As mentioned in this thread, the english language is varied, and continually evolving, and purists can do little to stop it. This evolution is due in part to technology, established convention, and influence from other languages.
What I wonder is, are other languages evolving in the same way? I understand that France, for one, resists this change by law. Modern Spanish, which I don’t really speak, seems to be full of modern influence and other language.
So, what do you think?
Peace,
mangeorge
All languages evolve. Laws that supposedly prevent language evolution are a joke, since they do nothing to prevent the changes in languages. There is some question about whether some languages may evolve a little slower than some others, but there’s no doubt that change is a constant.
I assumed so. But I remember reading that when computers were first becoming commonplace, french language officials called it “la machine” because they didn’t want to invent a variation of “computer” like most other countries did.
This could be pure american bullshit, I’ll readily admit.
The French have delusions of grandeur. They are trying (and failing) to avoid using words borrowed from English for new vocabulary. It’s inevitable that they will have to borrow such words from English, just as we borrowed “grandeur” and half a dozen other words in this paragraph from French 500 to 800 years ago. Laws about language don’t really affect anyone. In any case, new vocabulary is only a small part of the changes in languages.
I don’t know much about other languages in general, but I can say that the high-school Spanish my daughter is learning is very different from the Spanish I learned in high school. We never elided numbers, for example. It was viente y uno, viente y dos - and my daughter learned it as veniteuno and vientedos. I also noticed that the word we used for pen - pluma - more precisely refers to a quill pen, whereas the word boligrafo that my daughter learned refers to the more contemporary type of pen, such as a ballpoint.
I don’t know if that means the language itself is changing, or that they’re just teaching it differently.
How familiar are you with modern French, Wendell? On what are you basing your perception that “the French” are trying to avoid English words?
Je laisse mon scooter au parking quand je fais du shopping les weekends.
J’aime bien surfer le web, mais je préfère faire du tchat sur Messenger.
Note that the sentences above are perfectly natural. The truth is that French is loaded with recent and less recent English borrowings. Some of them stick, some don’t. We, as a whole, don’t “try to avoid” borrowing words from English.
Of course, there are people who argue against the growing anglicisation of the language. It’s a matter of style and aesthetics, however, and despite common misconceptions, in the end, French speakers decide French usage.
It should be noted, also, that French is spoken in many countries other than France, from Canada, to Belgium, Switzerland, North Africa, Haiti, Senegal, etc. The language evolves a little bit differently in each locale, and of course, French advertisement regulations don’t affect French speakers in Dakar.
Japanese is a language that changes very fast. It is very, very susceptible to borrowings; about 10% of the vocabulary comes from European languages, mostly English, and over 40% comes from Chinese. The written language has changed tremendously in the last 150 years or so. A text written in 1840 is likely to be almost illegible to an average modern reader.
By “the French,” I meant the people that mangeorge was talking about, the purists who have tried to stop the incursion of English vocabulary into French. Please read the posts in this thread more carefully. It’s mangeorge that you should be disagreeing with, not me. He was the one that wondered if the French language purists had been able to stop the flow of English words into French. I was the one who said that they hadn’t been able to do it. I was saying that English words were continuing to flow into English, despite the protestations of the French language purists (who are the ones who I characterized as having delusions of grandeur). I’m sorry, but I get mad when someone so badly misunderstands what I was saying in a post. You’re disagreeing with mangeorge, not me, so please don’t claim that I was saying the French have been able to stop from using English vocabulary.
First, I didn’t say you claimed that the French had been succesful in blocking inflow of English vocabulary.
From this, you seem to infer that “the French”, which I can only read as “all” or “most French”, have delusions of grandeur and are trying to keep English out. This may not be what you meant to say, but since nowhere did you refer to purists that’s how it comes out.
