Re: unnatural languages

On Mar 1, 10:03 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
On 1 maalis, 02:32, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

How many times do we have to tell you that it is not the parents, but
the peer group that determines a child's language?

So, you are moving goalposts again.

Don't lie. I have never said anything different.

YOU accuse ME of lying. Now we have a new definition for chutzpa.

Show me where I have ever said anything contradictory to the above.

First, you suggested two people
were enough for a community.

Two people certainly isn't enough for an infant to acquire a language!

I never acquired a language, then. Nice to know.

I don't know you, so I don't know what language you claim not to have
acquired, but it's a safe bet that Finnish is your native language, or
one of them. Is it your claim that for the entire duration of your
language acquisition period -- until the age of 10 or so -- only two
people in the entire world spoke to you in your native language?

If as a child you never got to play with children your own age, or go
to school, or engage in any other social activities, then you were
very deeply abused and the authorities who did nothing to rescue you
should be prosecuted.

Go learn some psycholinguistics.

You are entirely ignorant of Irish sociolinguistics, but make weighty
pronouncements on the matter anyway. After that I do not really
believe that you were in any position to say anything relevant about
psycholinguistics, either. To put the matter quite bluntly, Peter: I
do not really believe that you are fit or equipped to say anything
about linguistics or related fields. By your manners, or lack thereof,
you have entirely forfeited your credibility as a professional.

You managed to do that with regard to yourself some months ago.

I am ready to admit that I know little about linguistic theory - I am
a practical man and was always more interested in acquiring particular
languages and finding innovative ways to teach them. So, you did have
_some_ credibility as long as we were debating things that you _could_
be more knowledgeable about than myself. But your ridiculous and
arrogant attempt to actually contest _my_ firsthand knowledge of the
sociolinguistics of Irish society went simply too far. Here in Finland
we say that you should not teach your dad to, uh, fornicate, i.e. not
teach a person something that he or she obviously knows better than
you do. By trying to teach ME Irish sociolinguistics you definitely
crossed the last border.

The English for that is "Don't teach your grandmother to suck
eggs." (Not that _my_ grandmother ever sucked an egg, but these
sayings tend to reflect archaic customs.)

The ignorance of basic linguistics that you have displayed while
trying to discuss linguistic matters suggests that your ability to
speak on sociolinguistics is no greater than that of anyone else who
may have visited someplace but has never had any formal training in
sociolinguistics.

You have given no hint of any attempt to isolate factors that may be
influencing the linguistic situation in Ireland; you appear to have
made social and political judgments baaed on anecdotal observation,
not on scientific investigation of situations on the ground.

Now you are speaking about the peer group
and classmates, and suddenly the household is not enough for you.

There's no "suddenly" about it.

Don't try to intimidate me. I know that you contradicted yourself, and
there is no explaining away it. Of course you won't admit it. You
never admit any blunder.

And again I say, produce a contradiction.

I have said nothing different, and nothing the least bit surprising to
anyone who's had, say, a second-year class in a linguistic subfield.

And, while we are at it: in Belfast, there is an Irish-speaking
neighborhood ("Shaw's Road Gaeltacht") which was deliberately
developed as a close-knit community, and where there are three
generations of Irish speakers by now. Is Irish a natural and real
language there, or is it not?-

I wouldn't know.

Nice that you admit it.

What relationship does that dialect have with the
main dialects that are hundreds of generations old?

They try to keep in touch with the genuine dialects of Donegal. You
are supposed to spend your summer holidays over there. The dialect of
Ranafast is the most holy one, because it is the native dialect of the
revered writers Seosamh Mac Grianna and Séamus Ó Grianna.-

So you admit that it's an ideology thing rather than a practical-daily-
use thing.

I told you that they consciously created a close-knit community, where
they could live in Irish and have all their social contacts in Irish.
Then I told you that they make a conscious effort to keep in touch
with Donegal dialects.

I have know idea what "try to keep in touch" or "make a conscious
effort to keep in touch" means.

Yet you are yourself making use of terms like "native language" or
"real language" which are essentially big, menacing words without
agreed definition.

