2002-08-30 16:42 (UTC+1)

In which the cure turns out to be the disease rebadged

How, then, do speakers of minority languages express their critique of the nationalist position that language and national identity are tightly interwoven?

By parody, of course - they start nationalist movements of their own, and talk up the necessity of having a national language of their own to go with it.

Here are some of the slogans that have been used:
(as always this is lifted from Breton's book).

Flemish:

De taal is gans het volk

[ The language is everybody ]

Welsh:

Cenedl hed iaith, ceneg heb galn

[ A nation without a language is a nation without a heart ]

Irish:

Gan tanga, gan tira

[ Without a language there's no country ]

How much do you want to bet that something very similar has been devised for Cornish? Really, somebody needs to do a Foucalt-style analysis of the way the construction of national identity by linguistic exclusion perpetuates itself.

A post-colonialist account of Norwegian language politics would make me laugh, anyway, and that's surely what the universe is here for, isn't it? (I'm lazy, I have a day-job, I don't speak Norwegian and I already have a PhD, so I'm clearly exempt from doing it myself.)

An article in a glossy French magazine that leans heavily on the contradictions between attitudes to linguistic diversity before and after they ended up on the wrong end of the hegemony would make me laugh even harder, of course.

Meanwhile, one last slogan, from the good people of Luxembourg:

Mir welle bleiwe wat wer sin

[ We want to stay as we are ]

I don't think it's to anyone's great credit (including mine) that this is the most endearing thing anyone (including me) has managed to say on the subject all week, although I have been trying to use my powers, such as they are, for good, such as I perceive it. Given what we know now, though, can anyone really be surprised that the Luxembourgish tongue is described as a "dialect"?

2002-08-30 13:14 (UTC+1)

Ancient Wisdom, Freshly Minted

Today is the birthday of the celebrated lady novelist Mary Shelley - authoress of Frankenstein and the wife of a friend of Lord Byron - on which day it has been traditional, since some time later this evening, for English persons to gather convivially in ale-houses for celebratory imbibation while singing the traditional Mrs Shelley Shanty which I have made up in especial for the occasion:

And it's a pint for Frankenstein's monster,
And a pint for the Doctor himself,
And a pint for the great Mrs Shelley,
That we'll drink to her jolly good health!

[Trad., arr. Elgar]

Hip hip huzzah!

2002-08-30 09:53

In which the French are naughty in my sight.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
[ Matthew 7:3-5 ]

More stuff from Breton, this time on French. It would appear that the French emphasis on a single national language dates from the politics of the Revolution, where what was to become the standard language was associated with the rhetoric of liberty. Thus we find L'abb� Gregoire opining to the committee of public instruction:

Ainse dispara�tront insensiblement les jargons locaux, les patois de six millions de Francais qui ne parlent pas la langue nationale car, je ne puis trop le rep�ter, il est plus important qu'on ne pense en politique d'extirper cette diversit� d'idiomes grossiers qui prolongent l'enfance de la raison et la vieillesse des pr�jug�s.

(I'm not going to risk mistranslating this but I think the idea is clear - regional dialects are coarse and vulgar, and their use prolongs the infancy of reason and the old age of prejudice.)

Breton then claims that this line was followed into the 20th century, where we find A Meillet, billed as a progressive(!) (20th Century) French linguist, giving it up French-style on regional languages:

Elles ne concurrence pas r�ellement les grandes langues. Elles ne sont que les parentes pauvres qui n'ont pas r�ussi.

[ They're not really competing with the major languages. They're nothing but poor relations who haven't succeeded. ]

and Breton:

Par rapport au fran�ais le breton est un outil si grossier, si peu utile qu'aucun Breton sens� ne peut songer � l'employer de pr�f�rence. Autant dire que la lampe �lectrique opprime la chandelle [...]

By relation to French, Breton is so coarse and limited a tool that no sensible Breton would dream of using it for preference. One might as well say that the electric lightbulb oppresses the candle [...]

It is in the nature of things which are prone to the going of around that it is their habit also to partake in the coming of around, or so they say, and it is surely testimony to the flexibility and tough-minded pragmatism of the French that they have adapted with such grace and good humour to the subsequent eclipsing of their own language on the world stage by others, notably English.

Oh, no, sorry, that was the Danes.

2002-08-29 12:40 (UTC+1)

Earls Court Outranked.

Simon points out that the future Queen of Norway and probably Desbladet's favouritest princess has moved to London with her entourage.

There's nothing quite like having it explained that Sainsbury's is Englands motsvarighet till Ica to cushion the blow that one is not, in fact, likely to bump into her at the Harrod's herring counter after all.

They've got no class at all, these Scandiwegians.

[ Update: VG has the story too, and also a photo of Her Royal Selfness looking more-or-less as thrilled as you would expect at being doorstepped by paparazzi. ]

2002-08-29 10:00 (UTC+1)

In which I get around to Norwegian eventually, honest.

