Re: Question about Spanish


Felix Rawlings wrote:
On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 09:53:23 +0000, Felix Rawlings wrote:

On Tue, 07 Mar 2006 22:41:58 +0000, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

foggytown wrote:

Dear Group,

I am doing some research for a short story and perhaps I can find some
assistance in here. Question: are there countries once colonized by
Spain where the daily spoken language is now a form of Spanish which
has so degraded that it would not be understood by Spaniards or other
(former) colonies?

Please don't say "degraded." It suggests that the language is somehow
inferior or inadequate. Whatever the social circumstances of its
speakers, the language is fully as expressive as that spoken by any
Castilian.

Two things: One, must you be so thoroughly politically correct all
the time? And two, where is the data to support your assertion in the last
sentence? Or is this a case of PC dogma first, scientific evidence
afterwards?

It's interesting to notice that replies so far have just focused on
chastising me, for daring to wonder if the original poster was motivated
by political correctness, and have confirmed that his opinion is correct,
again without producing any solid, scientific data to support it.

Political correctness or not, the word "degraded" is not exactly a
valid or exact linguistic term. Instead, I would prefer either
pidginized or deviated. Pidginization would mean that the language has
been imperfectly acquired by a group, and that this has produced a new
linguistic variety unintelligible to the speakers of standard Spanish.
Deviation would mean that a variety once unmistakably Spanish has by
its innate tendencies become so different from Spanish that it cannot
be considered a dialect anymore, but a new language.

Now, I reckon that it is quite easy to find spoken varieties in many
parts of Latin America which might be unintelligible to native speakers
of Peninsular Spanish. The "motosidad" and the Quechua-influenced word
order of Andean Spanish certainly make it difficult to understand for
someone who is unfamiliar with the variety. But on the other hand,
there are spoken varieties in Spain itself which are unintelligible to
metropolitan speakers. Are these varieties "degraded"? And if they are,
does that count? As long as the speakers of these varieties have access
to metropolitan Spanish, can relate their own spoken variety to
metropolitan Spanish and can become fluent in metropolitan Spanish, due
to exposure to it at school and from the media, the question of the
"degraded" character of these varieties is of little relevance.

The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the speakers of deviant
varieties of Spanish in Latin America. They might be very different
from the standard variety, but speakers of these varieties are
continuously exposed to the standardized variety - the local "norma
culta" or cultivated norm, which will be mutually intelligible with
Peninsular Castilian Spanish - used in the media and in school, and
learn to understand and speak it more or less fluently.

The point is, that the "degradation" is not irreversible. If the
speakers of a "degraded" variety can still relate to the "pure" variety
and find themselves in a social context where it is for prestige
reasons advisable to adopt the "pure" variety, then the variety they
speak will under the influence of the "pure" prestige variety become
less and less degraded.

The linguistic situation in Papua New Guinea is a case in point. The
lingua franca and the official language of the country is a "degraded
and debased" variety of English - Tok Pisin. However, due to the
proximity of Australia as well as other sociolinguistic factors, Tok
Pisin is now being continuously influenced by standard English,
adopting both English words, phrases, and even phonetic features. It is
entirely possible that in the course of a couple of generations, Tok
Pisin will be superseded by standard English.

Do the Papuans view this as an entirely positive development, a
"de-degradation" of their "*** jargon" into good English? Not
unambiguously. There are people who are very emotional about Tok Pisin
and see it as a more intimate, beautiful language than standard
English. They might welcome standard English as a necessary tool, a
door to a wider world, but at the same time, they deplore the passing
of the genuine Tok Pisin of the good old days; and they might perceive
the re-Anglicization and decreolization of Tok Pisin as a kind of
degradation and debasement, although Tok Pisin itself was a kind of
"degraded" English to start with.

Of course, deviant or pidginized varieties of major languages can be
characterized as "degraded" in the sense that their speakers have lost
the access to the literary and cultural heritage of those major
languages. In that sense, they are "degraded": of course, it would be
possible to codify their spoken variety into a new written language,
but then they would have to provide the literature themselves. But
then, the loss of the access to the wider vistas provided by literature
in major standard languages would be more of a social fact than a
linguistic one.

.

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