[Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tim Starling]

Marcus Buck 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? 

Specifically the nature of the difference between Standard Arabic and
Egyptian Arabic.

> 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. 

Arabic may have spread from Morocco to Malaysia, but Cairo is quite close
to the Arabian peninsula, so I wonder if you're not overgeneralising.

An attendee at Wikimania 2008 compared the difference between Egyptian
Arabic and Standard Arabic to the difference between written English and
spoken English, or written and spoken French, which seems to me to be
somewhat different to the difference between French and Latin. It is, of
course, a matter of degree.

> 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).

I'm not really interested in your back-of-the-envelope calculations. I was
hoping that you might have some more detailed study that you can point me to.

Quoting again:
> There's no obvious or agreed-upon measure for the proximity of dialects 
> or languages nor for identity attitudes. All findings are inherently vague.

You seem to be preparing the ground to dismiss any kind of study which
contradicts your opinion. Linguistics might be hard work, and fraught with
subjectivity, but that's no reason to dismiss the whole field out of hand.

-- Tim Starling