It appears that this week's book (ie, Breton's G�ographie des langues) has been translated into English with the title Geolinguistics. Based on my reading of a little over half the French version I would warmly recommend it to anyone.

And now, on with the show. Nationalism and national languages, discuss:

C'est l'essor des nationalismes au XIX^e si�cle, avec leur participation populaire, des mouvements unifacteurs et lib�rateurs des nationalit�s, avec leurs implications revolutionnaires, qui mirent au premier plan les th�mes de la langue, et de la communaut� de culture, de territoire et d'institutions. A partir de ce moment la plupart des Etats mirent l'accent sur les n�cessit�s d'une langue commune, g�n�ratrice de coh�sion, de solidarit�.

Since I don't have the English translation, I can only offer you mine. (Be gentle with it, please - my French O-level was more than half a lifetime ago (sigh) and translation is rather more demanding than simply claiming to understand.)

It was the 19th century surge in nationalisms, with their popular participation, the movements to unify and liberate nationalities, with their revolutionary implications, which brought into the foreground the themes of language and of a shared culture, territory and institutions. From then onwards most States emphasised the need for a common language to provide cohesion and solidarity.

Since any sense of self requires a sense of Other (blame me rather than Breton for the use of this terminology) it would be asking a lot of 19th century nationalisms to be willing to share their national languages. In other words, we've arrived safely back at the ancient and venerable linguists' joke (which is also not a joke) that a language is a dialect with an army and navy. Incidentally, the Routledge survey of The Germanic Languages (now out in paperback) calls the two flavours of Norwegian dialects and makes them share a chapter for pretty much just this reason.

So, Mr. Norway, we meet again.

As our obnoxious friend from yesterday pointed out, Norway was united with Denmark for an awfully long time. Since continental Scandinavia (even now) is really a dialect continuum and Danish had already standardised a written language it's not surprising that the Norwegian bureaucratic, financial and administrative elite ended up using that, too. In any case, since written languages are invariably more conservative and more widely (geographically) spread than the speech habits of any particular community, pretty much everyone who doesn't make a point of speaking like a book (like as how us pointy-headed intellectuals do) ends up practicing a sort of sort-of bilingualism Breton calls "diglossia", and the situation was therefore nothing to get too worked up about there.

Until Mr. Nationalism finally came to Norway, that is, and it became urgently ideologically necessary to manufacture an Ancient, Proud and Independent Language to emphasise just how un-Danish the place was, dammit, at which point a choice of strategies emerged. The bureaucratic, financial and administrative elite which was in the habit of speaking more-or-less like what they wrote (and calling it Danish) proposed that they would instead write more-or-less like what they spoke and call it Norwegian instead.

This flavour of Norwegian has, at various times and in various political contexts and with various linguistic nuances, been called (variously) Dano-Norwegian, Riksm�l and (these days usually) Bokm�l. I would claim that the study of the varied varieties of variedness alluded to here is pretty damned unedifying even by the standards of Norwegian politico-linguistic history, but my Varied Reader is welcome to think otherwise.

By contrast Ivar Aasen was a more orthodox devotee of the principles of 19th century nationalism and accordingly set out to base his rival proposal, Nynorsk, on the most conservative dialects he could lay his hands on, eliminating as much of the perniciously impure influence of low German (from the Hanseatic league) and high German (from the Enlightenment) and even Danish as he could and emphasising instead the language's North Germanic roots instead. If it was perhaps unkind of Halld�r Laxness to have said

New Norwegian (Nynorsk) is essentially the speech of Norwegian peasants as mutilated by a schoolteacher with a poor understanding of Icelandic.

it also wasn't completely false.

Since by Bord's account continental Scandinavian had been pretty much creolised by sundry flavours of Other Germanic by this time it is tempting to deduce the silliness of a "purified" Norwegian from first principles, especially since events in the twentieth century have done a great deal to make any sort of ideological drive for any sort of "purity" unpalatable to right-thinking people.

The reader who thinks we've all outgrown this kind of parochial nationalistic silliness (for suitable values of "we") is cordially invited to try speaking German to the locals in the Netherlands or Jutland (even with fairly "we"-ish values of "them"). I haven't tried this myself (for some reason I don't seem to speak any German) but I'm reliably informed it can be a bracingly educational experience.

2002-08-28 14:59 (UTC+1)

On language, national identity and obnoxious opinions

I've been looking for a reputable source on the relationship between national languages and 19th century nationalism for a while - it turns out that Roland Breton's excellent Geographie des Langues covers this and much more. So much more, in fact, that we're having a Special Desbladet Week on language and group identity. (It's just as well that this is a short week in the UK, since all this stuff is doing my faith in Human Nature no good at all.)