My response to that was simply that the state of the language is dictated ultimately by popular usage (which you agree with), and that popular usage had voted a great many English words into standard French vocabulary. Ergo, French speakers, as a whole, do not avoid English words. I will further add that borrowings did not happen strictly because we had to. There are languages like Japanese that borrow tremendous amounts of foreign words, and others like Chinese that don’t. This difference stems from various reasons, like socio-cultural environments, structure of the language, etc. “Need” is not one of them as any language should be able to generate new vocabulary internally.
I am actually somewhat of a purist, and so take exception to your use of “illusions of grandeur”. In my case, and I suspect in many other mild purists’ cases, it’s merely an aesthetic issue. I don’t go out of my way to use French expressions when I speak English and when I do, I don’t go for a French pronunciation, though it would be easy for me to do. Same goes for English words in French and Japanese. I feel it breaks the rhythm and tone of the language. I would say that purists are generally romantic and sometimes nostalgic about their language, which might have been what you meant by “illusions of grandeur”.
Perhaps what he means by delusions of grandeur is the Académie française, whose members modestly refer to themselves as Immortals and pointlessly complicate everybody’s lives by thinking up “French” versions of English loan words and insisting on their use?
I mean, imagine if Bush earmarked federal funding for an Academy of English and they convened and then issued proclamations that all good Americans should henceforth say inwit instead of “conscience” and speechcraft instead of “grammar.” Delusional would probably be one of the nicer things said about such an exercise.
This is what I mean by misconceptions. It’s true, that as a matter of style the Académie recommends that a French word be used over a borrowed one, when there is one available. However, it’s clearly speaking from ignorance to state that they make up ridiculous words to supplant borrowings. See the following link for examples of foreign words that were introduced in the latest edition of their dictionary:
http://www.academie-francaise.fr/dictionnaire/etrangers.html
As a matter of fact, this is what former secretary Maurice Druon, a language conservative if there ever was one, wrote about borrowed words in the foreword:
My (clumsy) translation:
In fact, the Académie is extremely reluctant to sanction any new word. They publish a new edition to their dictionary once in a blue moon (9 times in over 350 years) and new editions are already dated by the time they come out.
Regular French speakers don’t really care about the Académie. When people look for a word, they check the Larousse or the Robert. When we need to look up grammar, it’s the Grevisse. Those references are compiled based on usage, by private publishers.
Neologism commissions do exist, and Académie members often sit on them but they exist for a reason. They produce guidelines for usage in specific institutions and situations. Texts like government publications shouldn’t use five different words for “e-mail” depending on who the author is.
That the Académie is a den of conservatism is undeniable. That from an American perspective it is an odd institution is understandable. France is an old country, and while the relevance and utility of the Académie may be questioned, it made sense when it was founded in 1635, and, well, you try getting rid of something that’s been around for 370 years.
Incidently, the term “immortals” is somewhat tongue in cheek. It’s a reference to a seal given by Cardinal Richelieu that read “for immortality”. The Académie was to foster and protect language, which is the vessel of immortality.
I recall hearing a news story on NPR some years back during which the commentator announced that the French government was at that time adopting an “official” language…(drum roll)…French! The story included an interview with a scholar who, it was explained, spoke English fluently, but “preferred to speak French”, which meant his responses to all questions had to be translated in voiceover. The gentleman explicitly stated that the adoption of English words was bound to cause irreparable damage to the uniqueness and beauty of the French language and that the practice must be slowed or reversed as much as humanly (or bureaucratically) possible.
The commentator then went on to express the opinion that the incorporation of outside words and phrases was one of the true beauties of language, and that linguistic purists were fooling themselves if they thought themselves capable of slowing a natural evolutionary process. Naturally, in the course of this discussion, he used as many words and phrases borrowed from French as he possibly could.
Classic.
I think most “purists” are simply trying to keep the fundamentals of their respective languages in place. I don’t think anyone is delusional enough to think that English isn’t taking over in certain fields. Take, for example, the German word for “to download,” downloaden. It is conjugated regularly in the present tense, but when its past participle is downgeloadet. In the past, it is treated like a separable prefix verb, but the prefix “down” has no meaning in German. Many English words don’t go into all the declensions and tenses well, and come out in twisted and confusing ways.
