Which version of English do foreign people learn when learning English?
Do they learn American or British?  Take someone from Peru who wants to
learn English as a foreign language.  Do their text books have British or
American or the ought to be standard English?{

Thanks for the replies.

John Lopez — nmsc…@beta.lanl.gov

In article <1ZbDDg#1tPF3k79dln93Lp2qs0FQgPX=co…@snark.thyrsus.com> Robert LeChevalier (loj…@snark.thyrsus.com) writes:

>              kan kat kat kort kas kata

>[Lojbanized phonetic forms of the source language words – the order of
>words is Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic.

I’ve no idea which `kan’ you have in mind for the Chinese for `to cut’; I
suspect that you just went through a character dictionary until you came
across one which looked enough like the others to satisfy you.  As for the
rest of the words in your list:  It’s clear that you are of the mistaken
view that Chinese characters correspond to Chinese words.  Please read
DeFrancis’s _The Chinese Language:  Fact and Fantasy_.

                                        –Scott

–
Scott Horne                               …!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne
ho…@cs.Yale.edu      SnailMail:  Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT   06520
203 436-1817                    Residence:  Rm 1817 Silliman College, Yale Univ
Uneasy lies the head that wears the _gao1 mao4zi_.

Because of the numerous responses, I’d like publically to thank everyone who
bothered to answer my question.

Apologies in advance for wasting bandwidth….
—

    =============================================================
    = Joel Murray / Vancouver, British Columbia  /  Canada, Eh? =
    = a…@mindlink.uucp   [or]  uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a23 =
    =============================================================

There’s been a thread running recently in this group about whether we
should say "Farsi" or "Persian": the issue, more or less, is whether
we should take the word of speakers of a language for what its name
is. I don’t know anything of interest about Persian/Farsi, but it does
remind me of a number of other cases where there is such an issue.
Apologies if these points have already been made – I haven’t read much
of the Persian/Farsi thread.

1) Lots of people tend to pronounce Breton (the name of the Celtic
language spoken in Brittany) with final stress. This isn’t the Breton
name of the langauge – that would be Brezhoneg. Now in Breton (with
the exception of the rather unusual dialect of Vannes) stress is
generally penultimate, so in [brezonek] the stress would indeed fall
on the syllable [zon], but not on a final syllable. In English, a
moment’s introspection will hopefully convince you that the normal
stress rules would stress the initial of Breton (like "Britain"). So
why do people stress the final syllable? Presumably not because of the
influence of the Vannetais dialect, but rather because the French give
the word "breton" final stress. However, given the ruthless efforts on
the part of French governments for centuries to wipe out Breton (along
with other "minority" languages), I see no reason to give the French
any credit in the matter. Let’s all say Breton with initial stress,
which conforms to the natural stress of both English and Breton.

2) My second case comes close to the kind of thing people have been
discussing in the Persian/Farsi thread. There is a rather widespread
(well – at least among a few hundred anthropologists, linguists and
movie buffs…..)  that there is a language called "Kwakiutl" spoken
on parts of Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland. This name is
often pronounced (by those who can’t avoid pronouncing it) as
something like [quack-ee-yoot-ul] (IPA-in-ascii, right?). The first
point to make is that the spelling `Kwakiutl’ represents Franz Boas’
use, in his early work on the language, of an orthography that had
been made up by a missionary (the Rev. Alfred Hall) who studied it
earlier. The orthography in question is absolutely awful, but
regardless, it should be recognized that it was intended to represent
a pronunciation better rendered as [kwagyoolh].  The sequence `tl’,
represents "lh", which is my ad hoc way to represent voiceless [l], as
in Welsh ll.

But there’s more. "Kwakiutl" is hardly an English formation, though it
is a native word: it refers to the people. They also have a word for
their language: kwakw’ala. Both of these are formed on an obscure stem
/kwakw/, refering roughly to members of this culture. The suffix
/-ulh/ `nominal’ yields [kwagyulh], the name of the people. The suffix
/-k’ala/ `noise typically made by [stem]‘, on the other hand, yields
[kwakw'ala] (don’t worry about the morphophonemics). So there’s a
perfectly good word for the language, and to say "those people are
speaking Kwakiutl" is roughly like saying "those people are speaking
Englishman". The usage comes from Boas, who certainly knew better (at
least he did very shortly after beginning his life-long work on the
language), and I’m not sure why he persisted in it. But I think a part
of it is an attitude on the part of certain scientists in certain
cultures to assume that it’s the anthropologist who decides what to
call the people, and their language, etc., not the people themselves.

