A few random thoughts

[matril]

I just feel like blathering a bit, with no particular direction. So, in the order that they pop into my brain, here are my thoughts:



1. Language change is a sign of a vibrant, growing culture, and people who try to resist it are not only mistaken about the way language works, but they're fighting a lost cause. It's gonna change; people will say "gonna" instead of "going to" because it's easier and flows better; get over it! I am very fond of old forms of English, but they're not lost entirely. Even Old English, from all the way back in pre-medieval times, still exists in written forms; imagine how much more we'll be able to save newer forms of English now that we have recording devices. Meanwhile, the newest forms are the way language naturally evolves to adapt to a changing people. It's why Latin is an intellectual curiosity, but not a viable language - it doesn't have a community to speak it and help it adapt. And the people with the authority to change the language are - guess what - the people who speak it. Uneducated, illiterate, whatever - from ancient Phoenician to Middle English, languages have been shaped by all classes of speakers. Why try to change that now? It's not gonna happen. Oh, and there's no such thing as "written language." Language, which is a form of complex communication naturally emerging among cultures, occurs either as verbal exchanges or in sophisticated gesturing systems like sign language. Written systems are devised to represent those languages, but they are not languages in and of themselves. The changes of the language filter down into the written systems, which resist change more because records have a semblance of permanance. But that does not make writing systems a more proper or correct form of language. They're just more polished, having the chance to be edited. The Internet, of course, has thinned the line between spontaneous speech and written representations of it, what with extremely informal email and blog language. The spelling and punctuation can be downright painful, of course, but that's a matter of mechanics and has no bearing on grammar and usage.

2. I hear lots of mothers talking about how busy they are, and realize that most of my guilt comes from the fact that I'm not busy at all. I have pretty leisurely days, except for when my children gang up on me to demand my attention at the same time. Usually, my son's at school, my daughter's playing somewhere that I can smile at her and make sure she's all right, and I'm muddling around on the Internet. And I think cringingly that I should wash the dishes or mend that hole-y clothing, or at least go write something or play the piano. But I just spend another hour online. It's because a homemaker's responsiblities are largely self-enforced. If I don't get them done, my husband doesn't worry, my children don't notice, and no one else cares. I don't have a lot of real deadlines or actual appointments. I should be making them myself and writing it in a handy little day planner. But I don't. And I spend another hour online.

3. People always greet each other with "Hey" in TV shows. It's not as noticable when you're just hearing it, but if you put on the close captioning, you see, "Hey" "Hey" "Hey" "Hey" and it begins to seem ridiculous. I usually say "hi" or "hello" myself. I wonder when "Hey" became the default for television.

4. There's something weird with our email - certain buttons don't respond to being pressed, including "Reply" "Forward" and "Attach files," which is monstrous inconvenient. I think it has something to do with our "cookies," but unless it involves adding more butter or cooking for another five minutes, I don't have the slightest idea how to fix them. Also I can't get our printer figured out, even though it says it should work. In our previous homes we could call on various friends or family members with computer know-how, but none of them live nearby now. I'm sure we could find someone if we just asked, but I'm not big on asking people for help. One of my stupid stubborn streaks.

5. If I had Photoshop, I would go seriously icon-happy. I had a desk calender with Episode II pictures, and when the year was up I cut out all the pictures and made a collage out of selected images, with snippets of lines that went along with them. This took quite some time and effort, and verged on obessive. Now, if I had access to such collage-makers on the computer...well, the results might be dangerous. This is why it might be a good thing that we can't really afford Photoshop right now.

6. I hate cell phones. I hate talking on the phone; why extend the areas where I would have to do it? I don't want to be reached in every place I'm in; I don't like having a stupid little box attached to my ear. And it bewilders me that commercials now target their products at families, like parents are really thinking, "Gee, I want my child to have a cell phone, but I just haven't found the perfect family plan." What the heck does a teenager or even younger child need with a cell phone? Now I'm in crochity old lady mode, poking my cane around. Young upstart whippersnappers...maybe I'm secretly a Luddite.

Well, I'm done.

Comments

A few random comments

[sreya.livejournal.com]

I tend to use "Hey" as a greeting a lot with my friends, something that drives my father nuts. He always comes back with "Hay is for horses."
And can I say it's funny to see this after your language change rant? :)

As for the cell phone thing - your kids are all still pretty young, right? My parents got me a cell phone in 1997 when I started driving on my own so I'd have something in case the car broke down. They've since moved to getting a cell phone for my 13 year old sister. She primarily uses it to call home for a ride when she's out with friends, or alternatively to ask if she can go somewhere with them after school or later than the pre-arranged pickup. I think it helps my mom feel a little more secure about her kids running around on their own - they can get in touch with her if they need help.

