>
>
>That's a whole other topic -- the literate groups preserving an ancient
>language rather than writing in modern vernacular. In a way, it's similar
>to the tradition of writing in Classical Chinese up until the early 20th
>century.
I rather think this quite the same topic, but with a gradual
difference. Of course, written English, due to high literacy, has
probably a huge influence back on spoken English. But so must have had
written Latin on spoken Romance, to a certain degree. And also the
other way round, in both cases. With Latin, there came a point when
many people felt the vulgar language to be so different from the high
language that it deserved to be written in a different way. I bet that
there are already English varieties that are felt to be so different
from regular English that they are occasionally written in a different
way. Not consistently so, not yet, but English is still only 600 years
away from its spelling, unlike Romances, which were about a millenium
away from theirs.
> Frankly, I think increasing literacy helps with this transition --
>if only a few rich people are literate, it's not a huge burden for them to
>be forced to learn a dead language along with their letters -- but this is
>less practical in the general populace.
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (43)
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1.2. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Tue Aug 20, 2013 11:02 am ((PDT))
On 20 August 2013 19:16, J. 'Mach' Wust <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I rather think this quite the same topic, but with a gradual
> difference. Of course, written English, due to high literacy, has
> probably a huge influence back on spoken English. But so must have had
> written Latin on spoken Romance, to a certain degree. And also the
> other way round, in both cases. With Latin, there came a point when
> many people felt the vulgar language to be so different from the high
> language that it deserved to be written in a different way. I bet that
> there are already English varieties that are felt to be so different
> from regular English that they are occasionally written in a different
> way. Not consistently so, not yet, but English is still only 600 years
> away from its spelling, unlike Romances, which were about a millenium
> away from theirs.
>
>
Actually, things happened about the completely opposite way from what
you're describing. The vernaculars were simply deemed unworthy of being
written. At all. People at that time didn't view language the same way we
do. In particular, they didn't differentiate between a language and its
written version. What was actually spoken by the masses was considered a
debased form of communication, and the only language worth recording was
the language of the Bible, Latin (in Western Europe). It has nothing to do
with how different the vernaculars were from Latin. If it was not Latin, it
wasn't something that should, or even could, be written (it helps that most
writing at that time was of religious nature or related). Writing was
Latin, and that was it. It took the troubadours to change this view, as
they started to view the vernaculars as languages worthy of making
compositions in that were good enough to be recorded.
So it *is* quite a different phenomenon from spelling reform. It was about
divorcing the idea of writing from the idea of writing *in Latin*.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (43)
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2a. Re: OT: Language in the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia.
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue Aug 20, 2013 1:44 pm ((PDT))
> If this is true, Evo Morales not only officialized many Indian
> languages, but is also requiring officers to learn them:
> http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=355071&CategoryId=14919
Makes sense: if you're government is going to recognise a language as official,
then
government officers, particularly those in areas with a large population
speaking
that language, ought to be able to speak that language. Same as the situation
in,
for example, the UK. As far as I understand the situation, languages like
Gaelic,
Scots & Welsh are all official. I believe speakers of those languages have the
right
to use those languages freely when dealing with government.
If this is a country where separate but equal is something of a norm, then I see
the move as non-problematic and even commendable. Any further commentary
along this line of reasoning will surely violate NCNC (even more so than other
responses thus far), and so I'll leave it at that.
> BTW, Bolivia has been requiring new access to the sea. As many point
> out, the more natural way would be along the Peru-Chile border. So, I
> wonder why similar solutions can't be used for all landlocked
> countries. Has UN never considered considering some countries' borders
> as international territory and building roads there to provide access
> to the sea to landlocke countries?
I think others have largely driven this nail into the discussion's coffin with
the
utmost vim. Bolivia might just consider starting up that xix century war again
and try to retake the land they lost before... Just a thought! But seriously,
I would note that there is already a precedent for just this kind of road
linkage,
and that would be between West Berlin and West Germany. As I understand it,
the land linkages were an informal arrangement bewteen the Allied Powers,
but there's no reason such an "informal arrangement" could not be worked out
here, and even made a little more formal.
