(Still OT) Nationalism, language and monoculture [was Re: Python Worst Practices]

[Steven D'Aprano]

Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> alister <alister.nospam.ware at ntlworld.com>:
> 
>> or as another analogy why don't you (Marco) try telling a Barber in
>> Seville that he should be speaking Latin Spanish not that strange
>> variation he uses?
> 
> If the barber conference language were Latin, and some Spaniard insisted
> on speaking Western Andalusian, I sure would consider that obnoxious.
> 
> Similarly, I've heard some Finnish representatives in the Nordic Council
> complain how the Danish insist on speaking Danish. The official language
> there is Swedish.

I'm reminded of the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who
apparently made a habit of answering difficult or embarrassing questions in
parliament in his native Welsh.


>> I suspect the reaction you get will be far more severe than the one
>> you are getting from we English (& Brits)
> 
> I don't understand your reaction. The rest of us are willing to walk a
> mile (say, Finnish -----> American English) and you are up in arms about
> having to shift a foot (say, Scouse -> American English).

"Not one inch!"

Sometimes the small differences are more important than the big. Your
Finnishness is not threatened by learning English, any more than Mark's
Britishness would be threatened by him learning Russian.

[Now there's a thought... with the historical relationships between Finland
and Russia, I wonder whether Finns would be as blasé about using a foreign
language if it were Russian rather than English? But I digress.]

Whereas the comparatively small differences between British and American
English are all the more important because they distinguish the two. Nobody
is ever going to mistake Finland and the Finish people for Americans, even
if you learn to speak American English. But for Britons to use American
English is, in a way, to cease to be Britons at all.

Personally, I think that monocultures are harmful and ought to be resisted,
whether than monoculture is one-species-of-wheat, one-operating-system, or
one-language. The English-speaking world is threatened by American cultural
and linguistic monoculture[1], and that's a bad thing. The same applies to
the rest of the world, but to a much lesser extent. Having a rich and
varied cultural ecosystem is important, and regional differences in
language and culture are an essential part in that.

Variations in idiom and spelling are a good thing. They open our minds to
new possibilities, remind us that we aren't all the same, and keep life
fresh. I remember the first time I realised that when Indians talk about "a
code" they aren't using "wrong English", they are using a regional
variation. In British and American English, "code" in the programming
sense[2] is a mass or uncountable noun, like air[3], milk, music and
housework. You cannot have "three milks", you have to add some sort of unit
to it: three litres of milk, five pieces of music, too much housework, five
*pieces of code*. But in Indian English, you can count code: *five codes*.
How wonderful! I'll probably never use it myself, but I am enriched just to
know it exists.





[1] Yes, I watch as many American movies and television shows as the next
guy. I'm allowed to take the parts of their culture I approve of and reject
the parts I don't.

[2] As opposed to the sense of secret codes and ciphers.

[3] In the sense of air that we breathe. One can still have "airs and
graces", although we rarely quantify just how many airs somebody is putting
on.



-- 
Steven