An old saw, but a pleasingly robust one.
The requirement for a navy, for example, helps explain why Switzerland has no single
language of its own and has to make do with borrowings from more seafaring
nations.
* *
* * *
Hard to get too excited about this unit, to
be honest. I guess it’s only the intro but it does seem to consist largely of
statements of the obvious. There does seem to be a lot of hedging around the
inherently political nature of designating a ‘language’ as such. Of course it’s not a purely linguistic
designation.
On which note, my training as a geographer
demands that I get a little preachy about the use of the term ‘nation states’.
Honestly, no such thing. Japan and Iceland are the only two countries which
come even close, and even then it’s getting hazier all the time. The terms nation, country, and state have separate, distinct meanings
and should not be used interchangeably; adding additional terms such as ethnicity, culture, and even race just complicates things further.
This all ties very directly into the issues
I suspect this unit will be covering further as regards group membership and
exclusion and how people and peoples choose to define who is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’
and how sharply and forcefully that distinction is drawn.
“…political and cultural factors have to be
considered…”
* *
* * *
“Standard
English is… that kind of English which draws attention to itself over the
widest area.”
Could you not argue for the opposite, that
standard English doesn’t draw
attention to itself over a wide area? Or at least, not in the way that distinct
dialects do? Obviously this question is very much influenced by my experience
with TEFL and considerations regarding English as a viable lingua franca
between L2 speakers.
* *
* * *
Readings-
Yeah, see above. Nice to have a bit of
methodological and numerical underpinning, but still nothing much to write home
about. One thing perhaps worth mentioning beyond the obvious is Wardhough’s
linking of dialect density and a language’s place of origin, and comparing that
to genetic diversity and the ‘Out of Africa’ theory of human population spread.
In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared
Diamond argues for the use of linguistic evidence to demonstrate historical and
pre-historical migration patterns of human societies. Bit of the chicken and
egg there, perhaps.
* *
* * *
Let’s pad the rest of this out with some
clips, shall we?
Well done, well done on the clips. Eddy Izzard and Stephen Fry, and the other guy I should know better, referring to Jeeves (which we all remember Stephen Fry as). When I think of Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie* on the same show, any number of times, I wonder why America makes any comedy at all.**
ReplyDeleteI had the pleasure to work at an international school lately whose foreign staff was largely not N. American: a prejudice of the 'Head Master'. Besides finally isolating what it is about Kiwi that makes it opaque, a paucity of vowels, and reinforcing the prejudice against Southern English passed to me by my West Yorkshire father, I had the chance to listen better to very different Scottish accents: Edinburgh and Glasgow. I rather like the Edinburgh. I'd even take it on if I lived there for any length of time: masculine but civilized. Glaswegian... I had a five second delay on understanding anything coming out of the young lady's mouth, and she's had as much education as I. Yet I am better at penetrating accents than many: UK father, Toronto mother, J-wife and in-laws, the usual multicultural babble of larger N. American cities, teaching ESL to adults in Toronto... I cannot imagine what her Japanese pre-teens made of it.
"'Standard English is… that kind of English which draws attention to itself over the widest area.'
Could you not argue for the opposite, that standard English doesn’t draw attention to itself over a wide area? Or at least, not in the way that distinct dialects do?"
Yes, and there is no standard English. That's rather a good thing for the robustness of English, and a 'standard Japanese' has much to do with Japanese' relative lack of robustness. Yes, that is an unsupported opinion. Oh well. A few Kansai hacks on variety shows does not disprove it.
Good luck on maintaining two blogs...
*The first time I saw 'House' my J-wife had to ask why I was laughing in amazement: he nails American body language, and apart from some stray posh diphthongs nails the accent.
**Americans Jews and Blacks may make comedy: none else - not even my fellow Canadians who go to LA.