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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 25 of 66 18 June 2012 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think that it's quite as neat as that. Nationalism and language learning are definitely separate as nationalism can discourage or encourage the study of some language - it depends on which case we're considering. On one hand, nationalism can easily be the impeteus to preserve a "language" but on the other, it can easily form a precursor to suppressing languages/dialects within the community or territory by shading into motivations to use a standard language in the name of national unity or some other political hoo-hah. For example, the Torlak transitional dialects/languages of Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria are under strong pressure ("vulnerable" in UNESCO's parlance) from the standard languages of the respective nation-states. By definition these nation-states are valid per certain nationalist principles and so led to the creation of some unifying language which quietly led to the stigmization of any dialect/language not enshrined by the central authorities. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| D+C Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4578 days ago 31 posts - 59 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Sign Language | Message 26 of 66 18 June 2012 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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All political extremes lead to homogeneity, be it cultural, class, racial or linguistic.
Moderate nationalism, like moderate internationalism, is not contrary to language learning. In my humble opinion tiny dialects like Torlakian are far more likely to persist within a nation conscious of its own heritage than in a global community torn from its historical and cultural roots. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 27 of 66 18 June 2012 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The thing with Torlak is that it's not even under political extremes i.e. it's not as if it's a crime to Serbian, Macedonian or Bulgarian authorities when others use Torlak. It's basically suffering from a combined perception among its speakers that what they speak is socioeconomically useless while officialdom follows the "tyranny of the standard language" even when they don't impose draconian measures on someone for using something non-standard.
Moderate nationalism neither automatically supports nor hinders language learning. In other words I don't agree with you but I don't agree either that nationalism automatically shuts down language learning. It lends itself to both outcomes quite "naturally" when you think about it and consider the position of non-official languages. However there is something like a zero-sum game where nationalism elevates one language and (sometimes inadvertently) denigrates all others. To make my point clearer, consider the Saamic languages. When I refer to how even moderate nationalism can be detrimental to a language's existence, I think of Akkala Saami which went extinct in 2003. The Soviet/Russian authorities didn't crush it or ban it, but instead focused on what was official for the nation-state (i.e. Russian) and so promoted it through teaching it to citizens. Eventually the speakers of Akkala Saami got the hint, and became slowly assimilated while their ancestral language became a museum piece. You'd probably be happier to hear about Finland's "language nests" for Inari Saami (basically they're a kind of state-sponsored immersion program for children) which come from the idea that being or belonging to the Inari Saami is somehow important and language acts as the primary marker of this distinctiveness. It's best to start when they're young so that the language can last for much of their lifetimes. In line with your thinking, the Inari Saami aren't pushing for these kinds of program out of some exclusionary nationalist urge but rather a fairly moderate stance focused on heritage and their self-perception. Inari Saami is also taught as part of a degree program at the University of Oulu and this again has some state support. This is what I mean by nationalism and language-learning being separate. When nationalism does get involved it can either work for or work against learning a language. A nationalist can eschew the learning of other languages because he/she holds that it's optimal to devote one's efforts to learning one's "own" language. On the other hand, a nationalist can eschew the learning of one's "own" language because learning the language associated with national unity or some prestigious subgroup in the community is held to be optimal. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| D+C Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4578 days ago 31 posts - 59 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Sign Language | Message 28 of 66 18 June 2012 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think we are essentially in agreement. My issue (I self identify as a national
conservative, for what it's worth) is with the suggestion that nationalism is evil and detrimental to language learning. I would argue that it is not, I would argue that it is in fact the best form of defence for a besieged language, but I would accept the premise that it is essentially "neutral", as most moderate politics would be. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 29 of 66 19 June 2012 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I can cite it out of the book I got it from: "A Patriot's History of the United States" "Environment also influenced accents, producing the flat, unmelodic, understated, and functional midland American drawl that Europeans found incomprehensible. Americans prided themselves on innovative spellings, stripping the excess baggage off English words, exchanging "color" for "colour," "labor" for "labour," or otherwise respelled words in harder American syllables, as in "theater" for "theatre." This new brand of English was so different that around the time of the American Revolution, a New Englander named Noah Webster began work on a dictionary of American English, which he completed in 1928." I'm trying to dig up more, I find it pretty cool :) Edited by datsunking1 on 19 June 2012 at 4:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6949 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 30 of 66 19 June 2012 at 9:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I had also learned that Webster was the source of these spelling reforms, and for what it's worth, Wikipedia seems to confirm this:
The use of "he chose", "he changed", "innovation", "spelling reformer", and "his dictionary introduced" would seem to point to most of the major spelling changes being his own creations, and the article cites his extreme nationalist/revolutionary ideology as a motivation for introducing these changes. In other cases, though, he was apparently just reflecting Americanisms that were already in place:
So were the spellings he decided upon already in use by some Americans? The following essay of his seems to suggest that they weren't; that they were entirely his own ideas: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/DKitchen/new_655/webster_langua ge.htm (remove any spaces in the URL) I hope that helps clear it up a bit... and in closing (and to veer this thread even further away from its original topic), an interesting language-related tidbit from the article:
I don't know if he was actually able to communicate in all those languages, but in any case, that's some amazing dedication! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5565 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 31 of 66 19 June 2012 at 9:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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'This new brand of English was so different that around the time of the American
Revolution, a New Englander named Noah Webster began work on a dictionary of American English, which he completed in 1928' - Was Webster one of the immortals? 1775-1928 is a pretty long time to write a dictionary :-) To my knowledge there was no conscious effort to change words until movements on both sides of the Atlantic at say, the early to mid 18th century, began to think about spelling standardisation. Given that people on both sides of the Atlantic in the 17th century would spell the same words differently in the same letter or book, I don't believe it was a conscious effort on the colonists behalf to separate themselves linguistically from England. In any event, hasn't the alleged separatist mentality of British Colonial America gone out of fashion in historical circles? Still, I accept, I could be wrong. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kman543210 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4664 days ago 26 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, German | Message 32 of 66 19 June 2012 at 10:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Just like hrhenry, I question the accuracy of this assumption. I have read several different books and watched many documentaries on the history of the English language, and I do not remember ever hearing this as the reason. People spelled words differently within the same country, and even the same person would spell a word 2 different ways before standardization. As for the book A Patriot's History of the United States, from what I know of this book, it was written from a clear political point of view, so I wouldn't take all the statements in it as facts but rather as a certain point of view of history, especially when trying to assign people's motives to certain things. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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