The Perfect Language?

[pattyshmack]

One of my teachers enthusiastically believes that the highest form of language, greater than even "American-English" is the English spoken by the royals and upperclass Brits (of today), in fact he even mentions that what these upperclass speak have no accent.  Isn't language just determined by culture and geography? I think this sounds kind of ignorant, I mean how do you determine the "most perfect" language?  

Any ideas would be helpful.

[Porter]

If there is a most perfect language in the world, it's certainly not English.

Really, this sounds like class snobbery.

[Jonathon]

Yes, language is pretty much arbritrary, and there's no objective measurement of how good a language is. Languages, dialects, and accents are pretty much just like skin color: everyone has one, and there's nothing right or wrong about it. Saying that upper-class British people have no accent is like saying that they also have no skin color.

[Porter]

Let's all start speaking Esperanto.

[saxon75]

I think it's pretty much impossible to have any objective measurement of how good anything is.  "Good" is a pretty subjective term.

[scottneb]

I think it's odd that a supposedly, well-educated professor would make such a general statement.

[Icarus]

Good is subjective, but we may choose particular traits to define "good" for us and rank based on this. For instance, if lots of different ways of expressing yourself, including lots of synonyms with subtle nuances distinguishing them is part of what you consider good, than English is a wonderful language. If logical rules that are followed pretty uniformly, leading, perhaps, to greater ease of learning are what you prefer, then you may prefer Spanish. If "purity" in comparison to an earlier version of a language is valuable to you, then my understanding is British English is not for you, but southern/appalachian American English is.

I find that claim the upper class British accent is "unaccented" absurd. I can imagine two meaningful definitions of "unaccented," neither of which applies. "Unaccented" could refer to an accent that is such a subtle blend of accents that it is not distinctive to any single region. This, as I understand it, is what most national (US) television programming strives for. Alternatively, "unaccented" could refer to least changed, in which case we're back to Appalachian English.

[Annie Subjunctive]

A good language is one that I can pronounce well.

[r!vk@]

My mom for a long time argued that if a language provides you with more opportunities, it can be measured objectively in that sense.  And in such a sense, I think American broadcast english affords more opportunties than upper class Royalty English.  Opportunities, at least, that I as an American am interested in.  If you like rich food, French is probably a better language to know.  I have to say, sometimes I think I was meant to be Italian.  Except that everyone would think I was  :fear:  

[Icarus]

My mom for a long time argued that if a language provides you with more opportunities, it can be measured objectively in that sense. And in such a sense, I think American broadcast english affords more opportunties than upper class Royalty English.

Interesting. By this standard, though, I don't know if I agree. At least in this heavily British area, people tend to suck up to people with that accent.

[pattyshmack]

Well, this same teacher blabbled on and on about how his former college professors wore different types of hats.  And the interesting thing is, is this is an American Lit class!  It just strikes me odd that he got a degree in this stuff.

[Jonathon]

Even purity isn't so easy to define. Appalachian English may be pure in some ways, but not in others. It's kept some older constructions, but the phonology is, contrary to popular belief, not Elizabethan English.



One thing I learned in college is that some professors don't deserve the degrees they have.

[pooka]

My Latin teacher used to call English the Bastard tongue.  It seems to be from the Germanic family, but 60% of the lexical items are of Latin derivation, very often via the French.  This is mainly due to the Norman Conquest (was that Charlemagne?)  Anyway, agree with what the jerk says to his face and secretly laugh inside yourself.  

[Porter]

This is mainly due to the Norman Conquest (was that Charlemagne?)

No.  That was William the Conqueror, previously known as William the Bastard.

[Jonathon]

William the Conquerer, not Charlemagne. He was a couple hundred years earlier, I believe.

English is even more bastardized than people realize, though. In addition to the huge influx of French and Latin, we also have a healthy dose of Norse, as well as a smattering of words from all over the world. Even Proto-Germanic was not a "pure" tongue; fully 30 percent of Germanic vocabulary is of unidentified non-Indo-European origin.

[Jonathon]

No.  That was William the Conqueror, previously known as William the Bastard.

Oh, the irony!

[pattyshmack]

I'm not even sure what constitues "pure" language anyway.  I could be wrong, but it seems to me that language is simply a communicative tool best suited for a particular culture or group, but it is never pure or perfect.
I guess it depends on how close to pure a language is.  I mean, how many things has mankind made perfect anyway?  I haven't noticed anything yet.
Although I have heard somewhere that Mandarin Chinese is a very pure language (just not sure why).

[Jonathon]

I think that trying to define the purity of a language is a pretty fruitless endeavor. What's the standard of purity? The fact that it hasn't changed much over the years? The fact that it hasn't borrowed from other languages? Neither of those has anything to do with the communicative ability of a language. Claims about the purity of a language are at best a misguided endeavor and at worst a form of nationalistic pride.

[Porter]

it seems to me that language is simply a communicative tool best suited for a particular culture or group, but it is never pure or perfect.

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.

[Marianne Dashwood]

Charlemagne was the ruler who created the first sizeable kingdom of the Franks. His empire covered much of modern France, but his capital was actually in Aachen, Germany. The Franks were a Germanic tribe, and it is because of their influence that the Latin of the region known as Gaul departed so much farther from the original than Italian and Spanish.

[pooka]

So there may yet be a link between french fries and frankfurters.  Wooo hoo, the world makes sense again.

People who are too into the purity of languages and the power of words in my experience are a little psychotic.  The original case was Ben Whorf, who believed that the non-concatenative morphology of the Hebrew Bible held the secret of how the world was created through the words of God.  That within each word was a syntax with the letters serving as lexical units themselves.  And while there is an extent to which this is true (echoes of this appear in all the generative/binary branching theories) it's not like God is going to leave the red phone to the universe laying around where anyone can dial it.

[Icarus]

I dunno about that. African tribesmen still have the purest versions of their languages, and they have perfect teeth and better health than we do. The facts don't lie.

 

[pooka]

The featurette on what later happened with that guy from "The Gods must be Crazy" seemed to run counter to that idea.

[Icarus]

Have you read the article?! Have you followed the links? What about the cats?!?!?!?!?! THese are facts!!!!!1!

[pooka]

Then there's the other explanation, that the language stayed pure because oftheir idyllic lifestyle and their organic diets,