Preventing language change

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clawgrip
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by clawgrip »

Tanni wrote:
clawgrip wrote:
Tanni wrote:As your conculture is set in the future, it's maybe the manual of the spacecraft or the computer system of that spacecraft which brought them to the planet they now live at. (There is an early Star trek episode with such a document.)
Are you talking about the godawful episode "The Omega Glory"?

"Ee'dplebnista norkohn forkohn perfectunun."
I don't know. As I saw this episode in German, it most likely had another name. It was one of the episodes with captain Kirk. I remember there was some kind of stela, and Mr. Spock pressed three of his fingers on the three planets or moons depicted in a relief on that stela. After that, the upper part of the stela went off and a book showed up, which was the manual of a computer system controling the spacecraft or moon or planet or whatever. Mr. Spock knew the language it was written in and could fix the problem.
It sounds like you might be misremembering the events of "The Paradise Syndrome" ("Der Obelisk" in German). Unless there's another episode I'm not thinking of.
What does the cited text mean?
That was a garbled version of "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union" spoken by the people of the planet in that episode. It was an awful episode, one of the worst of the series.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Squall »

Let's remember that universal literacy is something recent. When most changes occurred, most people were iliterate.

To prevent changes, the government would regulate the language and make a dictionary of "valid" words with the "correct" pronunciation and the "true" meaning. It would make a grammar book too. The correct language would be written everywhere and thaught in schools. It would create a culture of "correct or wrong" in the language.
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by k1234567890y »

Although the combination of standard forms of languages and compulsory education are notorious known for destroying preexisting dialects, replacing them with the standard form, and it may look like a perfect way to prevent language change, it may actually not be able to prevent language change, and what will happen next? schoolkids will create new and unexpected use on the basis of the standard language, and probably will bring them to the society once they leave school, as time passes, I guess it will create the new distinctions between the literal form and the vernancular forms of languages, and probably it will eventually create a new language family evolved from the standard form of language.

I think what makes schoolkids accepting the standard language is that using "dialects" is being highly stigmatized, and they they need some ways to commmunicate and socialize with others, but this does not mean people will always use the standard form; on the contrary, as what I have said, people will continuously create new and unexpected usages based on the standard forms, and I don't think people will always think the standard form as the best way to be used in daily life, they might start to see the standard form as a formal and even old-school variety of the language as time passes. I have ever tried to help my mother to type messages online, and she said my writing style looks old-fashioned, I think it's probably because I use a rather standard, text-book-like way in writing that message...

There are claims that Icelandic speakers can read Old Norse documents without difficulty, however, as far as I know, their ability to comprehend Old Norse documents is being overestimated, and most of Icelandic speakers actually read the Sagas with updated modern spelling and footnotes—though otherwise intact.

If you want to really prevent language changes anyways for your conpeople, you may consider the following methods:

1. Let your people be immortal and ageless, or at least give them a lifespan much longer than ordinary human beings.
2. They learn language through computers and chips implanted in the brain, and the brainchips will ensure that they will always have a speech form close to the "perfect" language that is intended to be preserved.
3. They have a high percentage of people with asperger's syndrome(A form of autism), as people with asperger's syndrome often have a formal, pedant-like and rather standard way of speech(which may show that they don't learn language through social interaction but other means).
4. Let them live on remote islands with a smaller population and a low population density, like Icelandic-speaking people do, but since even Icelandic has changed to some extent in the past 1,000 years(and Icelandic is seen as a classical example of a language that is highly conservative in basically every aspect), this is not a perfect solution, and I guess if the timespan were 2,000 years or more, even Icelandic could become very different from Old Norse so that they could not read Old Norse without learning it thoroughly.

