Re: Language policy

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

"Esperanto was banned in Nazi Germany, and from 1938 to 1956 also in the
Soviet Union."

    As were other international auxiliary languages.  I myself have seen the
Strafversügung of a fellow named Walter Rädler, who was prosecuted "... für
den in Deutschland verbotenen Esperantobund und den Occidentalsprachbund
betätigt zu haben, obwohl Ihnen von der Polizei in Grünberg dies
ausdrücklich verboten worden war."

    As far as other conlangs, or auxlangs such as Volapük, Ido, and the rest
of that lot, I'm sure they were small enough to fly under the radars of the
various totalitarian governments using language as a vehicle for their
imperialistic ambitions (including Esperanto, which has been well used by
the former USSR and China for propagandistic purposes).  The British actor
Steven Fry (Wilde, Blackadder) wrote a wonderful novel (The Liar) about a
group of "spies" who use Classical Volapük as a code to cloak their missives
(for which it is ironically well suited, despite having been constructed as
a tool for communication).

    In my own constructed analogue to the Barbary Coast, I've attempted to
fashion the political and linguistic situation upon the model of other
diglossic socities.  Most people speak a vernacular at home, and there is a
conservative, somewhat artificial form of the language which serves as a
national tongue (Old Afer, which finds its literary apex in the poetry of
Marcus IASUCTHAN).  When people from different prefectures in Northern
Africa wish to speak to one another, they "climb up a ladder," modifying
their speech towards this official form until they reach mutual
intelligibility.  The product of this speech is rarely identical to the
official language, except in certain rarefied topics of discourse, e.g.
academic, political, religious, in equally rarefied social contexts.
    Those Afari nationalists who talk about a return to Old Afer or even
Latin (!) rarely speak these classical languages with any degree of fluency.
  While speech in the vernacular dialects is not banned per se, it is
heavily discouraged.  Consequently, even things like grammars of the
vernaculars and popular novels are written in Old Afer.
-Chollie
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