10 Jan
2012
10 Jan
'12
3:13 p.m.
From: Chuck Guzis
Sent: Monday, January 09, 2012 10:10 PM
On 9 Jan 2012 at 21:09, dwight elvey wrote:
> Of course, English isn't the only natural
language but some think it
> is.
No, but Basic English (note the caps) has a pedigree:
To the best my knowledge, other languages, say, Old
Church Slavonic,
do not have a similar pedigree..
What do you mean by "pedigree" in these statements?
Basic English (which, contra the Wick, is "Business, Arts, Science,
Industry, Commerce English") is the failed pipedream of a single person
(and I'm speaking here as someone with 40+ years and undergraduate and
graduate degrees in linguistics). It's an attempt to round off the
corners of a natural language in order to make it easier for those
unfortunate enough to be born elsewhere than in the United States of
America to be governed by those more graced by God.
In what way does that constitute a pedigree?
And it's interesting that you chose, of all languages, Old Church
Slavonic as your example. OCS was based on the South Slavic languages
of the 10th Century (CE) Balkans, with vocabulary borrowed as needed
from Koine ("New Testament") and Byzantine
Greek to fill in the needed
concepts for expressing (Orthodox) Christian theology in
languages which
did not share that world view. The Christian scriptures were translated
into this refined and enhanced language for the purpose of converting
the heathen Slavs from their old ways of belief.
It worked. I'd say that that's a pretty damn good pedigree as these
things go.
Damn, this soapbox didn't look so tall when I climbed up here.
Rich Alderson
not speaking for anyone but himself, and so including no .sig that might
lead some reader to think otherwise.
10 Jan
10 Jan
3:42 p.m.
On 10 Jan 2012 at 20:13, Rich Alderson wrote:
And it's interesting that you chose, of all
languages, Old Church
Slavonic as your example. OCS was based on the South Slavic languages
of the 10th Century (CE) Balkans, with vocabulary borrowed as needed
from Koine ("New Testament") and Byzantine Greek to fill in the needed
concepts for expressing (Orthodox) Christian theology in languages
which did not share that world view. The Christian scriptures were
translated into this refined and enhanced language for the purpose of
converting the heathen Slavs from their old ways of belief.
It worked. I'd say that that's a pretty damn good pedigree as these
things go.
Damn, this soapbox didn't look so tall when I climbed up here.
Well, I'll defer to your scholarship, as I haven't studied the matter
too much. Basic English did get a lot of attention at one point--and
regarding Scripture, there does exist a Basic English version of the
Bible. Whether or not it's converted anyone is another matter
entirely.
--Chuck
5:41 p.m.
I will add, however, to Jim's "why English" that English does
dominate the computer world. When a Russian talks about his web
presence, it seem that he uses the word "Sait" (Is the mailing list
software is capable of Cyrillic characters?).
I once had a little green book for IBM employees in Japan. It seemed
that much of the computer vocabulary was simply transliterated
English (spelled in Katakana).
I don't know if it's true any longer, but there was a time when a
college chemistry major was required to learn German, as that country
once held a commanding lead in the field..
All of this is completely ignoring the silly attempts of L'Acad?mie
fran?aise to " frenchify" computer terminology. Do the francophone
Quebecers follow the guidelines for computer technology set down by
L'Acad?mie? Do Frenchmen?
--Chuck
11 Jan
11 Jan
5:27 a.m.
On Tue, 10 Jan 2012, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I don't know if it's true any longer, but
there was a time when a
college chemistry major was required to learn German, as that country
once held a commanding lead in the field..
That's because once upon a time, Germans knew how to speak and write
German, which is not really the case today. Big companies like IBM,
Siemens, Telefunken etc. all had their German vocabulary for technical
terms (e.g. Kellerspeicher ("cellar memory") for stack, or bistabile
Kippstufe ("bi-stable flipping gate") for flip-flop). Same thing in
France with Bull etc.
All of this is completely ignoring the silly attempts
of L'Acad?mie
fran?aise to " frenchify" computer terminology. Do the francophone
Quebecers follow the guidelines for computer technology set down by
L'Acad?mie? Do Frenchmen?
I'd say yes.
Interesting enough, the word 'courriel' (= courrier ?lectronique; email),
which must be used in official documents in France, is a Canadian
creation.
Christian
11:11 a.m.
All of this is completely ignoring the silly attempts
of L'Acad?mie
fran?aise to " frenchify" computer terminology. Do the francophone
Quebecers follow the guidelines for computer technology set down by
L'Acad?mie?
Directly? I doubt it. They would be more likely to pay attention to
the (Qu?bec) Office de la langue fran?aise, perhaps the closest analog
Qu?bec has to the AF. I don't know the extent to which the OLF pays
attention to the Acad?mie when making its own choices.
In practice, the ones I meet generally use English terms, but, since I
am not really competent to operate in French, it's fairly likely
there's a hefty dose of selection bias there.
Do Frenchmen?
Dunno. I've lived in Qu?bec but not in France. :)
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