Conlang to Natlang
Tiro Typeworks
Reading some of the more recent discussion in the this newsgroup
regarding Esperanto, Eurolang, et al, I wonder at what point in their
adoption such conlangs might be expected to begin behaving like
natural languages? It seems to me almost inevitable that, if a conlang
were to be adopted by a large number of people, and spoken and written
on a daily basis, it would soon exhibit the tendencies of natlangs, of
which regionalism seems the most obvious. Is there any evidence of
this occuring already, among the more popular conlangs? I am
unfamiliar with languages such as Esperanto, but would be interested
in hearing the views of Esperanto speakers on how that language has
changed (presuming that, as it has spread, it has encountered
circumstances which encouraged evolution).
For my own part, I agree with Rush Rheese's statement that all
languages are a record 'of ways of living that have meant something';
that is, language cannot be seperated from the lives of those who
speak it or have spoken it. For this reason, I am wary of things like
spelling reform because, while they respond to questions and concerns
in our own time that clearly mean something (otherwise they would not
be grounds of debate), they threaten to erase the linguistic record of
the lives of those from whom we inherit our language. The spelling of
the word 'knight', for instance, might make little sense to modern
English speakers (and still less to those struggling to learn the
language), but it will always tell us something about where our
language has come from.
My apologies for raising what may be, to many people, two distinct
topics. Feel free to respond to both, either or neither.
John Hudson, Type Director
Tiro Typeworks
Vancouver, BC
ti...@tiro.com
www.tiro.com
Jens S. Larsen
In article <5hmtc4$a...@thoth.portal.ca>,
ti...@portal.ca (Tiro Typeworks) wrote:
>
> Reading some of the more recent discussion in the this newsgroup
> regarding Esperanto, Eurolang, et al, I wonder at what point in their
> adoption such conlangs might be expected to begin behaving like
> natural languages? It seems to me almost inevitable that, if a conlang
> were to be adopted by a large number of people, and spoken and written
> on a daily basis, it would soon exhibit the tendencies of natlangs, of
> which regionalism seems the most obvious.
Regionalism is not a characteristic feature of natlangs, at least not
in modern societies. People move around so much nowadays, that the
effort is to conserve the differences rather than to conserve the
similarities between different people's speech. This kind of effort
is evaluated vastly differently in different countries. For all
practical purposes, the dialects of Danish have disappeared, for instance.
In Norway they live on as if modernity never happened, whereas Sweden
seems to occupy a middle ground in these matters. The German-speaking
Swiss cherish the differences between High German and Schwyzerduetsch,
the French-speaking Swiss don't (ie. they prefer to speak Parisian French
even at home, and else High German if they have to). I Croatia there are
some Don Quixote-types, trying to make Croatian look like a language
different from Serbian.
> Is there any evidence of
> this occuring already, among the more popular conlangs? I am
> unfamiliar with languages such as Esperanto, but would be interested
> in hearing the views of Esperanto speakers on how that language has
> changed (presuming that, as it has spread, it has encountered
> circumstances which encouraged evolution).
There is hardly any correlation between spread and evolution.
Languages evolve without its speakers moving anywhere, and they spread
without getting changed (grammatically, at least). If there is a
correlation, it's rather the other way round; American English and
French in Quebec show fewer innovations than British English and
French in France.
> For my own part, I agree with Rush Rheese's statement that all
> languages are a record 'of ways of living that have meant something';
> that is, language cannot be seperated from the lives of those who
> speak it or have spoken it. For this reason, I am wary of things like
> spelling reform because, while they respond to questions and concerns
> in our own time that clearly mean something (otherwise they would not
> be grounds of debate), they threaten to erase the linguistic record of
> the lives of those from whom we inherit our language. The spelling of
> the word 'knight', for instance, might make little sense to modern
> English speakers (and still less to those struggling to learn the
> language), but it will always tell us something about where our
> language has come from.
Spelling reforms do not "erase the linguistic record of the lives of
those from whom we inherit our language" more than abandoning Latin
for English did; much less, actually. There are better reasons to keep
English spelling as it is than historical ones; there's no reason not
to read Shakespeare in a reformed spelling, he needs tons of footnotes
to be understandable for us anyway (not to mention the fact that there
hardly were any spelling rules in Shakespeare's times).
It's illuminating to compare the world languages English and Portuguese
in this respect; English is spoken in countries with so much communication
between them that it is utterly futile to set up meetings in order to keep
the different types of English compatible; not so with Portuguese, where
minor changes in spelling rules have been agreed upon by an international
commission (actually several times, if I'm not mistaken).
Portuguese orthography is also much closer to the actual pronuciation
in the first place than the English is; this makes it much easier to
reach agreements. Take `knight'; according to the present orthography
a more pronunciation-true spelling would be `nite', and the fact that
this would be the new spelling for `night' too may cause some anxiety
among pedants, but no real problems.
The problem is that `nite' for `night' isn't much of an improvement;
in stead of a mute gh we now have a mute e! I can imagine some issues
being agreed upon (eg. to write `r' according to rhotic dialects), but
other issues, such as how the long vowels should be represented, could
only result in an end- and fruitless acrimony, at least if the new
spelling is to be normative in all the English-speaking world.
Jens S. Larsen
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