However, these are my personal opinions, you don't need to accept, and sorry if you feel your ideas are smashed, but I just want to say that preventing lanugage change is basically impossible in daily life, even if it is possible and may not be hard to do so in formal usages.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by mira »

I think one way I could do this would be to just have every official document, every public speaking, TV, books, dictionaries, school textbooks, everything controllable in the correct language. I don't mind if younger speakers begin to develop their own dialect of sorts, but them and everyone around them would still need to be able to speak the correct language to be able to do anything, making use of any different dialect come across as somewhat pointless, and the people of my small country are only there because they were invited out of the most intelligent of the human population, so one would expect a reluctance to develop a new dialect to develop via basic logic.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by gestaltist »

In that case, the "correct language" would soon become like Latin in the middle ages: not the native tongue of anyone, but used for education, politics, etc.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by mira »

gestaltist wrote:In that case, the "correct language" would soon become like Latin in the middle ages: not the native tongue of anyone, but used for education, politics, etc.
I guess, but it would be a kind of reverse of that. I can't think of any real world example, but you could imagine it like Latin in the middle ages, except everybody speaks Latin, and very few people speak Middle English, but Middle English is very similar to Latin and isn't used anywhere useful, so people would eventually stop using Middle English and stick with Latin, only for some new variant of Middle English to develop a few decades or centuries later (Where Latin is the correct language, and Middle English is the developing dialect within my country (which to be fair is only ~80km across)).
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Re: Preventing language change

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Squall wrote:Let's remember that universal literacy is something recent. When most changes occurred, most people were iliterate.

To prevent changes, the government would regulate the language and make a dictionary of "valid" words with the "correct" pronunciation and the "true" meaning. It would make a grammar book too. The correct language would be written everywhere and thaught in schools. It would create a culture of "correct or wrong" in the language.
That's why Modern French stopped changing, as we all know :roll:
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Squall »

gestaltist wrote:In that case, the "correct language" would soon become like Latin in the middle ages: not the native tongue of anyone, but used for education, politics, etc.
During the Middle Ages, 90% of the population were iliterate and never studied Latin.
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by qwed117 »

Squall wrote:
gestaltist wrote:In that case, the "correct language" would soon become like Latin in the middle ages: not the native tongue of anyone, but used for education, politics, etc.
During the Middle Ages, 90% of the population were iliterate and never studied Latin.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by gestaltist »

Squall wrote:
gestaltist wrote:In that case, the "correct language" would soon become like Latin in the middle ages: not the native tongue of anyone, but used for education, politics, etc.
During the Middle Ages, 90% of the population were iliterate and never studied Latin.
Your point being?
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by mira »

gestaltist wrote:
Squall wrote:
gestaltist wrote:In that case, the "correct language" would soon become like Latin in the middle ages: not the native tongue of anyone, but used for education, politics, etc.
During the Middle Ages, 90% of the population were iliterate and never studied Latin.
Your point being?
I think the point is that it doesn't quite fit the situation. My people have a virtually 100% literacy rate. Every child has a full education to the top level, and in order to really do anything, they will need to be fluent with the correct language. They'd be taught in it and read in it. The only time anyone might ever use any alternate dialect or language is talking with another person that also speaks that dialect, yet both will also know the correct language.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Isfendil »

OTʜᴇB wrote:
gestaltist wrote:
Squall wrote:
gestaltist wrote:In that case, the "correct language" would soon become like Latin in the middle ages: not the native tongue of anyone, but used for education, politics, etc.
During the Middle Ages, 90% of the population were iliterate and never studied Latin.
Your point being?
I think the point is that it doesn't quite fit the situation. My people have a virtually 100% literacy rate. Every child has a full education to the top level, and in order to really do anything, they will need to be fluent with the correct language. They'd be taught in it and read in it. The only time anyone might ever use any alternate dialect or language is talking with another person that also speaks that dialect, yet both will also know the correct language.
I think your statement solves your own problem. This discussion need not continue- you already know what this entails, and there is plenty of real world precedent for it.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by lsd »

natural features could be:
. using writing, specially ideogram (see Chinese writing )
. using religion...
conlang features could be:
. making philosophic language (a priori ratione) where writing includes meaning
. IA control
distopic features could be:
. erasing all past testimonies of speech to erase any changes
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Squall »

OTʜᴇB wrote:I think the point is that it doesn't quite fit the situation. My people have a virtually 100% literacy rate. Every child has a full education to the top level, and in order to really do anything, they will need to be fluent with the correct language. They'd be taught in it and read in it. The only time anyone might ever use any alternate dialect or language is talking with another person that also speaks that dialect, yet both will also know the correct language.
When your language get standardized, the literacy rate must be 100% and your conpeople should be only one city (before the expansion).
If you have many dialects, the different dialects may influence each other.
Isolation from other peoples is also important.

