Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

At 5:42 pm -0700 14/10/98, Gerald Koenig wrote:
>Ray said:
>>
>>I say that the notion that some natlangs are superior to others is just as
>>flawed, meaningless and IMHO dangerous as holding that certain races are
>>superior to others.  To me _both_ notions suck.
>
>Well that to me is a really strange identity.
Hardly.  Is not, e.g., the Zulu language very much identified with the Zulu
ethnic group.  Is not Welsh identied with a particular group of people?
When I happened to mention to someone that both languages contained the
velar fricative (Welsh 'll'), the response was "Well, they're both
primitive languages?"  Was there no implication that ipso_facto the peoples
who speak these languages are also primitive?

I'm sorry - but it _has_ been my experience that it is a very short step
from "Hebrew is a primitive language" (which I was once told by a
schoolmaster) to "Jews are an inferior people".  I still say both notions
suck.

>Do you think some
>educations are superior to others? Is not a language an education?
NO WAY!

Education is consciously devised by some group of humans and, alas, in this
country too much of a political football.  Of course some are bad, and some
even worse.  Occasionally some is good despite the politicians of both
major parties.

I know some governments have tried to regulate language, but this is
usually in areas of superficial things like script or spelling.

No, I see no analogy.

English has been far more than an education for me.  And I've had students
educated during their schooldays in two or three different languages.  I
see no analogy.

>Does an education add one whit to the inherent worth of the
>possesor?
Of course, but I fail to see its relevance in this argument.

>Is the thing contained equivalent to the container?
I assume the question is merely rhetorical.  I fail to see the relevance.

Ray.