This whole discussion is like the search for the aether as the absolute,
unmoving and therefore prime coordinate system.
Contemporary anguages are continua: Every persons speaks its own
"language"(idiolect) that has certain properties (grammar, vocabulary,
…). And now one can only compare two idiolects and group all idiolects
which are extremely similar to each other in contrast to other
idiolects. This grouping is based on valued criteria by the person who
groups. So there are dialects, idioms, languages, language families and
so on as different groupings describing different degrees of
similiarity. So it's utter nonsense to speak of an a priori "English"
language and let "American" differ from it. One can compare the
idiolects spoken by people living in England / Great Britain / UK to the
idiolects spoken in the USA. Following that, one _might_ come to the
conclusion that each differ among themselves a lot less than to each
other and that they differ from each other as much as they do from other
countries idiolects. (You see, this is very complicated.) But all of
this depends on valued criteria, so an Englishman might see huge
differences, but a native from Madagascar might see none.
The grouping into languages is in itself subjective. Linguistic
academics might have a common view to this which has proven successful
for further research.
Naming these languages isn't linguistic at all. It might have a lot of
different reasons, some of which might be politics, propaganda and
indoctrination.
So what can we do? All one can do is show respect to the native speakers
and name the language in a way that is tolerable to them and oneself.
As for me: Vafa want's it to be called Persion, so I'll do it. If some
other native speaker asks me to call it Farsi, I'll do and ask him, why
not Persian.
bye
Toscho
Am 10.06.2011 20:18, schrieb Alan Munn:
On Jun 10, 2011, at 1:56 PM, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
Hi Phil,
I can not much about Persian, Farsi, but
the Americans use to speak acedenmically
"American English", which in colloquial American
was referred to as English. Today, American is the widespread
term in Acedemica. Québécois is definitely is not French.
This really isn't the place for this kind of discussion, but as a linguist I
really can't let comments like this go past without saying something.
Language naming is a political act. It is not a linguistic act. For languages
that are definitely related to one another in recent history (as in American
English and British English or Parisian French and Québec French) there are no
reliable *linguistic* criteria by which one can say that one language is
English (or French) and the other is not. This is exactly the point made by the
article that Vafa refers to.
Furthermore, at least in the linguistics academic field, "American" is
absolutely not used as the name of the English spoken in the U.S. But since language
naming is a political act, it wouldn't surprise me if there were some academic circles
that have decided otherwise.
But I reiterate, this list is *not* the place for this discussion.
Alan
P.S. What language were you replying in?
regards
Keith.
Am 10.06.2011 um 15:43 schrieb Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd):
Vafa Khalighi wrote:
A while ago, I insisted on using the word "Persian" instead "Farsi". My friend,
Shapour Suren-Pahlav from the circle of ancient Iranian studies has written an article about this.
You can see his article here: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Languages/persian_not_farsi.htm
Well, yes : but is it any worse than the Americans describing
their language as "English" ?! At least the French-speaking
residents of Québec have the decency to call their language
"Québécois" and not try to pass it off as French :-)
Philip Taylor
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