Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)

From: Neeraj Mathur (neemathur_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 23:54:29 -0000

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:4230D7DF.2038@worldnet.att.net...
> Neeraj Mathur wrote:
>> What about things like the outlawing of Ottoman Turkish and Katharevousa
>> after political changes? Or am I misrepresenting the scenarios there?
>
> Who did the "conquering" there? You mean Turkish script reform? That
> came several years at least after the changeover from Ottoman rule to
> whatever you want to call Ataturk's rule.
>
> Who "outlawed" Katharevousa? When was Greece last "conquered"?

It does seem like I got myself muddled up.

My impression of the reforms in Turkey was that Ottoman Turkish was made
illegal (I'm sure I've read this somewhere), and the use of 'pure Turkish'
forms was enforced by law. The process as I understand it is significantly
more involved than just a script change, because there was an attempt to
remove foreign elements which, as I understood it, were natural in various
urban dialects (I have read that urban and rural dwellers could not
understand each others' normal speech before the reform).

I thought the change to Demotic in Greece was also enforced by law (I'm sure
a Greek friend told me this), where Katharevousa was not simply replaced in
official documents but essentially forbidden.

Of course I'm open to correction on any of these points; I'm not fully clear
on the exact workings of the two situations. They do fascinate me,
nevertheless - can anybody point me to some articles describing the
policies, the implementations chosen by the governments, and their long- and
short-term success? It would be interesting to compare with, for example,
the (failed) attempt of the Quebec government to outlaw English in the 70's.

Neeraj Mathur

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