On 2013-11-27 13:29, rusi wrote:
On Wednesday, November 27, 2013 6:27:52 PM UTC+5:30, Robert Kern wrote:
On 2013-11-27 08:16, Antoon Pardon wrote:
Op 26-11-13 22:42, Tim Delaney schreef:
On 27 November 2013 03:57, Antoon Pardon wrote:
So I can now ask my questions in dutch and expect others to try and
understand me instead of me asking them in english? Or can I use
literal translations of dutch idioms even if I suspect that such
a literal translation could be misunderstood and even be insulting?
1. No, because this is stated to be an English-speaking list/newsgroup.
It just doesn't specify what dialect of English.
Well so much for this group being an international group with only one
language allowed.
However that second sentence doesn't make much sense to me. Modern
languages contain a subset that is called the standard language.
Linguists would disagree.
Linguists disagree a lot amongst themselves:
Early 20th century there was Fowler and his followers -- unabashedly
laying down the law on what is right and not. Then there were his
opponents (French school I think, not sure what they were called --
poststructuralists maybe??) who said language was defined by usage and
not the other way. Until someone (Fowlerite?) pointed out that those
anti-Fowlerites seemingly objectively described all the dialects but
they themselves stuck to pristine Queen's English.
So like in society, all dialects are equal and some are more equal!
Henry Fowler? To my knowledge, he was a dictionary-maker, not a linguist. To be
fair, back then, the field of linguistics was not terribly well established, so
he might have qualified for the title at the time. However, linguistics has
learned a lot and moved on since then. You would be seriously hard-pressed to
find a prescriptivist linguist these days.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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