NuqneH! Saluton! A linguistic anthropologist studies those who invent new tongues.
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To learn Klingon or Esperanto: What invented languages can teach us
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Something I learned when I visited Turkey around '97 is that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rreplaced the Arabic alphabet with the Latin alphabetd in 1928.
It is mindblowing that the entire country shifted to a new written form of their language, and relatively recently.
It is mindblowing that the entire country shifted to a new written form of their language, and relatively recently.
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Not sure how you can talk about invented language without the granddaddy of them all, Lojban. A language designed around logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
https://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=L ... lang=en-US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
https://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=L ... lang=en-US
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Vietnam did this too. The country officially shifted from Chinese characters to the Latin alphabet in 1910.
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1928 was a long time ago - what percentage of the Turkish population were literate then? Most of the world is above 90% now, but even in Western Europe, it was barely 10% in 1828. A lot happened then, industrialisation, social changes, and eventually universal schooling. I don't know enough about Turkey to know how significant that change was.
There is precedent - European countries changed from the Roman numeral scheme to the Arabic one about 500 years ago, because it enabled complex mathematics which were simply unthinkable using Roman numerals. Only the educated elite noticed of course; 500 years ago most people were subsistence farmers with no use for calculus.
Perhaps Turkey thought they'd be better off teaching their kids to write in English, giving them access to lots of knowledge? Was English the lingua franka of science in 1928, or is that more recent?
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AFAIK, German was much more prevalent in scientific discourse before WWII than it is today. But I could be wrong.
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All computer languages are invented and whilst one doubt one would use lisp as native language. But why not I wonder. Can a lisp+ babe native. Can computer have Data moment or Asimov moments (when one of the non-human looking one got self conscious… not the old robotic series but the …)
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Uzbekistan started replacing cyrillic with latin alphabet in 1992. I think some other former USSR countries have done likewise. This sort of thing requires a _long_ transition period though.
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As a computer programmer, I believe a language that does not change the way you think is not worth learning. When you design a new language, do you do so with an ideology in mind? Do you think you can or should try to influence its users?
You mention the Superman language having a linguistic distinction between biological and technological. To me that seemed like a strange thing to hardwire into a language, because the distinction seems fuzzy when we get into engineered biology. Was there an ideology behind that choice? (The other obvious examples would be how the language deals with gender, and 1984's attempt to restrict thinking by making certain concepts harder to express.)
You mention the Superman language having a linguistic distinction between biological and technological. To me that seemed like a strange thing to hardwire into a language, because the distinction seems fuzzy when we get into engineered biology. Was there an ideology behind that choice? (The other obvious examples would be how the language deals with gender, and 1984's attempt to restrict thinking by making certain concepts harder to express.)
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You are right about the literacy rate, it was 10,5% at 1927 [1]. Changing the alphabet did not have a huge impact like everybody re-learning the alphabet. In 1935, with the new alphabet in use for 7 educational terms, the percentage rose to 20.4%. The general understanding is that switching to the new alphabet was instrumental in increasing the literacy rates since it was easier to learn compared to the Arabic alphabet (note that the current Erdoğan regime opposes this and claims otherwise, but they don't seem to have any substantial evidence to back their position).
I don't think switching to English (or French or German) would have been that easy. Because, changing the alphabet is one thing, but changing the language would mean teaching the whole population a language. That would in turn mean, you would need the human resources to teach a whole nation a new language (I don't want to get into the whole colonialism discussion here). The whole idea was to construct a nation from the remains of an empire and for that, an independent language would be a very useful thing to have. The language (Turkish) was already spoken by majority of the people (there was also a substantial Kurdish speaking people and many others that would have to learn Turkish due to this language policy), and changing the alphabet was one of the initial steps for "national construction". Then there was a long period where the state tried to change the language itself and remove the Arabic and Persian influences. And that has its own discussion. So, the language debate in Turkey is complex and -strangely- still a politically loaded topic in Turkey.
