Re: CHAT: language and politics (was CHAT: conlangs and mentalillness)

Tom Wier wrote:

>Well, I'd like to restate that I was not talking about my personal
>political beliefs, but those of a lot of people I've met who're pretty
>conservative by any measure.  I was just trying to correct what I
>perceived was IMO somewhat of an unfair characterization.
Oh I knew that!  Sorry for my being unclear.

>Certainly, there is a very wide variety of conservative ideologies,
>so I make no bones about the fact that it's just those that I've met
>that hold to that particular line of defense.
Basically, there are two schools of conservatism: the old conservatives are
those who just dislike a lot of government, especially centralized.  They
are more the "live-and-let-live" type, where they want localities to be
self-governing, without much interference from outside.  They would be found
among all social, ethnic, and religious groups, and would be naturally
tolerant of a pluralistic society, as long as they are not bothered by
people being pushy.  (The Governor of Texas, George W. Bush Jr., is more
this type of conservative I believe.)

A neoconservative, however, wants more centralized government, but not a
pluraistic welfare state; they want strong leadership, strong military,
patriotism, unity, and to certain degrees conformity.  In other words, our
nation doesn't have time to worry about minority issues, much less minority
languages.  We all should speak English first so we can better work together
for a stronger America.  (Some of these insist we all become evangelical
Christians, own lots of guns, and/or reject anything that is not purely
American culture, but those are obviously more of the radical right-wing
type.)

[sorry, I snipped all the information on Texas which I did find pretty
valuable]

>So, obviously, there are other reasons than mere diversity that determine
>whether a country will choose to designate an official language.  In some
>cases, such as China, it is because a regime wants to impose some sense
>of homogeneity on its population, or others, like I suppose in France,
>where
>the sheer weight of history and tradition make some unwilling to change,
>I think (during the Ancien Regime and Empire, of course, their aim was
>either
>to ignore the idea of subject language communities entirely, or to impose
>French, so as to impose Frenchness in the name of "unity").
Yeah, China and France seem to lean in the direction of that second type of
conservatism I spoke of.  China is quite statist, but it seems to me to be a
a capitalistic form of socialism, where the state runs like a for-profit
corporation, with the citizens as employees.  Legally, the minority
langauges such as Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian, and Hmong-Mien do have
protected status, but I don't think these languages are much protected in
actual practice.  I think the regime, and especially that of Mao Zedong,
really wants national unity, at least of Chinese-speakers, under the Beijing
dialect of Mandarin.

Okay, on to one of my conlangs and its culture.  In Techia, the Qotilian
dialect of Tech written in Latin script is currently the national official
language, but there is little central government.  (There is work to develop
a Standard Tech which is more central among the dialects.)  The King is more
than a mere figurehead; he has veto power and executive order privileges,
like the US or Russian President.  But the bulk of power is exercised by the
national Parliament, and even more among the tribes individually.  Different
alphabets/scripts are used for different dialects; the Ma`ou insists on
using Arabic script for their vernacular, and they are very adamant about
that.  The King or Queen is expected to be able to address his people in
*all* of the Tech dialects, as well as most of all of the main immigrant
languages.  (King John Baptist I, the current monarch, is believed to be
able to speak some 25 languages.)  Though there is little legislation
concerning "colonial" languages like English, Portuguese and English- and
French-based creoles such as Sea Islands, Seminole, Haitian and Louisiana,
these languages are well-tolerated, and native Tech speakers are encouraged
to learn one or more languages.  (In fact, an estimated 50% of the
population is at least basically functional in English.)  Classical and
liturgical languages such as Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, Sanskrit,
Egyptian and of course Ge'ez and Coptic (the prominent faith is Ethiopian
Orthodox Christianity) are very popular among the more educated and
professional folk.  Even auxlangs like Esperanto are found among the
intellegencia.

Well since we've gone over the 100 post limit, I'll shut up now and let
everybody get caught up.

Danny


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