This is a list of bodies that consider themselves to be authorities on standard languages, often called language academies. Language academies are motivated by, or closely associated with, linguistic purism and prestige, and typically publish prescriptive dictionaries, [1] which purport to officiate and prescribe the meaning of words and pronunciations. A language regulator may also have a more descriptive approach, however, while maintaining and promoting (but not imposing) a standard spelling. Many language academies are private institutions, although some are governmental bodies in different states, or enjoy some form of government-sanctioned status in one or more countries. There may also be multiple language academies attempting to regulate and codify the same language, sometimes based in different countries and sometimes influenced by political factors.
Many world languages have one or more language academies or official language bodies. However, the degree of control that the academies exert over these languages does not render the latter controlled natural languages in the sense that the various kinds of "simple English" (e.g. Basic English, Simplified Technical English) or George Orwell's fictional Newspeak are. They instead remain natural languages to a considerable extent and are thus not formal languages such as Attempto Controlled English. They have a degree of standardization that allows them to function as standard languages (e.g. standard French). The English language has never had a formal regulator anywhere, outside of private productions such as the Oxford English Dictionary.
Apart from the Akademio de Esperanto, most constructed languages (also called conlangs) have no true linguistic regulators or language academies. [25]
| Language | Regulator(s) |
|---|---|
| Esperanto | Akademio de Esperanto |
| Ido | Uniono por la Linguo Internaciona Ido |
| Lingua Franca Nova | Asosia per Lingua Franca Nova |
| Volapük | Kadäm Volapüka |
Esperanto and Ido have been constructed (or planned) by a person or small group, before being adopted and further developed by communities of users through natural language evolution.
Bodies such as the Akademio de Esperanto look at questions of usage in the light of the original goals and principles of the language.
Interlingua has no regulating body, as its vocabulary, grammar, and orthography are viewed as a product of ongoing social forces. In theory, Interlingua therefore evolves independent from any human regulator. Interlingua's vocabulary is verified and recorded by dynamically applying certain general principles to an existing set of natural languages and their etymologies. The International Auxiliary Language Association ceased to exist in 1954, and according to the secretary of Union Mundial de Interlingua "Interlingua doesn't need its Academy". [25]
| Language | Regulator(s) |
|---|---|
| Klingon | Marc Okrand |
| Lojban | Logical Language Group |
| Naʼvi | Paul Frommer |
| Talossan | Comità per l'Útzil del Glheþ |
These bodies do not attempt to regulate any language in a prescriptive manner and are primarily concerned with aiding and advising the government on policies regarding language usage.
Hong Kong: Official Language Division Civil Service Bureau Government of Hong Kong – concerned with matters concerning government language policy
Macau: Departamento dos Assuntos Linguísticos of the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau of the Government of Macau –concerned with matters concerning government language policy
Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it is intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language". Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language, which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, grammar, and other characteristics are derived from natural languages. Interlingua literature maintains that (written) Interlingua is comprehensible to the billions of people who speak Romance languages, though it is actively spoken by only a few hundred.
In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change without conscious planning or premeditation. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages are distinguished from constructed and formal languages such as those used to program computers or to study logic.
An international auxiliary language is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primarily a foreign language and often a constructed language. The concept is related to but separate from the idea of a lingua franca that people must use to communicate. The study of international auxiliary languages is interlinguistics.
Linguistic prescription is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes informed by linguistic purism, such normative practices often propagate the belief that some usages are incorrect, inconsistent, illogical, lack communicative effect, or are of low aesthetic value, even in cases where such usage is more common than the prescribed usage. They may also include judgments on socially proper and politically correct language use.
Language policy is both an interdisciplinary academic field and implementation of ideas about language use. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as Bernard Spolsky, Robert B. Kaplan and Joseph Lo Bianco argue that language policy is a branch of applied linguistics.
The Akademio de Esperanto is an independent body of Esperanto speakers who steward the evolution of said language by keeping it consistent with the Fundamento de Esperanto in accordance with the Declaration of Boulogne. Modeled somewhat after the Académie française and the Real Academia Española, the Akademio was proposed by L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, at the first World Esperanto Congress, and was founded soon thereafter under the name Lingva Komitato. This Committee had a "superior commission" called the Akademio. In 1948, within the framework of a general reorganization, the Language Committee and the Academy combined to form the Akademio de Esperanto.
