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19 Sep 2003
p. Language seems to be a bit of a theme this week. I noticed that Maciej Ceglowski[1] of "Idlewords":http://www.idlewords.com had written about a "Quebec blogger":http://www.idlewords.com/weblog.09.2003.html#282 who was threatened with a fine by the Quebec Office of the French Language because parts of his web page were in English. In other words, exactly the opposite problem that we have in the UK--too many languages on one page.
p. Idlewords is always a great read, and his article also provided two other points of interest. One was the following joke:
"What do you call a person who speaks two languages?" "Bilingual." "Three languages?" "Trilingual." "One language?" "American."
p. You could, of course substitute 'British' for 'American' without killing the punchline. The other thing that caught my attention was an offhand reference to the term ["on the gripping hand":http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/o/onthegripping_hand.html]. This neatly solves a problem I regularly bump into when writing; you start off by saying, "on the one hand...", followed by "on the other hand...", only to realize--too late--that you've got a third thing to refer to but no more hands. Step forward "on the gripping hand"--sorted!
fn1. Bearing in mind "what I said":http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000437.html about my lack of linguistic ability, I'm heartily thankful that you don't have to hear me try to pronounce his name.
2
Hmm, one of the fascinating aspects of languages/cultures: with each language you master you get a new grip on reality and yourself as well. Too bad it's so hard to learn several languages and understand cultures ... a clear reason for immortality, I need time ...
cheers orangeguru
by orangeguru @ 21/09/2003 10:10 pm • Permalink •
1
I'm not sure I'd venture to say that we (Americans) on the whole even speak one complete language...
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English, as spoken by Americans, is in a huge state of flux right now. The rate of change within the language today is simply staggering.
Just a decade or two ago new words, spelling variations, slang, and other modifications took months or years before they acheived common usage and usually remained an important part of the language thereafter.
Today, what used to take months or years now takes merely a few weeks. The "need" to make conversations brief, yet pack as much information as possible into them at the same time; the increasing use of text messaging, which also incurs space (and hence, information) limitations; and a generation of children (and many adults, as well) that are steeped into today's technological advances with less education, especially language education.
Finally, with the sheer number of different cultures present within the States, a foreign word can often be substituted for an English one with the majority of people understanding what was meant. This happens most frequently with both Spanish and Yiddish, but every language is fair game.
Most American's don't speak their own language very well but, at the same time, they also know words in other languages (that they also don't speak very well.) For better or worse, though, it's those same Americans that are changing the look and sound of our language every day.
by Nathan Ladd @ 20/09/2003 7:09 pm • Permalink •