Linguistic purism

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The Academie Francaise
in France is charged with maintaining the linguistic purism of the French language. This is the first page of the 6th edition of their dictionary (1835). DictionaryFrenchAcademy1835.jpg
The Académie Française in France is charged with maintaining the linguistic purism of the French language. This is the first page of the 6th edition of their dictionary (1835).

Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is a concept having a dual notion with respect to foreign languages and with respect to the internal variants of a language (dialects) The first meaning is the historical trend of every language to conserve intact its lexical structure of word families, in opposition to foreign influence which are considered 'impure'. The second meaning is the practice, possibly prescriptive, [1] of determining and recognizing one linguistic variety (dialect) as being purer or of intrinsically higher quality than other varieties.

Contents

The perceived or actual decline identified by the purists may take the form of a change of vocabulary, syncretism of grammatical elements, or loanwords.[ citation needed ] The unwanted similarity is often with a neighboring language the speakers of which are culturally or politically dominant.[ citation needed ] The ideal may invoke logic, clarity, or the grammar of classic languages. It is often presented as a conservative measure, as a protection of a language from the encroachment of other languages or of the conservation of the national Volksgeist , but is often innovative in defining a new standard. It is sometimes part of governmental language policy that is enforced in various ways.

The practice opposite of purism, when borrowed words displace native ones, also exists. For example, in English, the native word bookstaff (German : Buchstabe) was replaced by the Latin word letter.

History

Historically, in the first meaning, linguistic purism was institutionalized in Italy through language academies (of which the 1572 Accademia della Crusca set as a model example in Europe), and their decisions often having the force of law. [2]

Purism in Italy until the 19th century stemmed from the doctrine, developed in the 16th century mainly by Pietro Bembo and Lionardo Salviati and supported by dictionaries and grammars, that literary usage should imitate 14th-century Florentine. This view was contested by the Enlightenment, and the terms purismo and purista (first recorded 1758–9 but not used in print until 1838) were introduced to denote linguistic affectation or archaism. The 19th-century purism of Antonio Cesari and others was based both on veneration for the 14th century and on distaste for neologisms and foreign borrowings, especially from French. Purism in the 20th century resisted unassimilated borrowings from French and later from English and was at its height during the second half of the Fascist period. The neopurismo promoted by Bruno Migliorini from the late 1930s sought a compromise between the needs of Italian to evolve and to maintain its structures.

Cognate languages

In one common case, two closely related languages or language varieties are in direct competition, one weaker, the other stronger. Speakers of the stronger language may characterize the weaker language as a "dialect" of the strong language, with the implication that it has no independent existence. In response, defenders of the other language will go to great lengths to prove that their language is equally autonomous.

In this context, Yiddish and Dutch have in the past sometimes been considered dialects of German. In the case of Low German, spoken in eastern Netherlands and northern Germany, the debate is still current, as it could be considered a dialect of Dutch or German or a language of its own. An example of a related language that has only recently attained the status of an official national language is Luxembourgish. Since linguistic science offers no scholarly definition of a dialect, and linguists regard the distinction with scepticism – see A language is a dialect with an army and navy – the argument is really about subjective questions of identity politics, and at times it can invoke extreme emotions from the participants.

Writing systems

Closely related languages often tend to mix. One way of preventing this is to use different writing systems or different spelling systems.

Examples of this include:

Forms

Various scholars have devised classifications of purism. These classifications take different criteria as their starting point and are therefore partly independent of each other.

Based on the approach

One taxonomy of puristic orientations is due to George Thomas: [4]

Based on the goals

Based on the intensity

Based on linguistic level

Other forms

By language

See also

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References

Notes
  1. Veisbergs, Andrejs (2010). "Development of the Latvian Language, Purism and Prescriptivism". Linguistic Studies in Latvia (PDF). Vol. 18. University of Latvia. p. 15.
  2. Thomas (1991) , p. 108
  3. Tariq Rahman. Tariq Rahman: From Hindi To Urdu (OUP 2010) Pakistani Print Version.
  4. Thomas, pp. 75–83
  5. "CĂ"MO CREE QUE SE ESCRIBE: BLUE JEAN O BLUYĂ?N – Archivo Digital de Noticias de Colombia y el Mundo desde 1.990". eltiempo.com. 20 August 1996. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  6. "bluyín". Archived from the original on 29 November 2009. Retrieved 29 April 2010.
  7. [ dead link ]
  8. "champú". Archived from the original on 22 May 2010. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
  9. , based in Algeria. (Official site)
  10. Beka Melayu Lumpuk Ujar Dalam Pemerintahan, The Patriots (Malay article)
Bibliography