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Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

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Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#91

Post by nitwit005 »

leephillips wrote: post #31
BitwiseFool wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For other readers who want an example of this, look no further than how the Académie Française wants people to use the term "audio à la demande" instead of Podcast. They don't like loan words in general, and have a particular grudge against English loanwords. https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/27/france-invents-new-words...

I can understand the reason for this. English has established a hegemony over the world, especially in science and technology. They are fighting this, and don’t want their language polluted with an increasing conglomeration of English words that are often unnecessary, as equivalent words exist in French.

They wouldn't approve of a bunch of German words being used either. It just tends to be mostly English at the moment.

They just view foreign influence on the language as bad, even though that's been going on since the dawn of time.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#92

Post by unixhero »

andrewzah wrote: post #58

Really, it's for the better. Languages change naturally over time and institutions like for French or Korean have little bearing on that. It's better to have style -guides- than to try and enforce usages of a language that differ from how it's actually used in real life.

I have learnt Spanish in an academic setting and to have an Academia to refer to is invaluable.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#93

Post by Galaxity »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #55
leephillips wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My two Spanish teachers, who live in two different Latin American countries, use the RAE as a fallback authority in cases where it’s not clear what usage is preferred. So it is kind of a weak authority. And, believe it or not, the concept of correctness in language exists in Latin America, regardless of what the “locals” speak, and it matters to a lot of people, who love their language and treat it with respect.

Sure, the Spanish teachers do. The Americans? I still doubt it.

By Americans he means the locals. The (Latin) Americans.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#94

Post by wwtrv »

leephillips wrote: post #70
chrisseaton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they fighting it? What’s the problem has to be fought against? What will happen if they don’t fight? Is it just a weird xenophobic thing?

Linguistic hegemony can be felt as related to cultural and political hegemony. Just as something would be lost if the world only had one language, it’s natural for people to ask why, if our language has a fine word for something already, we have to throw it out and use a foreign word instead. Language is bound up with history and culture. People have affection for these things, and don’t always want to toss them away…

Not sure if France, whose government eradicated many local languages and dialects in geographical France throughout the 19th & 20th centuries and is not very eager to protect what survives of them now is the best example in this case, though.

e.g. in the mid 19th century 4/10 of all people in France spoke Occitan as their native language, how many do now?

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#95

Post by fanf2 »

js2 wrote: post #77
fanf2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my version of English, a router that passes packets rhymes with root, and a router that carves wood rhymes with out.

Is that typical UK English?

Yes :-)

There’s a nice list of other heteronyms at https://jakubmarian.com/english-words-spelled-the-same-but-p...

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#96

Post by denton-scratch »

The author (Byron) seems to conflate "eloquence" with the Ciceronian use of flowery constructions and lots of subordinate clauses. For me, eloquence is the art of making yourself understood in speech. Elaborate rhetorical embellishments, it seems to me, impede that goal.

I find that I identify as a prescriptivist; at any time, there seems to be a small number of words that are widely used in a sloppy and ignorant way by opinion-formers, and that usage rapidly pushes out more precise usage.

Having said that, I welcome the fluidity of English, and would be horrified at the prospect of an Academy Anglaise with a goal of fossilising the language. I enjoy adjusting my register to my audience. And (my elitism breaks through) I enjoy exercising my knowledge of English vernacular (i.e. I like swearing) and formal registers. And I enjoy the effect it has when I suddenly switch registers - swearing during a mainly formal utterance shocks people. I enjoy demonstrating that I am a native speaker, even if that makes me harder to understand for an increasing minority of people.

I use quite a lot of americanisms; when I was growing up, American slang was hip (I'm from the UK). I get teased for that. I also use a fair bit of "archaic" terminology, partly because it seems more precise to me than the modern gloss.

So I guess I'm not really a prescriptivist; I just have some opinions that die-hard descriptivists seem to find offensive. Lexicographers (Websters, OED) have apparently all lined-up behind a descriptivist banner, and I don't know where one might find an authoritative prescriptivist English dictionary.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#97

Post by denton-scratch »

Hokusai wrote: post #28
rarec wrote: post #4

English being a mess may be one of its charm points. Many languages in a trenchcoat, full of flavor and exceptions to its own rules and a headache to learn.

That same exceptions may cause an increased difficulty for dyslexics. The design of a language has effects on the society that speaks it. "So, how then have we ended up with the phenomenon that some people who speak both English and another language can be dyslexic in one, but not the other? The answer, it seems, is hidden in the characteristics of a language and its writing system. “The English writing system is so…

> print to sound or sound to print translation is not always one to one

You don't say!

It's almost always not one-to-one. The "ghoti" joke parodies this.

English language derives from Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin vulgate, celtic languages, and colonial imports from e.g. the Indian subcontinent. The spoken language has moved beyond those roots, but the spelling hasn't. I appreciate those old spellings; I like to see the origins of words in their spellings. Sometimes these spellings become apparent in the way words are used and pronounced in regional dialects, and I deplore the steady homogenisation of English.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#98

Post by denton-scratch »

pavlov wrote: post #38
bsder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language is more regular? I guess maybe Korean (Hangul is phonetic, no?). All the romance languages are weird. You can't even go from pronunciation to characters in Chinese or Japanese due to Kanji. Most of the Cyrillic languages are just as bad.

Spanish, Italian and German spellings are a lot more regular than English. You can almost always pronounce a word correctly even if you’ve only seen it written. English stumbles even with basic vowels. (After speaking this language for 30 years, I’m still unsure whether “pear” rhymes with “bear” or “fear”! This kind of thing doesn’t happen in any of the other four languages I know.) Even French beats English in this…

I have recently been pulled-up by a fellow native speaker over my pronunciation of the word "poor" ("poo-uh"). She pronounces it the same as "pore" or "paw". Many other words have exhibited the same shift: e.g. moor/more, boor/bore. My natural accent is RP, but I think the distinction I like to draw is not RP. Most of the people I meet that draw this distinction are from the North. Scots, in particular, seem inclined to draw the old distinctions more than southerners.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#99

Post by denton-scratch »

js2 wrote: post #77
fanf2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my version of English, a router that passes packets rhymes with root, and a router that carves wood rhymes with out.

Is that typical UK English?

It is. A "rooter" is a piece of network equipment; a "rauw-ter" is a machine for finishing a hole in a piece of work, such as a drill-hole.

I'm perfectly willing to accept american pronunciation of technical terms in IT; IT tech-talk is a kind of jargon that most non-techs are bewildered by. There's little benefit in clinging to customary pronunciations.

But the machine for cleaning holes isn't in that category. If I were talking to e.g. a woodworker, and referred to a "rooter", I expect that would result in some mirth at my expense, for exposing my ignorance.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#100

Post by denton-scratch »

scythe wrote: post #65
gerdesj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gather that Hungarian is nigh on completely regular with respect to symbol to sound. I was told this by a Hungarian, speaking English. Hungarian does seem to have a lot of diacritics which implies to me a deliberate formalism.

Non-Indo-European languages have an ironic advantage in that aspect, since they were generally only Latinized once, rather than accumulating various orthographies over the medieval period. Hungarian, unlike most European languages (but like Finnish), is Uralic. Pinyin is fully regular too, even though it looks very strange to an English speaker.

I thought Finnish was categorised as "finno-ugric", which I understood to be a language group that included only Finnish, Magyar, and Basque. Perhaps my understanding is outdated.
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