3) Lots of languages are known to people in one culture by a name
given them by members of a rather different culture, often derogatory.
The best-known case of this sort is probably "Eskimo," which was
apparently the name by which Cree-speaking guides in the far Northwest
described these people to early French explorers. The word in Cree
means roughly "those who eat disgusting stuff we wouldn’t touch with a
ten-foot pole" or something similar, so you can see why they would
rather be known as Inuit ("people" in Inupiaq) or the like, or just as
Fred. But "Eskimo" is only one instance of this. There are LOTS of
other cases of the same sort, I believe.

4) The limiting case of this kind of language-naming is probably
represented by the following anecdote. Supposedly the New Guinea
people known as the "Ono" were given that name by guides taking Dutch
explorers around. One day they cross a river, they meet some new
people, and the Dutch ask their guides "who are these guys?" The
guides, who spoke Kate, didn’t know, so they asked the people "Who are
you?" in Kate. Well, these folk don’t speak or understand Kate, so
their answer was, in effect, "Huh?" But the way you say "Huh?" in
their language is "Ono?"…..so the guides reported to the explorers
that these were the Ono. Again, I think this kind of story represents
the source of a number of other "glossonyms" among the lesser-known
languages that have made it into the anthropological/linguistic
literature.

There are several morals to be drawn from these anecdotes about
people’s attitudes toward languages and cultures other than their own,
but I will leave them to others to draw.

Steve Anderson

Greetings to all Finnish speakers,

I have a couple of questions.

It is said that in imperative sentences the subject can’t be present in its
normal initial position (i.e. _Sina" lue kirja"_ is ungrammatical), but it
can be present after the verb (i.e. _Lue sina" kirja"_ is fine).

1. Do you agree with this?

2. Does it also work in the same way in the plural, and possibly in
the other persons?

3. Can you have another word after the verb but before the subject?  Can
you say e.g. _Lue kirja" sina"_ or _Lue nopeasti sina" kirja"_?

4. Is _Lue sina" kirja"n_ just as bad than _Lue kirja"n_?

Thanks,

–
Ivan A. Derzhanski   i…@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
MB 1766 / Brandeis University                    How do you know that this life
P.O.Box 9110 / Waltham, MA 02254-9110 / USA         isn’t another world’s hell?

        When they get around to revising English, one innovation I
would like to see is a change is the use of punctuation. Right now,
we use symbols at the end of a sentence to indicate its termination,
*and* to identify what type of sentence it is. Why not separate these
two functions, and have one symbol for sentence termination, and
another symbol *at the beginning of the sentence* where it can more good ?
I think Spanish does something like this, and since stealing good ideas
from other languages is a fine English tradition, I like to see this
particular one adopted.

                                                        James Nicoll

I beg to inform y’all that All translations of Vega’s LANGUAGE into ALs
(including the lojban text and the Volap"uk and Interglossa versions that
some folks missed) SHOULD be in the file Vega.Language, in the archive
"other", at the Planned Languages Server, langs…@ivory.cc.columbia.edu.
I think you have to say "send Vega.Language from other".

Party on, dudes/Plu festu uloj.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nick S. Nicholas,                       "Rode like foam on the river of pity
Depts. of CompSci & ElecEng,                 Turned its tide to strength
University of Melbourne, Australia.      Healed the hole that ripped in living"
nsn@{mullian.ee|mullauna.cs}.mu.oz.au        -  S. Vega, Book Of Dreams
_______________________________________________________________________________

The intensity of the persecution of Catalan is indeed remarkable.
Let me put in a plug for a fascinating book on the topic that I
read last summer:

        F. Ferrer i Girones. 1985.
        La Persecucio politica de la llengua catalana.
        Barcelona: Edicions 62.
        (In Catalan, with extensive quotations from government documents
        and parliamentary debates in Castillian.)

