[Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 3:04 AM, Marcus Buck <me at marcusbuck.org> wrote:
> Tim Starling hett schreven:
>> Marcus Buck wrote:
>>
>>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
>>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic
>>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use
>>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard
>>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
>>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
>>> Latin is a godly language."
>>>
>>
>> I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
>> conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
>> credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
>> these claims?
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
> There's no obvious or agreed-upon measure for the proximity of dialects
> or languages nor for identity attitudes. All findings are inherently vague.
> What did you hear conflicting things about? About the big differences
> and problems with mutual intelligibility of Arabic dialects or about the
> notion of "one Arabic nation"?
> Well, that Arabic has a wide variety of different dialects, is obvious,
> if we look at the basic facts. Arabic is spoken over an area that spans
> thousands of kilometers. Arabic spread from its central area in Arabia
> in the 7th century due to the spread of Islam. Since then the dialects
> developed different from the standard that didn't change much since then
> due to it's liturgical character (just like Latin). Latin was in vulgar
> use since about the 1st century. So Latin Vulgar had 2000 years to
> change and Arabic Vulgar only 1300 years. Therefore Latin Vulgar should
> be roughly 50% more diverse than Arabic Vulgar (Please put the emphasis
> on "roughly" cause language change is of course not linear). [English is
> spread over a very wide area too and does not show that much variation.
> But English spread from England only 400 years ago and most of the
> speakers shifted to English only in very recent times. So outside of
> England there are no real dialects (and even England is no country with
> a pronounced dialectal landscape). Therefore the whole subject of
> "dialects" is a very obscure thing to many speakers of English.]
> The notion of the "one Arabic nation" is even more vague. We have to
> keep in mind, that mentalities do not necessarily differentiate between
> different identity-building elements. Identity can be based on
> ethnicity, on language, on religion, on common history, on citizenship
> or on arbitrary mixtures of these aspects. The most important connecting
> element for people in the Middle East is religion. The Islam. The Islam
> connects them to people with entirely different languages too. But the
> Standard Arabic language  is connected to the Islam also, cause it's the
> liturgical language of the Islam. Saying, that Arabic is a macrolanguage
> can easily touch religious feelings. That's irrational, but happens. So
> there are many different levels of identity and interconnections between
> those levels of identity. It's possible, that you talked to Egyptians
> and they said "those damned Syrians" or otherwise showed few "Panarabic
> loyalty". But that doesn't mean there is no common identity. I'm sure
> you will easily find New Yorkers saying "those damned New Jerseyians" or
> US Americans saying "those damned Canadians". It's normal to have
> animosities with the people you know best, your closest neighbors (cause
> there's few reason to be angry about people you have no contact to). But
> if it comes to identity or loyalty, New Yorkers and New Jerseyians,
> Americans and Canadians, and Egyptians and Syrians will stand close and
> stick together.

Just to add here Scots. English with ~1000 years of divergent
development is considered now as a separate language. Also, there are
significantly different English creoles, like Jamaican is. Scots, EA
and French may be treated as well developed creoles with some
convergent tendencies with Celtic (Scots), Egyptian (EA) and Celtic
and Germanic (French) substratum.