There are important things to say about all this stuff, of course, even probably some which are more subtle than "People suck (except when they don't)" but there is also the simple pleasure of mocking the stupid and obnoxious opinions of people who are long since safely dead.

Look - here's one now:

The term "Dano-Norwegian" has been used throughout the present work to avoid the constant repetition of the words Danish and Norwegian, both being, in point of fact, one and the same language.

Of late years a desire has been shown by certain patriotic Norwegians to secure for their native land a special mother-tongue, distinct from that which has for ages been common to the natives of Denmark and Norway. But the attempt to revive the language spoken by Norwegians before the union of their country with Denmark, at the close of the fourteenth century, would seem to be as impractical and undesirable in our times, as if Englishmen were to insist upon incorporating in their written language the various elements of Old English, which still survive in the local dialects of Cumberland, Dorset and Somerset.

Since the Reformation, Norwegians and Danes have had the same Bible and Psalter, and have studied from the same school-books, while the same national ballads, songs and proverbs have been common to both. The illiterate classes of Norway have, indeed, used Old Northern words, and spoken with a special provincial accent, but the peasants of Jutland, Fyen and Sealand have done the same. The educated classes, on the other hand, have long spoken and written the same form of Danish, whether they were natives of Norway or of Denmark.
[E.C. Ott� How to learn Danish (Dano-Norwegian) (2nd edition, 1884)]

This is wildly outdated, of course - no modern writer would use nearly so many commas.

I've no idea at all how widespread such silliness ever was, but the reader who did not already know that Norway now has two standard written languages - bokm�l (which is not Danish) and nynorsk (which is very not Danish indeed) would be wise to make a note of the fact.

2002-08-28 11:52 (UTC+1)

A clarification

At Desbladet we continue to believe that the world would be a nicer place if people were nicer to each other.

Just so that you know.

2002-08-28 11:34 (UTC+1)

In which my opinions are much sought after, actually

Last night the Gallup opinion poll people phoned me up. They used to do that a lot, usually waking me up on Saturday afternoons, but I'm usually out of the house then, now, and they haven't done evenings before.

They talk very, very fast. Much too fast to listen to what you say, although I'm sure they manage to record it just fine. On previous occasions I've told them I don't have a TV and then dealt with several subsequent questions about what I watch on it. In fact, this was easier to deal with than the questions about which car I would, in my heart of hearts, most like to own - in those days I actually had a car and my fondest wish was that this should not be the case, for which desire they had no box to tick. In the end I just let them pick for me.

This time, though, they only wanted three minutes of my time to ask about the Middle East (because obviously Tony wouldn't dare start a war without my say-so) which I've spent a considerable amount of time and effort not having an opinion about. I remain, in fact, firmly committed to taking as much of an interest in the situation as I would expect Mssrs. Sharon and Arafat to take in my opinions.

With the benefit of hindsight, though, I suspect that the question of whether I sympathised more with the Israeli or Palestinian cause was actually intended as an either-or rather than a yes-or-no question.

2002-08-28 10:49 (UTC+1)

What's Cornish for "Shibboleth"?

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
[Judges 12:6]

The Cornish language, with no native speakers, is making a comeback. You might think that that's a bit silly, but more sophisticated positions are also possible.

Here's Roland Breton from La g�ographie des langues:

A c�t� de la r�novation, certaines langues peuvent encourir une v�ritable r�surrection par la volont� du groupe ethnique. Ainsi l'hebreu langue �morte� depuis plus de deux mill�naires est-il devenu d'abord langue vivante seconde des colons sionnistes, puis langue maternelles (premi�re) d'un nombre croissant n�s en Isra�l.

[...] Et la tentative - priv�e - de faire revivre en Cornouailles le cornique, disparu depuis plus d'un si�cle, est un autre caslimite, que l'exemple d'Isr�el am�ne � considerer avec int�r�t.

One difficulty with standardising a dead language is how to decide what the word for, say, "telephone" should be. Normally one would favour current usage, but since there isn't any various competing factions have decided to bicker endlessly about it: Richard "The Cornish People's Liberation Front" Gendall dismisses rival dialects as "makey uppy" and "pseudo Celtic"; while Paul "What have the English ever done for us" Dunbar froths:

Students don't want to be breaking into English several times in a sentence when talking about something technical. It's irritating to have to use the language that bloody murdered Cornish.

Sadly the BBC article doesn't find space for Heinrich "Fernsprecher!" Trescothick and his plans to recover the ancient homelands of the Celtic people - which once stretched across much of Europe - starting with the Sudetenland, possibly because I just made that bit up.

Seriously, though, it's much too soon to be thinking of annexing Czechoslovakia, but there's surely no reason why, in the fullness of time, Cornwall couldn't become as vibrantly multi-cultural as, say, the Basque territories in Spain.