For me, the cell phone is essential because (a) I'm driving alone a lot, and (b) I'm rarely home and often need to make calls during the day from school or work. I'll admit that the idea of other people being able to reach me at all times isn't always appealing, especially when I think ahead to when I'll be working full-time and want to get away from work, only to have the boss calling me on the cell phone. Blech.

Re: A few random comments

[matril.livejournal.com]

Hee, you're right, the "hey" comment was pretty ironic after all my language ranting. I guess the only consistent thing about me is my inconsistency. Seriously, I'm talking more about script-writing technique - when everyone says "hey" it becomes monotonous, even if people do talk like that in real life. I'd throw in a few "hi"s and "How'ya doin'"s just for variety.

I grudgingly acknowledge that a cell phone can have its practical uses. I just really don't get stuff like text messaging, or having to talk so urgently that it must be done while driving, which is more dangerous than most people realize. Again, I'm a crochity old Luddite waving my cane around. :P

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I have a cell phone and constantly forget to take it anywhere with me, so it might as well be a landline. Hmmm - psychological resistance? But I think part of it is that when I'm out and occupied with Daniel, half the time I can't reach the phone anyway before it stops ringing, and that gets annoying. Certainly when I was pregnant I had the phone with me everywhere, but that was more of a safety-net in case of premature labour thing. They're good safety-nets. But that's about it, I think.

For language - I'd argue that grammar and punctuation do matter a bit more in an uncased language like English. When the lack of a period can substantially change the meaning of a sentence, and there are no inflections on the words to give clues as to their relationship to each other, punctuation becomes paramount. And while I'm fine with different versions and a changing language and so forth (that sounds silly - it's like saying I'm in favour of weather changes, like I could control it, but you know what I mean) there must be a standard version if people are to communicate with each other consistently. I mean, consider the confusion that could happen if you have two English-speakers who assign different meanings to the statement "I don't know nothing." Much awkwardness could ensue. That being said, this stuff obviously should be re-evaluated pretty constantly and the new rules (if any) clarified and laid down. An Academie Francaise situation woulddn't do anyone any good.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no arguments about the importance of punctuation in making writing more coherent and meaningful - I'm simply saying that it's not an aspect of correct or incorrect language, because in spoken language there's no such thing as commas and semicolons. They're a way of transcribing the natural pauses and inflections of speech, and the means of transcription don't come inherently to a language speaker. They have to be taught.

There's a massive difference between standardizing the means of written representation of language, and attempting to normalize actual languages. The former is a useful way of bettering writing systems; the latter is entirely unnecessary, not to mention impossible. People tend to shift and alter "rules" of language on a sub-conscious level, and any attempt to externally force or halt change is inevitably resisted. Academies don't make language; people do. But if they want to revise the punctuation systems, that's reasonable.

(Being on the verge of giving birth, by the way, is the only time I think a cell phone might actually be useful. But I still resist it...I'm just an old-fashioned crank.)

[camry-1.livejournal.com]

So, about language evolving-- yes, it happens. And unlike the mountains that were once seafloors, we can see the change in our lifetime. Just this week I watched "The Philadelphia Story" with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, really listening to their voices, trying to figure out precisely what gives away the era it's from. The accent, the slang, the speech has changed so much.

Noticing this is one of my kooky little hobbies. I think I got into it in college, where I majored in Spanish and Russian. When discussing Spanish, we often say it is one of the Romance languages, not because it lends itself to romance (which it does) but because along with French, Italian, and Portuguese it descends from Romance, a language spoken in areas conquered by Rome. In our literature class, we started at the beginning of Spanish lit, which overlapped a bit with Romance. It was wild to read things that seemed misspelled, or French-ish, or Portuguese, and realize that it wasn't influenced by Portuguese, it pre-dated it. At the time it was spoken, Romance wasn't a dead language, and surely didn't think of itself as an ancestor language.

I then do a mental turn, and visualize that the English we speak is likewise a common ancestor to the future languages that it will become, say, American and British. You can see areas of divergence, like slang and accent, which change quickly and in small regions. But you can see the inertia, the unification that results from American media broadcast in the UK, or popular books (HP) being read voraciously and imitated stateside. How much will it change? What will move change along? How long will it take? It's all fun for me.

[matril.livejournal.com]

I love Historical Linguistics. Before I studied it, I never knew that English was related to Icelandic, more closely than French or Spanish. It's amazing to see what directions language diverge. If dialects last long enough, they become languages. But the real disinction between dialect and language is actually fuzzier than it seems - sometimes all it takes is an army to declare "We now have our own language." If you travel southward from Northern Europe, the neighboring regions' dialects are mutually intelligible even if they're technically Dutch versus German, etc...but if you compare a far northern dialect to a far southern, they're incomprehensible to each other. So the language changes gradually from north to south, but at what point do you have a new lanugage? Officially, it's at the borders of countries, but it's not that simple.