[1] https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harf_Devrimi
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Mungus the Unhyphenated
Ars Tribunus Militum
Transitioning to a Latin-derived form of alphabet had less to do with any particular language, but rather the commonality of a relatively standardized form of glyphs/phonetic relationships that had developed all over the world. While learning languages in a polyglot world will always be challenging, at least starting off with a fundamentally similar alphabet eases some of the difficulty. Doubtless, the push for modernization accounted for that -- with a Latinized alphabet, anyone needing to learn Turkish didn't have to simultaneously learn a new character set to read and write, and likewise, future Turkish generations would be able to adapt to many other languages while still using a familiar alphabet.
To a point, at least. Because the pronunciation rules of some languages may deviate in... unexpected ways from the "standard" letter-to-phenome relationships as defined in Latin to the alphabet. Spanish, and Italian adhere rather well to the Roman-derived phenomes assigned to the letters. French, however, diverges with nasals and silent or near-silent consonants -- yet does so generally with regularity and consistency; it's a new set of rules to apply to a well-known alphabet. Then along comes Welsh.
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Although the language was invented for the series, in the series' early lost episodes it was related how the Klingon culture arose and how their language was itself an invented language, ie the invented language for the series was, in the persona of the series, itself invented. The ancient and semi-mythical Klingon original ruler Sa'r'an Rhra'p is said to have given them the language.
I think I read that somewhere.
I think I read that somewhere.
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Everything is of course relative but with electronic media and smartphones I think you could do it faster now than before, it takes relatively little effort to make a reader flip between old and new or show it side by side. All applications that support translation could just get a "Language (Latin)" in addition to "Language (Cyrilic)". And you could get a lens for your smartphone, just hold it up to a sign and it'll remind you what new signs used to be in the old writing and translate old signs for those that don't know them. Though in a transition phase you'd probably use "bilingual" signs with the old writing in a smaller font. I'd much rather be in charge of that than say a conversion to the metric system.
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Then along comes Welsh
I laughed so hard at this. OMG! THIS close to spraying red wine all over my monitor.
Expanding the writing versus spoken language discussion, Thai has had the same script since the 13th Century. However, pronunciation has changed in recent centuries. This has led to a few "interesting" quirks.
- The low and falling tone marks are not used in a way that is consistent with modern pronunciation. There are still consistent rules, to be fair, but they're way more complex than they need to be. At least they left the high and rising tone marks alone... See below for a handy flowchart.
- Some consonants are obsolete and never used in modern Thai. They're still in the script and still taught, however.
- Some consonants are pronounced identically to others in modern Thai. They're still around because of spelling tradition because they used to be pronounced differently. The sound "t" can be written with any of eight different consonants depending on the word...
Why? Because the script is sacred and shalt not be altered.
It has been noted that if you dropped a Thai person from the 16th Century in modern Bangkok, he would be able to read everything and understand it, but he would probably not be able to converse with people. He would probably also be run over in short order, but that's a different story. There are parallels to this with Mandarin and Cantonese, where people can write to each other with perfect comprehension, but cannot understand the respective spoken languages.
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So, the ancient Klingons learnt language from clingfilm (Saran Wrap)?! That sounds a lot like the origin story of the Cat from Red Dwarf...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_wrap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Red_Dwarf)
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That presupposes a certain level of technology. Conversion to metric system wouldn't be too hard, you just need an appropriate time scale. Uzbekistan phased in latin characters over the course of 30 years basically, but there was definitely a time when grandparents had difficulty with signs and young people didn't. It's a political issue that no one is willing to spend political capital on.
Now young people have hard time with things written in Cyrillic (much like how I have to look up how long a rods, perches, varas, etc are when I see them referenced in old documents).
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They didn't switch to English - Atatürk pushed through reforms to switch alphabet, not language.
