Re: query: distorted languages?

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> I was puzzled--the prof didn't get around to saying how much *he* agreed
> with this, but the argument was apparently that German was severely
> crippled by the "loss" of such words due to newly acquired and highly
> unpleasant Nazi connotations.
How? German was crippled *only* in the very restrictive sense that the
Germans felt they couldn't use certain words or constructions because of
their newly added connotations.  But that's not so much a linguistic "crippling",
as a new (probably good) taboo the Germans have.  They were also "crippled"
from playing records of "Deutschland über Alles" in this sense, which has nothing
directly to do with their use of language.

The problem with this thinking is that language itself will not be crippled as
long as innovation is possible for its speakers.  When a word becomes taboo,
a new word will usually be innovated (or borrowed) in its place. This is what
the aborigines of Australia do:  in their cultures, the death of a loved one, or
specifically the mother-in-law, can trigger a taboo on the use of all words that
sound like the dead person's name.  So, they borrow new words from neighboring
languages, or invent a new one.

So, given the context of German society, and what has happened to them, there
is no reason to expect them to do otherwise than to reject certain usages as
evocative of unpleasant experiences.  I mean, they're only human:  they have
to cope with the sickness that was National Socialism in some manner. Americans
do the same with slavery.  How is that crippling?

>  I kept thinking, Then how can I be taking
> a German class this semester?  It seemed to me that maybe people would
> stop using particular ideologically-charged words (I have a 1960's German
> grammar and I know every time *I* see "Fuehrer" for "taxi driver" I
> jump), but wouldn't people just damp down those connotations over time,
> or shift to alternate vocabulary?
Exactly -- as I said above.

======================================
Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
======================================