A "virtual port" . . .
I fully agree that a road running along the border is probably not a good idea —
too many cans of worms there. A solution I would propose is to simply provide
select Bolivian transport companies with some kind of pass that allows screened
drivers & trucks to cross the border with minimal delay, allows these same
truckers
and their rigs to stop and rest at sanctioned truck stops along the assigned
route and
allows the goods to be brought into / out of the port with minimal headache.
I'm not
saying it needs to be free, and I'm not saying these drivers have free license
to go
anywhere in Peru they wish to go. A simple GPS monitor on the truck, the trailer
and the driver ought to be sufficient to ensure that none of them gets too far
away
from where they're allowed to be. Obviously Peru ought to be justly
compensated for the imposition, so some sort of equitable payment structure
could
be worked out. A potential phase II could be some level of actual Bolivian
port authority
within selected Peruvian ports. Perhaps they could operate some kind of joint
oversight,
along with Peru, which would further facilitate Bolivia's needs and would link
up with the
road corridor already in place. Ultimately, the goal as I see it would be a
system
whereby Bolivia makes use of and pays for Peruvian infrastructure — a kind of
minimal rental, if you will — but where Bolivia works with Peru in regards to
ordinary
operations and exercises its own oversight over its own trucking in the region.
The solution
would recognise Bolivia's needs and provide a means for them to quickly and
inexpensively
move goods to and fro; it would also respect Peru's sovereignty and right to
determine who
can cross the border. Violating transport companies would, naturally, lose
their priviledge,
and would also suffer consequences in both countries.
So, not quite an entirely open border, and this would not allow just anyone to
cross; neither a cession of national territory nor a complex project that would
require lots of money to build (since the roads and port facilities already
exist).
No one loses face, everyone benefits and everyone looks good to boot: Bolivia
gets a port and easy access; Peru gets some cash and looks good on the regional
and world stage; I get a Nobel Prize for solving the problem! ;))))))))))
Padraic
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
>
> 2013/7/18 Padraic Brown <[email protected]>:
>>> From: Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>
>>
>>
>>>>>> So rather than enact useless constitutional ammendments, I
> think what is
>>>>>> needed is a "cultural ammendment" -- non Native
> peoples (European /
>>>
>>>>> *You* (not it) may have already noted that many Paraguayan
> Guarani speakers don't
>>>>> look like Native Americans at all, but even so they consider
> this language as a symbol
>>>>> of national identity.
>>>
>>>> I'm not sure what you mean. What does what someone looks like
> have to do with it?
>>>
>>> I mean that many of them are probably "white" (Hispanic as in
> Spain)
>>> with little or no Guarani mixing.
>>
>> Okay. Either way, people, regardless of what they might look like, have to
> ascribe value
>> to a language for it to survive, or for it to be revived.
>>
>> European Paraguayans may or may not care one way or the other about the
> language ---
>> but if there is a strong desire to maintain or revitalise among the Natives
> who speak it,
>> there is always the possibility that social awareness may be raised and
> that others who
>> are nòt native speakers, may take an interest.
>>
>>>>> Does English play this role in India?
>>>>
>>>> Yes. Especially among educated Indians (and Indians who currently
> do or wish
>>>> to engage in global affairs, whether that's call center
> staffing, international
>>>> business or etc). Internally, I think Hindi serves the purpose of
> a national
>>>> language as much as English does if not more.
>>>
>>> I have heard that some speakers of Dravidian languages prefer English
>>> to Hindi because of rivalry. Anti-Hindi and anti-Sanskrit sentiments
>>> apparently are very important elements of Tamil nationalism and
>>> separatism.
>>
>> Interesting. I am not at all surprised. I guess the English colonisers,
> who've only
>> been in India some 200 or so years are seen as less of a threat than the
> Hindi
>> colonisers who've been mucking about the place for several millenia!
> ;))
>>
>> Padraic
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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