Languages without regulatory authorities

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Woods
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Languages without regulatory authorities

Postby Woods » 2021-06-22, 13:59

Languages without regulatory authorities

I was amazed to read that in the English-speaking countries, there's not a single governmental body prescribing the usage of the language (is it effectively so?)

"Rules are not to be respected, they can only be obeyed or disobeyed" (some smart person on Quora)

And maybe that's one of the reasons English is so awesome at the end - its rules and grammar are the work of millions of people, not just a bunch of aleatorily competent commissioners.

I couldn't help but wonder, are there other widely-spoken languages in a similar situation?

From the ones I can think of, French has l'Académie française, Bulgarian has Българската академия на науките, Danish has Sprogrådet, Spanish has Real Academia Española. And their work is hit and miss. Sometimes setting some good rules firmly in place, sometimes crippling the language for generations to come.

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Rí.na.dTeangacha
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Re: Languages without regulatory authorities

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-06-22, 15:26

Woods wrote:And maybe that's one of the reasons English is so awesome at the end - its rules and grammar are the work of millions of people, not just a bunch of aleatorily competent commissioners.


This is the case for all languages, it's just that some have regulatory bodies that attempt to prescribe certain usages to greater or lesser effect. In all cases, the "real" language is what people actually use, which always differs from what is prescribed.

In most cases, I'm very much against regulatory bodies for languages, as they almost always act to propagate an unscientific, elitist view of language, and actively spur the demise of regional variation, which is a large part of what makes languages so rich an interesting in the first place. There are exceptions; smaller, threatened languages often benefit from having a regulatory body to "legitimise" their status, fight for language rights and promote the use af the language. I also think that for practical purposes, minority languages with no standard (de facto or de jure) variety can find it difficult to have any significant presence in media, education or government without a single standard and/or regulatory body to rally around. But there is a very fine line between acting as a rallying point and acting as a homogenising force assimilating peripheral varieties. It's tricky.
(pt-br)(ja) - Formerly Ciarán12


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