What may change the language:
-A famous poet may invent a style that changes the word order or use a common verb to expresses TAM. The style may become popular and people may use it and change the language.
-Idioms may appear because of unknown events.
-New concepts may be invented. Some concepts may be forgotten. New concepts may use current words and change the meaning of words for forgotten concepts.
-New objects may be invented and some objects may become obsolete.

It is easier to control mispronunciation with the culture of wishing the correct pronunciation. However, hypercorrection may occur.

It is difficult to control meaning and it may change, although it is slow.
Ex: Verbal offense -> Generic offense -> Physical offense -> Wound caused be an offense -> Any wounds
Another example is the culture. See this exemple: In a conculture, apple juice is popular and there is a root for it. 400 years later, it is not popular anymore, the word is forgotten and orange juice is popular. 400 years later, apple juice becomes popular again and the word for it may be invented by combining apple and juice. 200 years later, apple becomes used only in the juice, the fruit is forgotten by non-producers and the juice is shortened to 'apple'.
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by mira »

Squall wrote:
OTʜᴇB wrote:I think the point is that it doesn't quite fit the situation. My people have a virtually 100% literacy rate. Every child has a full education to the top level, and in order to really do anything, they will need to be fluent with the correct language. They'd be taught in it and read in it. The only time anyone might ever use any alternate dialect or language is talking with another person that also speaks that dialect, yet both will also know the correct language.
When your language get standardized, the literacy rate must be 100% and your conpeople should be only one city (before the expansion).
If you have many dialects, the different dialects may influence each other.
Isolation from other peoples is also important.

What may change the language:
-A famous poet may invent a style that changes the word order or use a common verb to expresses TAM. The style may become popular and people may use it and change the language.
-Idioms may appear because of unknown events.
-New concepts may be invented. Some concepts may be forgotten. New concepts may use current words and change the meaning of words for forgotten concepts.
-New objects may be invented and some objects may become obsolete.

It is easier to control mispronunciation with the culture of wishing the correct pronunciation. However, hypercorrection may occur.

It is difficult to control meaning and it may change, although it is slow.
Ex: Verbal offense -> Generic offense -> Physical offense -> Wound caused be an offense -> Any wounds
Another example is the culture. See this exemple: In a conculture, apple juice is popular and there is a root for it. 400 years later, it is not popular anymore, the word is forgotten and orange juice is popular. 400 years later, apple juice becomes popular again and the word for it may be invented by combining apple and juice. 200 years later, apple becomes used only in the juice, the fruit is forgotten by non-producers and the juice is shortened to 'apple'.
I think it would probably be useful if I outline what my con-culture is like as this is very promising information.

My con-culture is based on a man-made island in the pacific ocean. It is a very large mega-city about 80-100km across and is completely urban area (grassland and plant-life is achieved through grass roofs on all buildings and small green areas in gaps between buildings where appropriate). It's isolated from the rest of the world and is fully self-maintained. It's based only 30-40 years into its life and so the people are only at the second or third generation, the most recent two grew up solely on the conlang (which is a conlang in the conworld).

Education, TV, media, news etc. are all monitored by an area of government titled the "Language Management Department", the job of which is to control the language used across all of this and to keep the language from evolving in unwanted ways. This government is virtually devoid of corruption as every person originally brought to the city was invited because they showed good intelligence and reasoning as well as good morals and little greed. This department will check over anything to be published before release to make corrections or rejections if the language does not meet adequate standards. This is not very strict, and rejections are more a "please try again" than a "**** you you're terrible". This is also a very democratic area of government and people can request needed words and they will be properly thought through and created and added to the dictionaries, instead of people just making their own and modifying the language in ways that do not fit the orderly nature of the language.

