Author: lingo (---.ucla.edu)
Date: 06-27-2002 19:19
I'm a grad student in linguistics, and I get a cold chill every time I open the opinion section of the newspaper and see an article about language; the strength of one's opinions about language seems to be inversely proportional to the amount one has actually bothered to learn about it.
I got the same chill when I saw that this column was about language -- so it was a double pleasure to actually READ it, and see that it was well-researched, well-informed, well-thought-out, and, well... just SUPER. Except that I have to wait until the next column to read the rest. Tease.
That said, a couple of quibbles:
Quote: Among Indo-European-derived languages, syllables are typically vowel sounds, or consonant sounds followed by vowels.
True enough -- but this is also true of ALL known languages. Although many languages allow syllables that contain no vowels (English, for example, has syllables like "?n", the second syllable of the usual American pronunciation of "kitten" -- "?" stands for the glottal stop, the sound in the middle of "uh-oh"), and some languages allow big long sequences of consonants with no vowels at all (some American languages, some languages of the Caucasus, some Berber languages), in all languages the basic syllable is a vowel preceded by a single consonant. All languages have syllables like that, and some don't have any other kind of syllable.
Quote: But American is a snarling, bestial, wild mongrel running loose in the yard. Devouring anything that it comes across and making it part of itself. Moose and mosquito and tomato and ketchup. Tycoon and typhoon and racoon and chipmunk. Ranch and rodeo and lasso, hurricane and renegade and alligator. Kayak and igloo and hickory, squash and jaguar and chocolate. Karaoke and tea, futon and tattoo and taboo. Launch your website in Los Angeles and you're speaking four languages at once. Or one. American.
Well, these words did all enter the language through American English, but they're just as much a part of British English as American English by this point. (Love this paragraph, though!)
Finally, your response to this quote in another post:
>A common language allows cooperation and cooperation leads to civilization. Latin was a binding force that led Europe out of the Dark Ages.
That's backwards; unity leads to a common language, not vice versa. Latin was a common language only in places conquered by the Roman Empire, and ceased to be such soon (in historical terms) after it fell. Latin was certainly not any sort of common language by the end of the Dark Ages, save in limited circles (the church and, by extension, academia).
Your overall point is well taken -- Latin per se was only spoken by elites (but was very influential nonetheless). But it's not really accurate to say that Latin ceased to be a common language soom after the Empire fell -- it never stopped being spoken by the masses, and it's still spoken today. It's just that now we call it French, Spanish, Portugese, Romanian, etc. These languages bear more or less the same relationship to Latin that English does to earlier stages of English.
Just quibbles, though -- and I wouldn't bother mentioning them except I liked your column so much I thought I would just DIE if I didn't post SOMETHING. Hurry up with the next one!
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