Cultivating your English #12+1: güisqui, guateques and the magic of language
❤️"The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself."❤️ Noam Chomsky
Thanks to Angel, one of the readers, who sent me this interesting article which I highly recommend. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/28/english-perfect-language-arabic Here is a cracking little excerpt:
“The purpose of language is to facilitate communication. The magic of language is its capacity to spontaneously evolve to facilitate that communication, incorporating and accommodating the influences, and thus the needs, of those who use it.”
This makes me think of the REA and the IEC and the way they “protect” Castilian and Catalan. The English language doesn’t have an equivalent “governing body” as it were. Here is a list of language regulators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators
(Can anyone guess which film the image is taken from?)
It’s true that English has different important “players” when regulating what is “correct” and what is not- the Oxford English dictionary for example. But ultimately English is a self regulated, crowd sourced, open sourced, wikipedia style language. I think that’s actually kind of cool! 😎
The consequences of this are actually quite significant I believe. For example:
👉It makes English far more “welcoming” of new words from other languages and cultures. Check out Miranda Crowhurst’s funny little 3 min video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/miranda-crowhurst_englishlanguage-englishteacher-english-activity-6800508616500625408-ty6P
👉Generally speaking English tends be a little more respectful to the origin of a word. Compare “siesta” in English to the word “güisqui”- the RAE’s version of whisky. (maybe this decision was taken after a few whiskies!) 😂🥃 Or “pàrquing” which is obviously the correct word for “car park”/“parking lot” in Catalan. 🚗🚙
👉It also makes me think of pronoms febles and that kind of thing. Is the overprotection of Catalan and strict rules you must adhere to actually increasing its chances of survival into the future? Would it be better for more people to speak “bad” Catalan or for less people to speak “good” Catalan?
👉I have a theory that when the RAE finally “allowed” the word guateque in their dictionary nobody actually used the word anymore! Does anyone know?
👉Not only is English easy to learn but because it’s “open source” you can actually create your own words and expressions. All you need to do is to get enough people to use your creation for it to become a “real” word/expression. That is easier said than done of course! 😅
👉I think that it’s one of the reasons why English has become “the” international language. Ironic that one of the only “unprotected” languages is the most widely used!
👉What are your thoughts on all of this? Press reply and let me know!
See you in #14, thanks for reading folks! 🙏😻