[Wolves] Archive via Google

[sparkes]

On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 18:49, Aquarius wrote:
> sparkes spoo'd forth:
> >> you want to add a new word or gramatical structure to the language all you
> >> have to do is persuade enough people that its usefull, it is (sometimes
> >> literally) a language developed in the bazaar.
> > This is how all languages develop.  You can't create a language and
> > expect people to use it.  Esperanto and some offical signing languages
> > have proved this.  A pidgeon language will form and from that a creole
> > rather than use any language dictated from an offical source.  
> 
> That would be "pidgin". :-)
pedant ;-)

> 
> Pidgins develop between two communities without language in common. A creole
> is a pidgin tongue that's grown up a bit, although some people might
> disagree with this. 
yup but this is the context that I used the words in so we are agreed on
a common language for the discussion and our grammers are close enough
that very few situations will arise that lead to confusion, even when
using extremly long sentances like this, or using wrrung spelling ;-)
pure chomsky ;-)

> The distinction between them and, say, Esperanto, is
> that Esperanto is the language of *neither* of the communities; it's daft
> to make *everyone* learn a new language.
but this has happened in the past.  mostly with former slave (and other
imported workers) and instead of taking the language of the 'masters' be
it English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spainish whatever the workers
communicate among themselves and soon have enough common grammer and
vocabulary that a pidgin language allows them to communicate.  The
language would only be able to do the rudimentory things that languages
need as the grammar would not have much sophistication.  'That meat
bad', 'no, good meat, your moms a donkey lover' and 'go outside be
beaten' etc would be about the standard.  The children of pidgin
speakers would spontanously create a whole language in a single
generation with it's own rules of grammer.  This proves language is
inate ;-) chomsky again.

The examples of signed languages in countries where deaf students where
educated in the home until recently show this even better.  Expecially
where the state tryed to enforce a language (normally american standard
sign language) but also created a pidgin language out of there own
languages so the adults trained in ASL couldn't understand them.  These
languages formed into full creoles in a matter of years and soon the
language started to replace ASL in the countries that attemped to use
it.

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/nuggets/028/nugget.htm is one good reference I
found to document this but AFAIK it also happened in hawiwi and other
central american and carabean countries as well.

>  Besides, the lingua franca these
> days is English, conveniently enough for us.
english is 'linga franca' gotta love a language that allows you to use
another (dead) language to describe how it is the common language.  
I know it was deliberate and you considered the consquences of using it
but we would still be writting in one language and reading another if
rebels didn't break the rules sometimes ;-)

I started with a quote and in the interest of adding as many long quotes
as possible to support this thread here is another ;-)

"Now renegades are the people with their own philosophies
They change the course of history
Everyday people like you and me
We're the renegades we're the people
With our own philosophies
We change the course of history
Everyday people like you and me" - Afrika Bambatta 

Starting with Dickens who changes english with his writing at the time
and kept in the dark ages for school children in the 20th century to
Afrika Bambatta who changed the language in the 20th century and might
just bore children in 200 years

>  
> Aq.

sparkes