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In the 15th century, the Emperor of Korea changed the written language from Chinese Kanji to what it is now to try to politically and socially separate themselves from China. In the fifth century, Japan created an entirely new writing system because women weren't allowed to learn Kanji, so Hiragana was created for them. Then during the Meji Restoration they created another writing system to import foreign words. And Chinese Kanji itself was imposed in order to overcome the difficulties of all the regional dialects. If you have any interest at all about languages, the youtube channel Nativlang is an excellent source for this.
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For some, the language is very, very strongly tied to their culture and identity. Here in Norway we already understand Swedish and Danish - not surprising since the three nations put together has a population roughly the size of Florida. But even so within Norway there's a divide between a Danish-influenced "bokmål" and a variation that's supposedly a more true reconstruction called "nynorsk". So that's two official written languages, each with their separate vocabulary and grammar spread across 5 million people despite the linguistic distance of dialects.
Needless to say, they're all absolutely getting steamrolled by English, including loanwords and expressions infiltrating our own language but the debates... it's like two men trying to drown each other even though their boat is sinking in the middle of the ocean. They're like the butt of the joke about the religious bridge jumper:
Personally I think we'd do fine without it - it's not like the US, Australia etc. fail to have their own culture and identity distinct from England even though they use English. But it's not a hill I plan to die on.
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Pah, Welsh! There's so much overlap it's only a little weird, substituting a few letter sounds. You just have to remember a few rules and you can switch from one to the other easily. Cyrillic is where things get interesting for users of the Latin alphabet.
Hardmode: Try written Cherokee. The syllabary clearly derives nearly two dozen of its 85 characters directly from the Latin alphabet (and more with slight modifications), but the pronunciation doesn't align in a single instance. Not one overlap. Ꮢ is "sv" like in the name "Sven," Ꮶ is "tso" like the famous general's chicken dish, Ꭰ is "a" and Ꮃ is "la," as in the lyrics to the Smurfs' favorite song.
It makes sense that there's no commonality between the character and its Romance language pronunciation, since the person who invented the syllabary was completely illiterate in (and probably never spoke) English. Despite that, he saw what writing was and figured out how it worked, then set about inventing a writing system that worked with the syllable-based language of his people. So even though there are more than 3 times as many characters to learn, there aren't any exceptions and weird variant rules to follow like English. (You'll never have the old cough/thorough/dough/through etc. conundrum in Cherokee). In fact it was so much easier to learn when applied to its language and caught on so quickly, the Cherokee became more literate in their native tongue than most of their Anglo neighbors were in theirs!
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That's a very discipline-specific take. The purpose of all natural languages is to communicate and the traditional reason for learning more than one was to communicate with more people. Esperanto was invented for the same purpose, though it will never be as useful as speaking a major natural language like English, Spanish, or Mandarin. The purposes of invented spoken languages could be ideological, or otherwise purposeful.
Jargons are kind of a middle ground, being derived largely from natural language but with many invented words to describe and precisely denote items and concepts specific to a field of study, job, or industry.
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Albino_Boo
Ars Praefectus
The Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918. It had been rotting for centuries and the pervious 100 years it had been proped up by various European powers to keep the Russians out. The strain of entering WW1 finished it off. Ataturk was an Ottoman army officer who won fame during the gallipoli campaign. He gained power from the provisional government and his supporters stoned to death the last Grand Vizer, the Great Great Grandfather of the current British Prime Minister. Atatürk created a national state for Turks our of the wreckage of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The change of Alphabet was a deliberate action to suppress the Islamic past. The new Turkish state carried out ethnic cleansing of non Turkish minorities inside the territory it controlled.
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How the heck is that the Grandaddy when Esperanto predates it by about a 100 years???
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I was thinking quicker than I was typing, and inadvertently conflated some things. I know they didn't change their language, I just meant that using the same alphabet ought to make it easier to translate foreign works. I speak a little French, and a few words of German and Spanish. I can understand, or at least make an educated guess at the foreign languages on the back of products sold in many countries - but only those which use the same alphabet. I don't even know where to start with Chinese or Arabic, for example.