Just because English happens to be very flexible and open to borrowing words doesn’t mean the grammarians in other languages aren’t just as open to the concept, they just have to work with a less compromising language.
Unless, of course, we take into account the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but that’s another debate.
Never heard of the “English Only” movement, eh? “Movement” is exactly right, imo.
So? I exaggerate a little. 
jovan, please tell me what is the common french for computer, it’s roots, and if it is truly a result of resistance to using a version of the vastly 
popular english word.
I don’t trust googles language tool, which has caused me some embarrassment. :o
Merci, mon ami.
The word for “computer” is “ordinateur”. If you look in old texts (1960s), the word “computer” occasionally pops up.
“Ordinateur” was not coined by the Académie, but by IBM, in 1954. They were looking for a good term to sell their machines. This meant that it had to be a term that had to be pleasently sounding and easy to remember. They first considered a direct translation of the English word: “calculateur”. They thought it sounded silly, however, and instead opted for “ordinateur”, which might translate as “orderer”. It was actually an archaic religious term to refer to one who confers a religious order onto someone.
Even though, etymologically, it’s grossly inaccurate, it does roll off the tongue and caught on in popular usage. (In 1954, I don’t think you could say “computer” was vastly popular!)
Other computer-related terms are:
“Informatique” = “computer science”, coined by engineer Philippe Dreyfus in 1962.
“Logiciel” = “software”
“Souris” = “mouse”
“Octet” = “byte”
One word that’s not terribly common but worthy of mention is “télématique”, which was coined in France and imported into English as “telematics”.
Words that were borrowed from English and left as-is include: bug (sometimes written “bogue”), web, tchat/chat, internet, and pixel.
While the French are being debated…
…Most modern languages, if the culture they represent is not specially isolationist, are in a very dynamic stage, due to the communications explosion. English is specially suited due to its amenability to word coinage and English-spearers’ unselfconsciousness(*) about loanwords.
Of course, this means that English becomes a powerful presence in the transnational culture and that ruffles some feathers, leading to ocassional overreactions in the opposite direction.
(*and its germanic affinity for compounds)
Modern Spanish does, indeed have a lot of change in it, and more so when you stop to think that in colloquial speech, there will be a lot of diferring influences depending on whether you’re in Mexico, Spain or Argentina. The * Academia*, rather than obsess over lexical fundamentalism, is more focused on maintaining standardization and ensuring proper learning and use of the grammar – they want it to stay mutually understandable from Mexico to Chile to Spain to the Bronx.
Thanks, jovan. By “vastly popular” I meant that many languages have adopted, and adapted, the word computer.
I’ll cop to at least a little admiration for the seeming contrariness of the french language, though.
An aside;
A couple of Canadians (one was a gf) have remarked to me that some (few) French French people pretend to not understand Canadian French. Tsk tsk.
We do have a french smiley. :dubious:
A man I work with, an engineer from Nicaragua, told me that the spanish spoken in his circles has become so changed that he (and others) often go hang with the natives to hear and re-learn “the pure language” so they won’t totally lose it. But television is coloring their language too. American tv, not dubbed, is hot down there he says.
When he first arrived, he had a hard time adjusting to my speaking to him as an equal. He’s ok with it now, though.
[QUOTE=mangeorge]
I’ll cop to at least a little admiration for the seeming contrariness of the french language, though.[/.quote]
I’m not so sure it’s all that special, though. Maybe, somewhat, compared to other European languages but Chinese generates pretty much all its new vocabulary internally for instance.
I think it’s more that they don’t want to make the effort. Think of Americans who didn’t like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels because they couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying.
Thanks, jovan, for the reminder. I’ve heard a lot about that movie, but I keep forgetting about it. I’ve just ordered it from netflix.
I did have trouble with some of the dialog in The Limey. Good one, imo.
I had friends, a couple, years ago who were from London. They basically spoke two forms of english, cockney and the other one. 