Idiot. No one doesn't know what "native language" means. A native
language is one that is acquired by an infant without any conscious
"learning" or "teaching."

So, if parents speak Esperanto to their children, the children will
acquire Esperanto as their native language. Agreed.

No, the child might create an Esperanto creole from the imprfect
(i.e., pidgin) input from the abusive parents.

Well, let us put it that way. If the creole is mutually intelligible
with other Esperanto-based creoles which have been created in a
similar way, and if it is mutually intelligible with the "conference
Esperanto", too, and if its speakers can make intelligent use of
printed media in standard Esperanto, then we can say that the creole
and those other varieties are dialects of the same language for all
intents and purposes-.

Sure.

And in English, if not in Finnish, "real" is the opposite of
"artificial."

Well, in my personal English idiolect, "real" is the opposite of
"ideal", "imaginary", or "unreal"; and "natural" is the opposite of
"artificial".

Then you would do better to conform your personal English idiolect to
the general norm.

I do not think Peter Daniels is in any way better equipped than me to
define "the general norm". I think Peter Daniels's personal quirks do
not constitute "the general norm".

Then maybe phoglund should look at a standard English dictionary. M-W
11th Collegiate: aside from the irrelevant def. 1 (as in "real estate"
or "real property," the oldest usage), def. 2a is 'not artificial'.

But let me specify: people take holidays in the
Gaeltacht, they send their children to Gaeltacht summer schools and so
on.

A week or three does not constitute immersion.

How come this assertion does not surprise me?

Because it's a self-evident truth.

Somehow, other people's self evident truths are never accepted as such
by you. I think I am going to respond in kind.




So, where's the response?





Which part here suggests that it is not about
practical daily use? Are ideological commitment and practical daily
use mutually exclusive?-

Usually.

Well, I have bad news for you. The practical daily use of a minority
language in an environment where a majority language is perceived as
norm is frequently looked upon as an ideologically motivated act, by
the speakers of both languages. If you speak Irish openly in Ireland,
there are people who will construe it as a nationalistic
demonstration, even if you were a native speaker with Gaeltacht
credentials.-

Bull***. In case you'd forgotten, Ireland has been a "nation" --a
Free State from 1916 -- for nearly a century. There is no
"nationalisticism" in Ireland.

Well, as I stated, I have been involved with the Irish language for a
mere fourteen years, sociolinguistic aspects and language attitudes
included. And as I stated, my humble knowledge is certainly no match
to the divine gnosis you acquired during your one-week stay in
Ireland.

I actually knew that Ireland was a nation _before_ I went there.

Nice to know that you had some knowledge. Now, if you could read
books, it might be a good idea to read some standard works about Irish
history and society. "The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland" is a
good read for a person of your sort: it even has lots of nice coloured
pictures if you find the texts too long, challenging, and replete with
hard words.

Why don't you tell us about Swedish in Finland?

Because I reckon you are, in your infinite wisdom, better equipped to
tell us about it - if I uttered anything, you would be calling me
idiot and my statements bull***.-

Prejudiced, anyway.

It is no prejudice to presume that you persist in your earlier abusive
style.

I suppose now you'll retort that some of your best friends are Sweded?

I don't know about Swedes, but I presume "Swede" means in your
deficient and flawed terminology a Finnish citizen who is a native
speaker of Swedish. The correct term is Finno-Swede, based on the
native terms "finlandssvensk" and "suomenruotsalainen". My father is a
native speaker of Swedish, originally from a village in Ostrobothnia
where Swedish, or a related dialect, is the community language. I
acquired my university degree at Åbo Akademi University, where Swedish
is the teaching medium. And I speak Swedish to my girl-friend. I
readily admit that I am biased - in favour of the Swedish-speakers. In
the upcoming elections, I am going to vote (it is no secret) for
Stefan Wallin, the leader of the political party of the Swedish-
speaking minority.-

Aha. The source of some of your biases begins to appear. You find
yourself a member of an oppressed minority -- even though all this
time you have been masquerading as a Finn.

.