My question(s) throughout this thread is/are therefore: Will this work? If not, why? And how can it be improved to work?
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Tanni »

I hope for your conpeople that this would not work. You created a dictatorship based on what the government thinks is the correct language.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by mira »

Tanni wrote:I hope for your conpeople that this would not work. You created a dictatorship based on what the government thinks is the correct language.
How so? Correct language is a thing, and the "correct" language isn't what the government thinks, but what is carefully designed and respected by everyone, including the government. The people making the language aren't part of government but the government (politely) enforce the correct language as dictated by the creators of the language. This correct language may not be completely static forever, but any change that does happen would be carefully designed to retain the order of the language.
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Ebon »

OTʜᴇB wrote: I think it would probably be useful if I outline what my con-culture is like as this is very promising information.

My con-culture is based on a man-made island in the pacific ocean. It is a very large mega-city about 80-100km across and is completely urban area (grassland and plant-life is achieved through grass roofs on all buildings and small green areas in gaps between buildings where appropriate). It's isolated from the rest of the world and is fully self-maintained. It's based only 30-40 years into its life and so the people are only at the second or third generation, the most recent two grew up solely on the conlang (which is a conlang in the conworld).

Education, TV, media, news etc. are all monitored by an area of government titled the "Language Management Department", the job of which is to control the language used across all of this and to keep the language from evolving in unwanted ways. This government is virtually devoid of corruption as every person originally brought to the city was invited because they showed good intelligence and reasoning as well as good morals and little greed. This department will check over anything to be published before release to make corrections or rejections if the language does not meet adequate standards. This is not very strict, and rejections are more a "please try again" than a "**** you you're terrible". This is also a very democratic area of government and people can request needed words and they will be properly thought through and created and added to the dictionaries, instead of people just making their own and modifying the language in ways that do not fit the orderly nature of the language.

My question(s) throughout this thread is/are therefore: Will this work? If not, why? And how can it be improved to work?
Not that I'm an expert on language change, but I'm pretty sure that if someone needs a word enough to submit a request, they'd probably start making them up themselves instead. If officials have to carefully think through any and all additions, I don't see it being a quick process.

Also, speaking as a writer, I suspect they'd stifle creative expression by demanding published works adhere to some official standard. (Although if that's what you want, go for it- concultures don't need to be utopias, after all.)
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Salmoneus »

How could intelligent and moral people agree to live within, and even support, one of the most repressive dictatorships in human history, solely to quixotically defend an arbitrarily chosen dialect from change? No matter how 'polite' people there are?

I mean, even religions and political ideologies can't inspire that level of self-destructive fanaticism for very long, and those things actually matter to people...
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Re: Preventing language change

Post by Squall »

OTʜᴇB wrote:It's based only 30-40 years into its life and so the people are only at the second or third generation, the most recent two grew up solely on the conlang (which is a conlang in the conworld).
The people of the first generations will bring their culture and thoughts. Their native language will influence the conlang and their fluence will not be perfect. People of the same home country may form a community and develop a common style that will lead to a dialect.
OTʜᴇB wrote:Education, TV, media, news etc. are all monitored by an area of government titled the "Language Management Department", the job of which is to control the language used across all of this and to keep the language from evolving in unwanted ways.
Do they censor phone calls, online networks, emails, boards, etc?
OTʜᴇB wrote:This government is virtually devoid of corruption as every person originally brought to the city was invited because they showed good intelligence and reasoning as well as good morals and little greed.
Corruption depends on law and culture.
This may not ensure that the future generations will not be corrupt.
An opposite example is Australia. It was the destination of criminals arrested in the British Empire, but nowadays Australians are an honest people. Because it is unrelated.
OTʜᴇB wrote:This is also a very democratic area of government and people can request needed words and they will be properly thought through and created and added to the dictionaries, instead of people just making their own and modifying the language in ways that do not fit the orderly nature of the language.
This is the flaw in the goal of keeping the language unmodified forever.
The people will request to change a word because the new pronunciations is better.
If a word changes or a new word be born from nothing, the people will vote for the change.
My question(s) throughout this thread is/are therefore: Will this work? If not, why? And how can it be improved to work?
It is very difficult to keep real accuracy. You should build plausible features and consider in the future that the strategy worked.
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
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