Your attitudes towards “purity” and loan-words

[mōdgethanc]

I have no idea what that means.

[KingHarvest]

It means "That word doesn't exist."

[hlysnan]

In australia, as in most english speaking countries, people don't care enough about their language to try and preserve it. There I really would have to start ground up. Fortunately at uni you can find some people with IQ high enough to support prescriptivism. My plan would be taking the queens english society and promoting it. Who knows, with enough publicity they might attract a large enough following to have real power.

Now I'd rather you don't do anything and wait on that government grant.

[mōdgethanc]

I have decreed that from this day forth the tongue of the Angles shall never again be heard in this land forthwith.

[ILuvEire]

The idea of "preserving a healthy language" annoys me off to no end. I mean, yes, languages like Tlingit or Tiwi which have complex morphologies that are dying off because of English influence, they need to be preserved, so that they don't die out completely. But a healthy language like Hungarian should be encouraged to grow and change.

[mōdgethanc]

What if we encourage it to grow by coining new Hungarianisms? Where does that fall?

[Ludwig Whitby]

What if we encourage it to grow by coining new Hungarianisms? Where does that fall?

That would fall in the 'Ridiculous' category.

[mōdgethanc]

Hungarian has a paucity of word-formation processes, I agree. Not like our good old English *agglutination!












*A friend of mine who is a well-meaning psychology major tried to convince me once that English was an agglutinative language. I tried to be as kind as I could.

[TeneReef]

Puristic languages are stuffy.
Compare two Dravidian languages: Malayalam (not puristic) and Tamil (puristic)

Malayalam has higher literacy rates, more newspapers and more Indian state literature awards.
People like reading in Malayalam because the language used in very contemporary.

In Tamil Nadu, the written language is 13th century Tamil and people are not too comfortable with enjoying it, they read in English instead.

[hlysnan]

Puristic languages are supposed to be easier to learn. Let's look at examples in English. We have "authority" and "leadership", or "colleague" and "workmate". It's obvious which of these are easier to understand.

[Śrāmaṇera]

Yes, "authority" and "colleague" are by far the easiest for me

[mōdgethanc]

Puristic languages are stuffy.
Compare two Dravidian languages: Malayalam (not puristic) and Tamil (puristic)

Malayalam has higher literacy rates, more newspapers and more Indian state literature awards.
People like reading in Malayalam because the language used in very contemporary.

In Tamil Nadu, the written language is 13th century Tamil and people are not too comfortable with enjoying it, they read in English instead.

That's pretty anecdotal.

[hlysnan]

Yes, "authority" and "colleague" are by far the easiest for me

Duh, but for native English speakers, it's the reverse.

[Ludwig Whitby]

Yes, "authority" and "colleague" are by far the easiest for me

For me too.
But I really don't see how "colleague" is more difficult for English natives than for French. I think that neither of them would say: ''Oh Let's see.. We have the prefix 'com' and the rest comes from the verb leg..well of course! I understand the word now.''

[linguoboy]

Puristic languages are stuffy.
Compare two Dravidian languages: Malayalam (not puristic) and Tamil (puristic)

Malayalam has higher literacy rates, more newspapers and more Indian state literature awards.
People like reading in Malayalam because the language used in very contemporary.

In Tamil Nadu, the written language is 13th century Tamil and people are not too comfortable with enjoying it, they read in English instead.

That's pretty anecdotal.

Moreover, it can be better accounted for by non-linguistic factors. Kerala is the only Indian state with an HDI in the "high" range (0.814 vs. 0.675 for Tamil Nadu and 0.612 for all of India). Now, I admit this is a little circular, since adult literacy is one of the factors that makes up the HDI. But it's not the only one, and the ranking is corroborated by more diverse measures such as the Education Development Index which is a composite of such indices as "number of schools per 1000 child population, average student-classroom ratio, pupil-teacher ratio, gross enrolment ratio and gender parity index". In short, Keralites are the best-educated of all Indians; they would have a sky-high literacy rate regardless of what language they spoke.

[KingHarvest]

Puristic languages are supposed to be easier to learn. Let's look at examples in English. We have "authority" and "leadership", or "colleague" and "workmate". It's obvious which of these are easier to understand.

I don't know about you, but I don't generally have problems understanding pretty basic vocabulary.

[hlysnan]

I don't know about you, but I don't generally have problems understanding pretty basic vocabulary.

What I meant was that if a native speaker of English had never seen those four words before, the person would at least be able to guess the meaning of leadership and workmate.

[linguoboy]

What I meant was that if a native speaker of English had never seen those four words before, the person would at least be able to guess the meaning of leadership and workmate.

That person would also likely be able to take a stab at "colleague" and "authority", given that "league" and "author" aren't exactly obscure.

[hlysnan]

That person would also likely be able to take a stab at "colleague" and "authority", given that "league" and "author" aren't exactly obscure.

I can see what you mean, but I didn't realise it until you pointed it out. I don't see what author has to do with authority though.

[KingHarvest]

Why would a native speaker besides a 3 year old never have experienced these words before? This is a ridiculous example.