The Perfect Language?

[Icarus]

I am failing at parody here.

[Jonathon]

*pat pat*


I enjoyed it.

[pooka]

I understood that it was parody, though I wasn't sure of what.  Do I do that?

[Porter]

It's a parody of somone whose posts you have never read.

[Marianne Dashwood]

She was getting close to the shellfish, though.

[saxon75]

I'm going to disagree with you. It seems that language is not so much engineered according to the needs of the group, but pretty much happens accidentally according to the history of the group.

For example, the uber-bastardization of English didn't happen because of the needs of the English, but because of what happened to the English.

Engineered, no, but need-based, yes.  It would seem more accurate to say that the uber-bastardization of English happened because what happened to the English caused them to need different words.

Edit: Actually, I'll modify that.  It's probably both.  It seems to me that words would change in at least two ways: 1.) for whatever reason--getting conquered, previously unknown phenomena, etc.--the population needs a new word, or 2.) idiosyncracies that unintentionally accumulate over time.  

[Porter]

I still disagree.  New words weren't needed.  

Seriously -- what use is there to have different words for poultry/chicken, pork/pig, beef/cow?  None.  It just happened because of the accident of history that made it so that the Romantic-speaking nobles were eating the beef while the Germanic-speaking plebes were raising the cows.

[saxon75]

New words weren't needed because no one had seen or eaten cows before, but the influx of Normans would have caused a need to learn each others' words in order to communicate.

[Jonathon]

I don't know about that. Much of the vocabulary of English was added for reasons of fashion, not necessity. We didn't need the word pork—swine worked perfectly well. But the nobility spoke French, and people like to sound like nobility. The French and Latin loanwords in English never filled a gap that English couldn't have filled itself.

Edit: D'oh! Curse your mind-reading and fast fingers, Porter!

I still disagree with that, saxon. The Normans learned French when they migrated from Scandinavia to France. They could've just as easily learned English when they came to England.

[saxon75]

Seems like the kind of thing that would be difficult at best to really know.  But you know more about this than I do.

Edit: See, I didn't know that.

[Jonathon]

It is often very difficult to say which language changes are driven by need and which ones are driven by mere chance or other factors. But I believe that when two groups come into contact, there's no reason why one language has to borrow words from another. If one group learns the other's language, then the language gap is removed.

And anyway, the French words that we borrowed didn't even fill any sort of language gap. They just added a French flavor to one's speech—"Look at me! I know French words!"

Most Latin borrowings did fill a need, but there was no reason why it had to be Latin. It was just a convenient language to coin new words from.

[Jonathon]

Seems like the kind of thing that would be difficult at best to really know.  But you know more about this than I do.

Edit: See, I didn't know that.

Yup. Norman = Norseman.

It's something that's always perplexed me, to be honest. Why would they abandon Old Norse for Old French when moving to France, but then take French with them when moving to England? It must've been that French was a step up from Norse, socially speaking, while English was a step down from French.

[saxon75]

When they moved to France, did they come as conquerors or just immigrants?  And were the French more or less advanced than they were when they arrived?

[Porter]

Edit: D'oh! Curse your mind-reading and fast fingers, Porter!

Wow.  We really are on the same wave-length today.

[Porter]

When they moved to France, did they come as conquerors or just immigrants? And were the French more or less advanced than they were when they arrived?

Conquerors.

William the Conqueror
Norman Conquest

[Jonathon]

When they moved to France, did they come as conquerors or just immigrants?  And were the French more or less advanced than they were when they arrived?

Aha! I just checked Wikipedia, and it was enlightening. They invaded Normandy and then swore allegiance to the French king, so it was efficacious for them to learn French. In England, they conquered the entire country, so they could do what they darn well pleased at that point.

[Porter]

That makes a lot of sense.

[Jonathon]

When they moved to France, did they come as conquerors or just immigrants? And were the French more or less advanced than they were when they arrived?

Conquerors.

William the Conqueror
Norman Conquest

Those both refer to the conquest of England, not the original invasion of Normandy.  

[saxon75]

Porter,  your links both have to do with the Norman conquest of England, but I was asking about their move from Scandinavia to France, not from France to England.

Edit: Or, you know, what he said.

[Porter]

Woah.  

Norman == Northmen == Norsemen.

[Porter]

Porter, your links both have to do with the Norman conquest of England, but I was asking about their move from Scandinavia to France, not from France to England.

From my second link:

Normandy is a region in northwest France which at the time had experienced extensive Viking settlement. Beginning about 150 years earlier in a French Carolingian ruler Charles the Simple had allowed a group of Vikings, under their leader Rollo, to settle in northern France with the intention they would provide protection along the coast against further Viking invaders. This proved successful and the Vikings, who were known as the Northmen from which Normandy is derived, held off further Viking invaders. The Normans quickly adapted to the indigenous culture, renouncing paganism and converting to Christianity, adopting the langue d'oïl of their new subjects and, through the introduction of Norse features, transforming it into the Norman language, and intermarrying with the local populations.

[Jonathon]

Woah.  

Norman == Northmen == Norsemen.

Yes. Good job, Porter.

[saxon75]

Are they still conquerors if they're allowed in?

[Jonathon]

Beginning about 150 years earlier in a French Carolingian ruler Charles the Simple had allowed a group of Vikings, under their leader Rollo, to settle in northern France with the intention they would provide protection along the coast against further Viking invaders. This proved successful and the Vikings, who were known as the Northmen from which Normandy is derived, held off further Viking invaders.

This seems like such an odd strategy. I guess it worked for the French, but it certainly didn't work for the Britons when they invited the Anglo-Saxons to come over.

[Porter]

Did the Greeks conquer Troy?  

'Cuz they were accidentally allowed in.