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The way I understand it, linguistic standardization is a modern and artificial process. Even such seemingly scientific and well determined concepts such as lang

The way I understand it, linguistic standardization is a modern and artificial process. Even such seemingly scientific and well determined concepts such as language or dialect are in fact arbitrary distinctions imposed on a continuous phenomenon. In this light, you could say that there's essentially no such thing as the 'right' accent. Whatever is considered standard is simply a reflection of the power structures that currently dominate a society, e.g. if the South had won the Civil War, it's entirely possible that today people would have been making fun of Yankees and their 'hick' accents. These observations are in line with the spirit of the article. I however disagree with its sort-of conclusion: > [...] the future belongs to the privately-educated head of HR lecturing you about the latest initiative in Diversity and Inclusion. "Accentism" can be overcome by first overcoming class and power differences - not easy, but not impossible either.

pharke 6y ago
I think that may be verifiably false. If I speak French with a heavy English accent (as in pronounce the words as I would in English, not with what is commonly thought of as an "accent from England") any native French speaker will have a hard time understanding me and likewise non-native French speakers who have learned to understand words as they are pronounced in French. What you are proposing would amount to the creation of a new creole but that in itself is a systematized blending of more than one language by a large group of people. You really can't get away from standards when it comes to communication. So much depends on the ability to reliably reproduce sounds that can be easily interpreted by others to mean the same things that you intended when speaking.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  > You really can't get away from standards when it comes to communication. I disagree, at least in principle. It's important to separate the natural phenomenon of language, which has been going on for perhaps 100000 years or so, from the general understanding of the term. In the general sense language indeed has to be standardized, because that's what is needed to have a functional nation-state that has (ideally) high internal homogeneity. Nation states are however a modern and artificial construct. If you go back a few thousand years (or even a few hundred in some places) you will see much more of a continuous distribution of languages [1]. Even today you can see traces of this in, for example, the Western Romance languages [2]. Again, in the natural sense of the word, there isn't even a clear separation between languages. It's all a continuum of different ways of speaking that flow into each-other. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:Romance_languages.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:...
  - pharke 6y ago
    If you read the first link you gave you'll find several instances explaining that while dialects from nearby locales are understandable, ones from further away eventually become unintelligible. Nation states emerged after the improvement of transport first with rebuilding of road systems and then with further developments in technology that made it possible for more people to travel further. The development of so many dialects was a direct result of people not travelling anymore causing those populations to become isolated and diverge linguistically. The re-emergency of reliable travel necessitates standardization of language since you can't be expected to learn every dialect within an area governed by a single body. Using Romance languages goes completely against your point since they are all offshoots of the OG standardized language.
gwd 6y ago
> ...Yankees and their 'hick' accents. Heh -- a fun little thing about moving to England is that loads of people use the work "reckon" here in everyday conversation; whereas in the US that would stereotypically be part of a "hick" accent. > The way I understand it, linguistic standardization is a modern and artificial process. It may be partially artificial, but I don't see how it could be considered "modern". I'm no linguistics or history expert, but it seems to me there has always been two things in tension: forces which push for unification, and forces which push for diversification. For unification: On the one hand, there's obviously an advantage to having a common language everyone speaks. 2000 years ago in the Mediterranean it was Greek; 1000 years ago in Europe it was Latin, 800 years ago in the ME / North Africa it was Arabic, etc. Also, there are advantages to having larger groups of people working together; one way of getting people to work together is to have a shared identity; one way to have a shared identity is to have a shared language. And so one way to grow your power is to unify larger areas (either via annexation or conquest) and then get the areas to have a similar language (either by education / persuasion or suppression). And the most natural way for the powers that be to "unify" a language is to declare the one spoken in the capital city as the official standard. For the diversification side: It's very natural for language to evolve; and the larger number of people speak a language, the more difficult it is for everything to evolve in the same direction. This means that local areas or local groups are naturally going to "drift". And once they do drift, then identity comes into play in the opposite ways. It's beneficial for leaders of a large area if everyone has the same identity; but there's an opposite attraction for individuals to identify as part of a smaller, distinct group; and thus to emphasize or even push for the diversification of the local dialect. > In this light, you could say that there's essentially no such thing as the 'right' accent. One thing I have noticed is that "prestige dialects", as they're sometimes called, have had people go through the language and "revise" it to make it more "rational". After studying Mandarin for several years, I started studying Cantonese; and it's pretty clear that Mandarin has had a lot more effort from people put into it to revise it and make it consistent, whereas Cantonese is much more spoken, and thus a lot more "quirky" in lots of ways. The "no double negative" rule in English is an example of this sort of thing. Many languages have "agreement", where the whole sentence is either negative or positive; "Je n'ai jamais" in French could literally be translated "I not have never"; but in French it's not a double negative, it's just "agreement". English used to be exactly the same way (you can read educated people speaking unabashedly with double negatives in, say, the court of Henry VIII); but at some point some clever people decided that it would be much more rational if two negatives made a positive. That became the "prestige dialect", and the "common" people who spoke English the way their ancestors had for hundreds of years were then looked down on for being uneducated and speaking English "incorrectly". So yes, you can't say Mandarin or the Chicago Manual of Style's version of English is "right"; but it's quite probable that they are more consistent than the alternatives (though perhaps less florid or interesting as a result).

