Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?

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xBlackHeartx
Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?

Postby xBlackHeartx » 2017-04-26, 19:22

This is something I'm devising for a conworld. Right now I'm contemplating a religion that, like Islam, insists on preserving the original version of their holy book. But simply preserving it isn't enough, they want the original text to remain be intelligible for eternity.

Part of this has to do with their view on art: they hate it and view it as sorcery. And just so we know, no, the religion isn't really based off of Islam (much), but it is inspired by the Abrahamic family in general. In a way it looks like a long-lost member of that family. Anyway, like I said, they hate art. In general they're extremely anti-materialist and think art is at best a useless distraction, at worst a form of mind-controlling sorcery. In the case of their holy book, they want people to pay attention solely to what the text says, rather than how pretty it sounds. The founder of the religion himself advocated this, and the entire text is written in a very boring, almost robotic fashion. Thinking about the grammar, it actually bears a mild resemblance to Lojban.

Thinking about it, there are ways they can keep the text intelligible despite language changing over time. Like some modern real-world languages, the spelling system may be slower to change than the spoken language, resulting in a lot of spelling irregularities, but keeping older texts intelligible for longer. But this would probably only work for a few centuries. Another way would be for the book to be written with a logographic system, allowing pronunciation to change freely but the text still being intelligible as long as the grammar remains the same. But I find it hard to believe that the religion's founder would have that much sense. I'm not sure how old the religion is, I'm thinking between 1500 and 3000 years old. I'm kind of leaning towards a younger date though, because I like to think that they actually keep the original book written by the very hand of their founder, and I highly doubt a book or scroll could last for thousands of years, no matter how much you do to preserve it.

But really thinking about it, they probably wouldn't bother to write any books besides copies of their holy book and maybe their own history. Honestly, I doubt they would even have a word for 'book', when the only book most people know of is their own holy book. I like to think the name of the book is simply translated as 'the book'. Foreigners simply choose to use the name of their holy book because they simply had no other word for book.

And yes, they're anti-materialist to an impractical extreme. They almost look like Jains. Really the only possessions they see as okay to possess is clothing, shelter, and food. And the average person doesn't make use of much more than that. They keep copies of their holy book, of course, they also use a tool for both chopping and hoeing the soil for their crops (the thing looks like an Adze, if you care), a clay pot to boil their food in, and a simple loom to make cloth. These people don't even know how to work metal (they just 'slot' boards together to make buildings, like the real-world Japanese used to do, rather than use nails). They don't make use of wagons, or wheels. Think of the Amish, except they essentially only use stone-age technology. Note that I'm still working out what kinds of tools they make. I know they would need knives (they do eat meat, and they make their clothing out of wool so they would need something to shear sheep), and I don't know if an Adze would have the precision they need to make their houses. Not sure how they could make a saw without metal-working though. I guess they could use stone chisels...

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Re: Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?

Postby Johanna » 2017-04-26, 21:28

There are ways of keeping the rate of change slow, for example if there's a strong sense of nationalism in combination with a degree of isolation. Add to that a high degree of literacy and you end up with something like Icelandic.

It's definitely not Old Norse as spoken today, but your average Icelander can read Old Icelandic from the 1200's and make pretty good sense of it, probably something like on the level your average Swede understands written Danish. This is if those texts are rendered in a more modernised orthography anyway, back then a bunch of rather important letters hadn't been invented yet and there was no such thing as a standardised spelling.

Then again, what they did when they created the orthography for Modern Icelandic was to base it on what they knew of the pronunciation of Old Icelandic and then they made a few necessary adjustments so that it would work for the modern variety too. Had something close to that orthography been invented in the year 1200, I'm not sure they would have changed the spelling of any single word to this day...

That being said, I doubt that if a random Icelander were thrown back in time 800 years they would understand the language. They'd probably pick it up pretty fast, but it would take a while, and they'd continue to baffle the natives of the era by using modern terms and idioms in lieu of older ones that are now forgotten
Swedish (sv) native; English (en) good; Norwegian (no) read fluently, understand well, speak badly; Danish (dk) read fluently, understand badly, can't speak; Faroese (fo) read some, understand a bit, speak a few sentences; German (de) French (fr) Spanish (es) forgetting; heritage language.

xBlackHeartx

Re: Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?

Postby xBlackHeartx » 2017-04-26, 22:12

Well they only need to be able to read their holy book, being able to pronounce everything as it originally was is unnecessary. I'm not sure how high literacy is, but everyone is required to memorize the entire book. Its literally the only form of education they have, besides the few trade skills they make use of. Even then the only 'complicated' things they know is weaving, construction, and agriculture.

Problem is, because of their extreme anti-art stance, they really wouldn't be making too many texts besides maybe history books. Their religion also forbids a 'metaphorical' interpretation of the text, they have to take everything literally and at face value, thus no debates over how to interpret the book. If the book doesn't explicitly state something, then god doesn't want you to know it. They don't even really have preachers. The closest thing they have is an 'orator' who just reads directly from the book. And even when it comes to history, likely only the church's governing body would feel inclined to keep such a record. Though thinking about it, they might be inclined to record facts about other cultures, if for no other reason than to find ways to convert them. And if they record their history, then you may see a few (auto)biographies being written.

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Re: Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?

Postby kevin » 2017-04-27, 10:03

xBlackHeartx wrote:Even then the only 'complicated' things they know is weaving, construction, and agriculture.

And apparently writing/copying/producing books or at least scrolls or something. Feels almost a bit too advanced for what you describe otherwise. Books wouldn't be my first association with stone age people...

IpseDixit

Re: Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-04-27, 12:50

Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?


Not using it?

xBlackHeartx

Re: Is there anyway to keep a language from changing?

Postby xBlackHeartx » 2017-04-27, 14:36

kevin wrote:
xBlackHeartx wrote:Even then the only 'complicated' things they know is weaving, construction, and agriculture.

And apparently writing/copying/producing books or at least scrolls or something. Feels almost a bit too advanced for what you describe otherwise. Books wouldn't be my first association with stone age people...


Honestly, I imagine they were once more advanced than they are now, but have just become more extreme over time with the whole anti-materialism thing. I think they were as advanced as everyone else back in the middle ages, I even think they once had currency, but it fell out of use over time, mostly bc they didn't have much of it to begin with.

Yeah, it may not make 100% sense, but honestly screw it. Does everything humans do in the real world make sense?

And I didn't come here to have my conworld critiqued, which is still a work in progress btw. I came here to ask if there was anyway they keep their holy book at least intelligible to modern people.


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