GibberMeister Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Scotland Joined 5808 days ago 61 posts - 67 votes Speaks: Spanish, Catalan, Lowland Scots*, English*, Portuguese
| Message 1 of 12 05 April 2011 at 2:44pm | IP Logged |
Personally I'd say no.
Not really from any point of view.
This link my brother sent me (although humorous) makes a case for it.
http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=59366
(Btw, this isn't intended to poke fun at anyone's spiritual views but the link started this discussion with some workmates.)
And I was surprised to find a couple of Americans I know reckon there's a case for this, mainly political.
But linguistically? Is it as grey as some say, or clear cut black and white.
Black and white for me (no).
Thoughts/Opinions?
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mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5757 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 2 of 12 05 April 2011 at 3:51pm | IP Logged |
In years to come I would imagine, when there is a Hispanic majority, but not for a while.
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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 3 of 12 05 April 2011 at 4:15pm | IP Logged |
No.
I can see the case made for Scots (and that can go either way ignoring non-linguistic reasons) but the mutual intelligibility is still too high between "American" and the other nationally-defined forms.
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GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French
| Message 4 of 12 05 April 2011 at 11:49pm | IP Logged |
Whenever I see that site I always wonder how people can be so dedicated to it every day, it's amazing how long they've kept doing that.
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canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5495 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese
| Message 5 of 12 06 April 2011 at 12:46am | IP Logged |
For those who aren't aware, the site isn't for a real church; it's a parody of the
American right.
Perhaps there will be an American language some day. None of us will be around to see it
though.
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schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5560 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 6 of 12 06 April 2011 at 5:02pm | IP Logged |
Even if it was identical, there's no reason why they shouldn't refer to it as "American" if the prefer.
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 7 of 12 06 April 2011 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
Moldovan and Romanian would have to be a comparable pair -- almost entirely mutually intelligible, but with different names.
who really wants to speak "someone else's" language as their first language?
This isn't just about the name but also about maintaining a standard. A dominant variety can impose its norms on a minority form just by strength of numbers. Creating an explicit Moldovan norm gave Moldovans control over their own literature, exams etc that didn't have to follow fashions across the border.
English's problem is that the Americans are the dominant group now, so they don't need a new label to protect their norms -- it's the rest of us who need it.
I'm getting sick fed up of putting a foreign-language film in my DVD player and being bombarded with phrases that look wrong to me, or translations of things like French procureurs to "DA" and all young offenders' institutions being "juvie". These things make the films (or "movies" as they'd say in the subtitles) much harder to watch, because the language is genuinely harder for me to process, and it's distracting.
It would be nice if there was an Americanese, and then we could have English translations too....
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canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5495 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese
| Message 8 of 12 06 April 2011 at 9:42pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
Moldovan and Romanian would have to be a comparable pair -- almost
entirely mutually intelligible, but with different names.
who really wants to speak "someone else's" language as their first language?
This isn't just about the name but also about maintaining a standard. A dominant
variety can impose its norms on a minority form just by strength of numbers. Creating
an explicit Moldovan norm gave Moldovans control over their own literature, exams etc
that didn't have to follow fashions across the border.
English's problem is that the Americans are the dominant group now, so they don't need
a new label to protect their norms -- it's the rest of us who need it.
I'm getting sick fed up of putting a foreign-language film in my DVD player and being
bombarded with phrases that look wrong to me, or translations of things like French
procureurs to "DA" and all young offenders' institutions being "juvie". These
things make the films (or "movies" as they'd say in the subtitles) much harder to
watch, because the language is genuinely harder for me to process, and it's
distracting.
It would be nice if there was an Americanese, and then we could have English
translations too.... |
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Imagine how the Portuguese feel. Whenever I see something (usually websites or movies)
with a language option, it lists only Brazilian Portuguese, but not the Peninsular
variety.
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