In a sense, Latin didn't die, it simply branched off into various dialects - Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian...in fact, some dialects may have arisen from contact with Germanic tribes and their vastly different languages, which would in effect make French a Creole language. Wonder what a Frenchman would say to that.

Can you tell how much I obssess about this? The only branch of linguistics that fascinates me as much as historical is Language Acquisition. Ironic that my son has a severe language delay. Or maybe it's no coincidence...I hope my little hobby could actually be useful in helping him learn to speak. I've rambled on enough for now; I'm done.

Language acquisition

[camry-1.livejournal.com]

Tell me a bit about language acquisition- What in it interests you? What affects it? Although at one time or another I've studied five languages, and was paid for four years to teach, I've never actually been taught anything about language acquisition. I'm a blank slate, and fairly curious. (Out of my four kids, one is incredibly verbally adept, one is normal, one has extreme articulation challenges, and one is too young to make generalizations about (23 months), although it's clear she's not advanced like the oldest. At this age the oldest was speaking in complete sentences, polysyllabic words, abstract concepts etc.)

Re: Language acquisition

[matril.livejournal.com]

Oh boy...

A newborn baby has the "wiring" to learn any language. See, its brain has tons and tons of synaptic connections, and will not need most of them as it grows older. So brain development includes the process of snipping off the unnecessary connections, so that the brain can specialize on the connections that remain. For language, this means that as a baby spends time in a particular language environment, it picks out which phonetic distinctions are meaningful and which are not. As an example, in English we distinguish between "l" and "r." "Low" means something other than "row." Not so in Japanese - those sounds are just two variants of the same phoneme. So a Japanese baby, after a few months, will discard the brain connection that notes a difference between the two sounds because it's unncessary for its native language. As time goes on, the baby's hearing perceptions become more and more focused on the language being spoken around it. This specialization is one of those miracles of development.

Now, as far as grammar - the formation of words, sentences, word order, etc. - there is strong evidence that all babies are born with a sort of "universal grammar." They have an inherent notion of things like nouns and verbs and the logic behind putting them together for meaning. This is indicated by the study of Creole languages, which are literally created by the second generation of two peoples with unrelated languges who have generated a basic lexicon of shared vocabulary. A lexicon, not a full-fledged language. But get this - The children create a grammar. Not only that, but Creoles across the world, with no contact with eacht other, have markedly similar grammatical systems.

But the trick is learning the specifics of their native language. After all, whatever grammatical similarities all languages share, over time they're going to diverge. So a child must learn this. And most children (I say most because I'm the mother of an exception) have the natural ability and desire to learn it. They don't need to be pushed or prompted (although encouragement is exciting for them) and they don't need to be taught. They listen, they make deductions, and they experiment. The pattern is typically to learn a general rule (ie, past tense is formed with -ed), to then note the exceptions ("rang" instead of "ringed"), to temporarily apply the exception to every word ("brang") and then finally apply the general rules and exceptions correctly. It's absolutely remarkable. Every child has their own pace (my son is currently stalled)(children in bilingual environments tend to go slower, but they learn each language eventually, and know how to distinguish between the two!) but the pattern is very predictable. And it's totally self-motivated. If you correct a child a hundred times, it won't sink in - the child just keeps repeating the mistake. Then, suddenly, the next day, it's been absorbed, and the correct usage comes up naturally. All they need is to be surrounded with people speaking the language, and they listen and observe.

The best way to encourage learning the correct usage is not "No, that's not it - say it like this" but rather, if the child says, "Him go to school today" to reply, "That's right! He did go to school today!" Eventually, the child will get it, and not feel crushed in the process. Language "mistakes" are a regular process of acquisition, and no child yet has learned their native language wrong. Mind, I mean that they all learn to speak just as those around them. If those around them speak so-called "sub-standard" English, then the child is simply learning what is being presented as its native tongue. They haven't yet been poisoned with moral judgements about language. (Oh, I'm ever so slightly opinionated about that...)

To sum up, language acquisition is one of the most miraculous of human abilities, and it's something that an infant does more expertly than an adult with the best of language courses. To me it's wonderful to think that we're born with the capacity to speak in ways more complex and sophisticated than any other life form on the planet. That's why I love to study it. I could go on....

Re: Language acquisition

[camry-1.livejournal.com]

This is interesting. I'd heard that there was something that allows children to hear accents/variations, and that by age twelve they lose it. I like the way you explain that with the synapses getting snipped. We all probably know people who have immigrated to the U.S. as adults, and after 20 years here they speak great English (grammar-wise), but can't shake their thick accent of origin. Once again, we see that the parents' role of "teacher" is really more of "example." That seems to be true in language acquisition, and every other kind of development.