Re: Language revival (was Re: Which auxlangs? (was Re: I won't [to] start a flame war))

At 2:12 AM -0500 11/14/99, Raymond Brown wrote:
>At 11:25 pm +0000 13/11/99, alypius wrote:
>>All true, but this list is the *last* place I expected to hear complaints
>>about language artficiality!
>
>I'm not complaining about artificiality per_se but about things like "false
>archaisms, hypercorrections & mere blunders" and, indeed, the macaronic
>nature of katharevousa.  I think if someone produced such a 'conlang',
>s/he'd get a bit of critical comment on this list  :)
But these are characteristic of _all_ language reforms. There are some
lovely hypercorrections in Sanskrit, as well as misanalyses of various
roots, and false archaisms. What's wrong with this?

The appeal of Katharevousa is that it provided a higher register for
communication than the demotic. My wife appreciates the esthetics of
Katharevousa, and she is a classicist as well as a native demotic Greek
speaker. of course, she can't follow some of the older and more elaborate
Katherevousa very easily, although her classical training makes it possible.

She, and almost all of the Greeks that I have met, deplore the fact that
the rigid demoticization enforced by the government over the last 25 years
has robbed students of the ability to read literature and primary documents
that are little more than a century old. This is a shame, especially in a
country so young and with such a deep anxiety about its identity.

>I've even known some conlangs get criticized simply for being
>relexifications of natural languages - a little unfair IMO since people's
>first attempts at conlanging tend to be just this.  (But if some one - who
>ought to know better - makes extravagant claims for such a relex, then that
>is another matter.)
This seems like a different issue.

>>>One can hardly mourn its demise.
>>
>>Yet I have met Greeks who do.
See my description above. The loss of popular access to the cultural
history of a country _is_ something worth mourning.

>I've no doubt there are.  I'd be surprised if no Turks earlier this century
>mourned the passing of the Arabic script for their language (for all I
>know, there may even be some who'd like to revive it).
That change was part of a very calculated attempt to change the culture --
In some ways, perhaps one that has backfired. While one clear intent of the
writing change was facilitating modernization (which must have been a real
effect in the age of the typewriter), another was the loss of much older
literature to any but a dedicated scholarly readership. To read Turkish in
the old script requires quite some time of specialized education and
practice; whatever is not re-published in the new orthography is not
accessible to the population.

On the other hand, literacy rates are much higher, I believe, and that is
obviously a good thing.

   -- David
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