Re: NATLANG: Scary Document

Joe wrote:

> I have to say though, Scots is an interesting language.  More Germanic than
> English.
I adore Scots.  I grew up hearing it quite a bit.  Is there a body
in charge of the Scots language?  I suppose they would face problems
many language planners face, such as creating new "native" words by
various means that no one uses or understands, or using the English
words everyone understands but which distort the look and feel (and,
in some languages, function) of the language.  Look at some of the
loathsome English loans in Japanese!

Plenty of creative methods exist; Icelandic has been mentioned (and
I believe Faeroese follows their example, right?).  Don't forget
Modern Hebrew.  Even Arabic has some nifty methods.  Turkish also, I
suppose, but I don't know too much about what they did.

Scots, however, is at an advantage in that it's close enough to
English that Scottifications (is that neologism?) of English words
and skillfully crafted calques would lead to something both
recognisable and Scottishy.

Dialecticisms and obsolete words could also be utilised more
efficiently, but this won't help for things like "television" and
"heavy water nuclear reactor".

As the wise Hanuman says: "Fight Linguistic Waste! Save, Salvage,
Recover, Scavenge and Recycle!"

Cheers,
Eamon
____________________________________________________
Robert Eamon Graham              robertg@knology.net

Anugraha banana shundarata dengan bisri bastu-bastu.

                                -- U2, "Grace"

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