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Of course language standardization is something that exists. You get a ruling body to declare a particular manner of speaking as the preferred one, mandate tha
by yorwba 7y ago
Of course language standardization is something that exists.
You get a ruling body to declare a particular manner of speaking as the preferred one, mandate that it be taught to children in school and prevent anyone who speaks differently from appearing in mass media. After a generation, you have children who grew up speaking non-standard with their parents but standard with their peers in school. Many of them will speak standard with their children, so non-standard becomes something you use to speak to your grandparents. Then the grandparents die and almost everyone who speaks non-standard fluently doesn't use it regularly, so they forget. The next generation grows up barely aware that the standard way to speak is not the only way.
All of that doesn't completely stop natural language change from occurring, but it strongly constrains the range of possible variation. Locutors may create languages, but ruling bodies can tell them which language to create.
- pyrale 7y agoMind you, did your country/language try this? Because, being french, we actively do it, and it is an utter failure. People do not know the ruleset they were supposedly taught, new words largely come from the society as opposed to the institution, and thus the institution mostly acknowledges things after the fact. From that pov, the thing you describe looks like a pipe dream.
- squiggleblaz 7y agoWhat's interesting about France is the people who think they don't speak much less understand the local dialect - who think it's dead or dying - but then you actually record them talking to their children, and lo and behold, they're passing dialect on to their children. Still, the descendants of emigrants who learnt the dialect of their parents can only understand the older generation, not their peers.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago> You get a ruling body to declare a particular manner of speaking as the preferred one, mandate that it be taught to children in school and prevent anyone who speaks differently from appearing in mass media. In a liberal democracy?
- jackjeff 7y agoThis is what France does. The Académie Française is responsible for defining the proper spelling of words and update the intricate grammar rules. At some point the Éducation Nationale adopts the changes and requires that all children learn using the new rules. Eventually style guides of major newspapers and TVs are updated as well. This has worked mostly until the reform of the 1990s which is controversial. I think the Éducation has only recently started to enforce it (15 years later). Many publications still use or tolerate the old style. Microsoft office gives you two dictionaries to chose from. So basically this has worked until people started to actively go against it...
- maximente 7y agothis makes no sense when "the ruling body" is located in a country that's different than where a large body or even the majority of speakers are located. see spanish or french.