Re: RE: 'America' vs. USA
jimmoyer said:
That idea of standardizing a language actually
has an examply in Deutschland.
In fact recent headlines about the German Reform
movement to standardize the German language
is going back and forth between the old way of
combining words or the new way of separating them.
It has to do with culture. In some cultures, language is viewed as a tool, a technology if you will, of which man is in full control, capable of manipulating it as needs be to achieve a desired purpose. In otehr cultures, on the other hand, language has a sacred quality to it, never to be touched and to be preserved for the sake of tradition, nothing more, no matter how logical an argument might be. And yet in otehr cultures, the two converge.
To take a few examples of cultures in which man is in full or relatively full control of his language, let us look at French, Indonesian, Turkish and Chinese. French has the French Accademy, whose purpose it is to keep the language "pure" so as to maintain its internal logic as much as possible. But even French has a traditionalist streak in terms of preserving its fundamental grammar. but the Accademy does even have legal and authoritative power to decide to replace a word or introduce a new word independantly of popularity, with French schools being required to teach it. Indonesian was based on an Indonesian Pidgin and then adppted, developped, applied and officialized by the government to unite the nation. The government continues to control the evolution of the language quite stringently till today, just as does the French Accademy. Attatuk and the PRC both changed or modified the traditional scripts of their languages for the purpose of increasing literacy among the population at lower cost to the educaiton system. China has also adopted a policy of standardizing and promoting one particular chosen dialct, along with pronunciation, throughout its school system so as to ensure a common language for a modern nation. A good reflection of this is the fact that students learn a standardized Pinyin right from the beginning so as to ensure a common standard pronunciation nationwide. That would be equivalent to English students learning to read the IPA before the alphabet.
English would be an example of the latter, where in that culture, "mice", as illogical as it is, would be defended to the last purely out of a sense of sacredness to the language. this same sense of sacredness in English culture prevents agreement on a standard spelling for "colour", or the acceptance or dropping of the pronunciation "f" in the word lieutenant, or builded instead of built (even though that one is a little ironic seeing that the King James Bible does in fact use the word "builded", so perhaps it would be important to mention that that sense of sacredness stems more from contemporary habbit than it does from historical reality, or a view that language somehow evolves "mysteriously" beyond human control as opposed to through active, consientious human intervention).
Now of course I'm sure all these languages have streaks of the others too. Just as English will accept conscious intervention sometimes (as when the Canadian journalists' Association switched from Peking to Beijing a few decades ago through a conscientious and systematic strategy (they would use Peking followed by "Beijing" in quotes so as to accustom the population to the change gradually), so some Indonesians are likewise resistant to some afficially sanctionned changes to the language by the Indonesian government.
German, traditionally, was more like English. It had gone through some changes with the invention of the printing presses, but not much more before or after. Rather like Englihs, allowed to evolve freely and at will. The shift from "sacredness" to "ownership" of the language is a little more recent for German culture. Needless to say, Esperanto speakers would tend to have much more "ownership" of language in that we even recognise the possibility of creating a whole new language from scratch.
Effectively, for any kind of English Language Accademy or equivalent to be born any time soon, a shift would first need to occur in the culture from "sacredness" to "ownership" of the language, sufficient enough for the English-speaking world to be prepared to accept systematic modifications done to the language, be it spelling or what have you, by some authoritative body.
I'll admit that since I was raised in an English environment, even I tend to take on a more "sacred" view of the English language and so tend to naturally resist change to it. When speaking in Esperanto, on the otehr hand, sinse that culture is much more in control of its language, I'm even open to creating new words as I'm speaking, through the use of already existant morphemes. And even in French, I tend to naturally acknowledge and recognise teh authority of the Accademy Francaise over the development of the language. Esperanto also has an accademy, but it only deals with recognising correct grammar and morphese. beyond that, words can be put together at will.
So certainly, an English Accademy could occur, only should a shift occer in the culture of the language first.
