Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?

On Sat, 21 May 2005 10:20:05 +1200, benlizross
<benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:428E6295.14DB@xxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

[...]

> In the meantime, I'll say:

> - names are words (which are socially assigned to individuals);

I don't know what account Peter has in mind, but I don't
consider names to be words in the ordinary sense of the
word. Cecily Clark, 'Onomastics', in vol. 2 of the
Cambridge History of the English Language:

Names, whether of places or of people, have by
definition a distinctive standing vis-à-vis the
language at large. Although ultimately derived
from elements of common vocabulary (not
necessarily that of the language they currently
grace), they have become emptied of their
original etymological denotation; and this is true
even for those whose form still coincides with
that of the related lexical items: no-one expects
to find cattle wading across the river at Oxford
and, should a Mr Butcher actually be in the
meat trade, the coincidence almost excites mirth.

On the one hand, this semantic detachment promotes
cross-cultural survival: some Present-Day 'English'
place names are traceable to Celtic forms at least
two millennia old, a few even suspected of going
back to pre-Celtic times; some 'English' baptismal
names have Hebrew origins. On the other, it lays
names open to phonological attrition, for no more
of any form need survive than is required for acting,
in context, as an unambiguous signal or pointer.

She goes on to point out that names are a poor guide to the
incidence and chronology of sound changes and may even
participate in purely onomastic sound changes.

Brian
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?
    ... > Cambridge History of the English Language: ... > original etymological denotation; and this is true ... > even for those whose form still coincides with ... > participate in purely onomastic sound changes. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Leodhasach & Hearasch - Gaelic help please
    ... course our own traditional language is even more neglected than Gaelic is. ... who speak English soon get the gist of it. ... is someone who truly appreciates Scottish culture in that you won't find ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • the tomasites , english and the filipino
    ... And they came to teach English as part of the "policy of attraction" ... a Filipino is deemed illiterate even ... Even a secondary Spanish school like Colegio de San Juan de Letrán ... wrote a textbook to teach the English language as early as 1902. ...
    (soc.culture.filipino)
  • Re: the tomasites , english and the filipino
    ... this change was documented in books written in English or other ... European languages not Tagalog or any other of the Filipino dialects. ... second language, unfortunately it seems that we did not use these ... Even a secondary Spanish school like Colegio de San Juan de Letrán ...
    (soc.culture.filipino)
  • Re: OT: Six out of 10 young Americans cannot find Iraq on a map
    ... Language became a political and an emotional issue as early as the ... proposed English Language Amendment, ... Despite the myth that German had once come close to replacing English ... The story of the German Vote is occasionally trotted out by ...
    (alt.guitar.amps)