This book gives a detailed history of the efforts of the Spanish state
to suppress the Catalan language and replace it with Castillian since
1760. There are also a couple of chapters on the situation in France.
In addition to an exhaustive treatment of measures suppressing Catalan
and of the debates in the Spanish government, which are quite revealing
of the underlying attitudes, there are many interesting plates (e.g. the
edict of Louis XIV prohibiting the use of Catalan in official documents,
a letter written in 1952 by an official of the Ministry of Information and
Tourism prohibiting the holding of an academic conference in Catalan),
and a 14 page appendix listing particular acts of suppression (e.g.
in 1896 the prohibition of speaking Catalan on the telephone.)

                                                Bill Poser

 From time to time, the question of spelling reform in English raises
its head. More recently the French have been tinkering with the
orthography of their language. But it strikes me that reconciling
orthography with sound might be far better served by PRONUNCIATION
reform, and leave spelling well alone. Writing is much more permanent
than speech; we have ample written records of long-extinct languages
which we can merely conjecture what they must have sounded like.
So my suggestion is: as there are 26 distinct symbols used to write
English, there should be 26 distinct phonemes and a strict one-to-one
correspondence. If this is too radical, one could compromise by
allowing certain frequently used digraphs to have independent
phonemic status. But even this should follow a strict rule. If for
instance we admitted the digraph "th" to stand for the unvoiced
labiodental fricative (as in "think") then it would also have to be
pronounced the same way in "this" and "outhouse".
  In some circumstances, something like this is actually happening with
regard to proper names. Many English personal and place names like
Cholmondeley (chumly), Happisburgh (haysbr) and Congresbury
(koonzbri) are becoming more and more pronounced as spelt. In fact
most inhabitants of Congresbury and Cirencester (both in SW England)
will now pronounce as written. Can Loughborough (lufbr) be far
behind?
  One casualty would be poetry, as not only would rhymes change, but
many words would end up with different syllable counts, ruining
scansion. Still don’t you think the idea has some merit?

                -Greg Trice- (lsuc!greg.tr…@canrem.uucp)
—
Canada Remote Systems.  Toronto, Ontario
NorthAmeriNet Host

] From: paut…@ils.nwu.edu (david pautler)
] Subject: Why bother inventing ALs?
] Message-ID: <8…@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
] Date: 16 Feb 91 03:21:30 GMT
]
]       Esperantists: What hope can we have that an international language
] would maintain its international character?  

Quite a good hope, actually.  Most changes in languages are brought about
through normalized mistakes arising out of illiteracy.  Esperanto has
no illiterate speakers.  Esperantists understand the primitve roots which
form more complex words and are, therefore, much less likely to contract
or misuse them.  Furthermore, Esperanto is used in a more highly
ritualized way than national languages which reduces chances of slang
developing.

] The majority of the world’s
] people have no access to global media.  If some language were to be adopted
] tomorrow by the entire international community, it would still be impossible
] for local users to coordinate inevitable linguistic innovations with their
] fellows in other communities.  The natural tendency of originally-coordinated,
] but since-independent systems is to fall out of sync.

All it takes for users of Esperanto to coordinate efforts is the production
of books and journals:  a process which already takes place in Esperantujo.
Having a cassette tape when first learning pronunciation is helpful,
but by no means necessary.

]       I am baffled at the concern over which of several natural or
] artificial languages is the "most logical" choice for such an international
] language.  The choice of language is immaterial.  

If this were true, then there would be no language problem today.
But you are right to one extent:  the language is not the most
important issue, rather it is that no-one is willing to take the
risk that one society will benefit more from the change than another.
It has seemed obvious to many people that the world would greatly
benefit from a common language, but they did not count on the
resistance from those who, although benefitting from the change,
might receive less than others.

] Maintaining a high level
] of communication among all the local communities, however, was the problem
] the visionaries originally set out to tackle and it will remain no matter what
] the particular features of the chosen language are.

This is not really true.  There really isn’t much difference between
the Esperanto spoken by people from different part of the world (my
personal experience).  Practicing with local Esperantists and reading
books and journals is adequate preparation for using Esperanto with
people from anywhere else.  It would be interesting to look at
differences between spoken and written Esperanto from all over the
world, but as far as I know such a study has not yet been performed.

]
]                                               — david pautler

Steven D. Brewer
Department of Science Education
Western Michigan University
"Se vi ser^cas esperantujon, ^cirka^urigardu!"