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My kids and I are big Dune fans, which may have led to our ‘house language’ that only we understand.
It’s fun, and it’s useful.
All of my kids are trained in martial arts - a lot - and 2 are/were military. We have used our hyperlocal dialect tactically.
Now in some cases, we’ll use a phrase…in English…that means something very specific. We were at a giant medieval fair a few years ago, and some actual Nazi Youth clowns showed up. Looked at the boys and oldest girl (actual G.I. Jane still in the Navy) and said “Pop quiz”.
This means this is a fight we’re trained for, find the leader or instigator, and talk them down or TAKE THEM DOWN, as needed.
OTOH, “smorking the pleerb” is all us, and only for us. We never translate if overheard.
So maybe not an invented language so much as what I said…a hyperlocal version of English.
Still fun and useful.
It’s fun, and it’s useful.
All of my kids are trained in martial arts - a lot - and 2 are/were military. We have used our hyperlocal dialect tactically.
Now in some cases, we’ll use a phrase…in English…that means something very specific. We were at a giant medieval fair a few years ago, and some actual Nazi Youth clowns showed up. Looked at the boys and oldest girl (actual G.I. Jane still in the Navy) and said “Pop quiz”.
This means this is a fight we’re trained for, find the leader or instigator, and talk them down or TAKE THEM DOWN, as needed.
OTOH, “smorking the pleerb” is all us, and only for us. We never translate if overheard.
So maybe not an invented language so much as what I said…a hyperlocal version of English.
Still fun and useful.
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It was a political movement to steer Turkey towards Europe. It came a after the collapse of Ottoman empire after WW1 where Turks lost the "arab" territories they controlled.
("arab" between quotes as it includes not only parts of arabic peninsula but also lebanon, palestine,...)
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In a way, what happened in Norway is comparable to what happened in Turkey after 1928. In Turkey, the state started eliminating the Arabic and Persian words and then "inventing" new words. Over time, this meant, highly educated people started using a slightly different language. Everybody still understood each other, but using the "new words" was a way of signaling status. And it was not only status, it was also political. So, the conservatives insisted on using the "old words". And that created some division within the society. If I understand it correctly, the bokmål/nynorsk debate was at its height during the 70s where being proud of one's dialect was the main outcome. I think this is a good thing because it works against elitism. And since more or less everybody understands each other, having two written forms does not seem to create tension (yeah, I'm looking at you Valle). So, the results in Turkey and Norway was in opposite directions when it comes to equality. But they also diverge from each other in some other ways (because the "old language" in Turkey was not what was spoken in villages, it was the language of the palace; "riksmål", if you like
).I think the only problem with having so many dialects is that it's not easy to learn the language. There are so many variations all of which are correct and that causes confusion. For immigrants, this means falling back to English (either words or full sentences) more frequently.
I'm a bit undecided about English wiping it all. I mostly agree with you. It would also make a lot of things much easier. For example, mobility in Europe is limited mostly because of language. It's not easy for a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher to migrate from Netherlands to Norway. That would not be a problem if English was the official language in whole of west Europe. Apart from the possible nationalistic push-back, we would certainly lose some cultural artifacts, but as you say, it's possible to keep parts of the culture. Also, the influence would be two ways. English would also "borrow" from these other languages. I think English needs the word "dugnad" and that would only happen if official language of Norway was English
But it's not a hill I plan to die on, either.