pharke 6y ago

I think that may be verifiably false. If I speak French with a heavy English accent (as in pronounce the words as I would in English, not with what is commonly thought of as an "accent from England") any native French speaker will have a hard time understanding me and likewise non-native French speakers who have learned to understand words as they are pronounced in French. What you are proposing would amount to the creation of a new creole but that in itself is a systematized blending of more than one language by a large group of people. You really can't get away from standards when it comes to communication. So much depends on the ability to reliably reproduce sounds that can be easily interpreted by others to mean the same things that you intended when speaking.

leto_ii 6y ago
> You really can't get away from standards when it comes to communication. I disagree, at least in principle. It's important to separate the natural phenomenon of language, which has been going on for perhaps 100000 years or so, from the general understanding of the term. In the general sense language indeed has to be standardized, because that's what is needed to have a functional nation-state that has (ideally) high internal homogeneity. Nation states are however a modern and artificial construct. If you go back a few thousand years (or even a few hundred in some places) you will see much more of a continuous distribution of languages [1]. Even today you can see traces of this in, for example, the Western Romance languages [2]. Again, in the natural sense of the word, there isn't even a clear separation between languages. It's all a continuum of different ways of speaking that flow into each-other. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:Romance_languages.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#/media/File:...
- pharke 6y ago
  If you read the first link you gave you'll find several instances explaining that while dialects from nearby locales are understandable, ones from further away eventually become unintelligible. Nation states emerged after the improvement of transport first with rebuilding of road systems and then with further developments in technology that made it possible for more people to travel further. The development of so many dialects was a direct result of people not travelling anymore causing those populations to become isolated and diverge linguistically. The re-emergency of reliable travel necessitates standardization of language since you can't be expected to learn every dialect within an area governed by a single body. Using Romance languages goes completely against your point since they are all offshoots of the OG standardized language.

gwd 6y ago

> ...Yankees and their 'hick' accents. Heh -- a fun little thing about moving to England is that loads of people use the work "reckon" here in everyday conversation; whereas in the US that would stereotypically be part of a "hick" accent. > The way I understand it, linguistic standardization is a modern and artificial process. It may be partially artificial, but I don't see how it could be considered "modern". I'm no linguistics or history expert, but it seems to me there has always been two things in tension: forces which push for unification, and forces which push for diversification. For unification: On the one hand, there's obviously an advantage to having a common language everyone speaks. 2000 years ago in the Mediterranean it was Greek; 1000 years ago in Europe it was Latin, 800 years ago in the ME / North Africa it was Arabic, etc. Also, there are advantages to having larger groups of people working together; one way of getting people to work together is to have a shared identity; one way to have a shared identity is to have a shared language. And so one way to grow your power is to unify larger areas (either via annexation or conquest) and then get the areas to have a similar language (either by education / persuasion or suppression). And the most natural way for the powers that be to "unify" a language is to declare the one spoken in the capital city as the official standard. For the diversification side: It's very natural for language to evolve; and the larger number of people speak a language, the more difficult it is for everything to evolve in the same direction. This means that local areas or local groups are naturally going to "drift". And once they do drift, then identity comes into play in the opposite ways. It's beneficial for leaders of a large area if everyone has the same identity; but there's an opposite attraction for individuals to identify as part of a smaller, distinct group; and thus to emphasize or even push for the diversification of the local dialect. > In this light, you could say that there's essentially no such thing as the 'right' accent. One thing I have noticed is that "prestige dialects", as they're sometimes called, have had people go through the language and "revise" it to make it more "rational". After studying Mandarin for several years, I started studying Cantonese; and it's pretty clear that Mandarin has had a lot more effort from people put into it to revise it and make it consistent, whereas Cantonese is much more spoken, and thus a lot more "quirky" in lots of ways. The "no double negative" rule in English is an example of this sort of thing. Many languages have "agreement", where the whole sentence is either negative or positive; "Je n'ai jamais" in French could literally be translated "I not have never"; but in French it's not a double negative, it's just "agreement". English used to be exactly the same way (you can read educated people speaking unabashedly with double negatives in, say, the court of Henry VIII); but at some point some clever people decided that it would be much more rational if two negatives made a positive. That became the "prestige dialect", and the "common" people who spoke English the way their ancestors had for hundreds of years were then looked down on for being uneducated and speaking English "incorrectly". So yes, you can't say Mandarin or the Chicago Manual of Style's version of English is "right"; but it's quite probable that they are more consistent than the alternatives (though perhaps less florid or interesting as a result).