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

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 03/11/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 02:37:47 GMT

Neeraj Mathur wrote:
>
> "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).

That's the subject of the book by Geoffrey Lewis that Yusuf frequently
recommends.

> 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.

I don't know anything about that, but is it a dialect thing or just an
orthography thing?

> 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. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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