In sociolinguistics, language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of languages or language varieties within a speech community. Robert L. Cooper (1989) defines language planning as "the activity of preparing a normative orthography, grammar, and dictionary for the guidance of writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community". Along with language ideology and language practices, language planning is part of language policy – a typology drawn from Bernard Spolsky's theory of language policy. According to Spolsky, language management is a more precise term than language planning. Language management is defined as "the explicit and observable effort by someone or some group that has or claims authority over the participants in the domain to modify their practices or beliefs" Language planning is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations such as grass-roots organizations as well as individuals. Goals of such planning vary. Better communication through assimilation of a single dominant language can bring economic benefits to minorities but is also perceived to facilitate their political domination. It involves the establishment of language regulators, such as formal or informal agencies, committees, societies or academies to design or develop new structures to meet contemporary needs.
Esperanto and Interlingua are two planned languages with different approaches to the problem of providing an International auxiliary language (IAL). Esperanto has many more speakers; the number of speakers is c. 100,000-2,000,000. On the other hand, the number of speakers is c. 1,500 for Interlingua, but speakers of the language claim to be able to communicate easily with the c. 1 billion speakers of Romance languages, whereas Esperanto speakers can only communicate among each other.
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, of determining and recognizing one linguistic variety (dialect) as being purer or of intrinsically higher quality than other varieties.
Neo is an international auxiliary language created by Arturo Alfandari, a Belgian diplomat of Italian descent. It combines features of Esperanto, Ido, Novial, and Volapük. The root base of Neo is closely related to French, with some influence from English.
Kichwa is a Quechuan language that includes all Quechua varieties of Ecuador and Colombia (Inga), as well as extensions into Peru. It has an estimated half million speakers.
Humphrey R. Tonkin is professor of English, and served as the 4th president of the University of Hartford. He is also a dedicated Esperantist.
The High Academy of the Quechua Language, or AMLQ, is a Peruvian organization whose purpose is stated as the teaching, promotion, and dissemination of the Quechua language.
William Edward Collinson was a British linguist and, from 1914 to 1954, Chair of German at the University of Liverpool. Like Edward Sapir and Otto Jespersen, he collaborated with Alice Vanderbilt Morris to develop the research program of the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). From 1936 to 1939, he was Research Director of IALA. Under Collinson's guidance, methods of compiling international word material were tested at Liverpool. In 1939 IALA moved from Liverpool to New York and E. Clark Stillman succeeded Collinson as Research Director. Alexander Gode, editor of the first English-Interlingua dictionary published in 1951, remained in contact with Collinson which had collected much of linguistic material in the University of Liverpool.
A constructed language is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. A constructed language may also be referred to as an artificial, planned or invented language, or a fictional language. Planned languages are languages that have been purposefully designed; they are the result of deliberate, controlling intervention and are thus of a form of language planning.
Manuel Alvar was a Spanish linguist, historian, and university professor who specialized in the study of dialectology and philology of the Spanish language. Throughout his career, Alvar oversaw and influenced the creation of many Spanish linguistic atlases; maps which recorded speech variations in a given geographical area. He served as Director of the Real Academia Española for four years and was a member of language academies throughout Europe and Latin America.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Esperanto:
Ri is a singular third-person gender-neutral pronoun in Esperanto intended as an alternative to the gender-specific li ("he") and ŝi ("she"). It is used by some speakers when the gender of a person is not known or when it is not desirable to specify them as either a "he" or "she", similar to how singular they is used in English. In Esperanto, the usage of this pronoun is called riismo ; it is one of several proposals for gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto.
Ilona Koutny is a Hungarian linguist and Esperantist. She works as a professor in Poznań, Poland. In 2008, she was honoured as "Esperantist of the Year" by the magazine La Ondo de Esperanto.
Whereas a number of the puristically motivated language societies have assumed de facto responsibility for language cultivation, the decisions of the academies have often had the force of law. ... Since academies are so closely associated with the notion of purism, a brief word on their history may not be out of place. The first academy to deal expressly and exclusively with language matters was the Accademia della Crusca ... Its orientation was essentially conservative, favouring a return to the Tuscan language as cultivated in the fourteenth century over the innovations of contemporary renaissance poets such as Torquato Tasso. ... One of its first tasks -- as with so many academies to follow -- was to produce a large-scale prescriptive dictionary of Italian
Field of Activities: ... compilation of the Belarusian language dictionaries including Belarusian – the other Slavonic languages and the other Slavonic languages – Belarusian dictionaries; ...
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)