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In a way, what happened in Norway is comparable to what happened in Turkey after 1928. In Turkey, the state started eliminating the Arabic and Persian words and then "inventing" new words. Over time, this meant, highly educated people started using a slightly different language. Everybody still understood each other, but using the "new words" was a way of signaling status. And it was not only status, it was also political. So, the conservatives insisted on using the "old words". And that created some division within the society. If I understand it correctly, the bokmål/nynorsk debate was at its height during the 70s where being proud of one's dialect was the main outcome. I think this is a good thing because it works against elitism. And since more or less everybody understands each other, having two written forms does not seem to create tension (yeah, I'm looking at you Valle). So, the results in Turkey and Norway was in opposite directions when it comes to equality. But they also diverge from each other in some other ways (because the "old language" in Turkey was not what was spoken in villages, it was the language of the palace; "riksmål", if you like
I think the only problem with having so many dialects is that it's not easy to learn the language. There are so many variations all of which are correct and that causes confusion. For immigrants, this means falling back to English (either words or full sentences) more frequently.
I'm a bit undecided about English wiping it all. I mostly agree with you. It would also make a lot of things much easier. For example, mobility in Europe is limited mostly because of language. It's not easy for a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher to migrate from Netherlands to Norway. That would not be a problem if English was the official language in whole of west Europe. Apart from the possible nationalistic push-back, we would certainly lose some cultural artifacts, but as you say, it's possible to keep parts of the culture. Also, the influence would be two ways. English would also "borrow" from these other languages. I think English needs the word "dugnad" and that would only happen if official language of Norway was English
As a native English speaker, I don't really want English to be the world language. Something important is lost when everyone speaks the same language - 1984 touched on this, explaining how some concepts could become unthinkable without the words to describe them. I also feel guilty when I travel, and everyone I meet speaks English. I try to speak French in France, and I think it's appreciated. All of this is moot of course, I'm not planning to travel again until it's safe.
Thinking about it a bit more, given English's origins and willingness to import foreign words, it might not be so bad. Hygga has recently become popular (largely due to an IKEA advert, but that doesn't really matter), perhaps in time dugnad will join our language too - smorgasbord did long ago!
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Maybe not the correct translation, but I've been smorking a lot of pleerb during this dead week between holidays...
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Do you have any reliable source for that assumptive percentage? I myself do not have reliable numbers at hand, but remembering my studies in history of English, I would doubt very much that the litteracy rate was lower than half of the populace after the introduction of the printing press. Even in the ancient Roman empire, litteracy was more common than uncommon among the "common" people. In Western Europe, the literacy rate dropped severely after the Western Roman empire collapsed, because our region was cut off of the papyrus supply chain and Western Europe could only write on parchment (slaughter one pig to only get like 20 pages) which only very rich people could afford, but after the invention of paper and the printing press with moving letters, th litteracy rate increased again.
I have not studied the middle east, but I could imagine that Koran schools during the 19th century taught common children to read old arabic as they do today.
The Romanian language (the Eastern Romance language of Romania) shifted from the cyrillic to the latin alphabet in 1862 accompanied with the introduction of newly formed words to "deslavify" and "reromanise" the language through the already established school system - and it worked. (sometimes prescriptivist can accomplish something - not very often, though)
Being a native Berlin German who went to museums of the history of schooling (e.g. the "Guthenbergmuseum" in Thuringia) as a child, I expect to be true, as long as those museums did not lie, that at least in Prussia (one of the most important German states before "Germany" was a thing), all common children born to common parents went to state-owned, state-paid schools for their education and all learned to write, and analyse Goethe, and basic mathematics.
What seems interesting about Atatürk's shift to the latin alphabet is his insistence on the separation of state from religion.
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I looked, and you're right - the literacy rate was much higher than I realised. I expected it to track the rise of public education, which didn't begin until 1839, but churches were teaching hundreds of years earlier. I'm often surprised by how advanced people were in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... in_England
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They teach us that a lot of nerd'ish people have too much free time, but sometimes its the job needing to be done.
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Well, after last night i found out i'm still fluent in Drunkenese; the language of the liquor!
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Ataturk modernized and reimagined the old Ottoman empire to such a degree that it got a new name: Turkey.
Unfortunately, the last decade or so it is slowly regressing from a European country wanting to join the EU into the dark ages again by an Islamistic politician: Erdogan, first PM and now president. Also gung-ho about persecuting political opposition.
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