Grammar and Grimmer

It is perhaps a monument to the evolution of language that a worker at a fastfood restaurant (if it could be considered food or a restaurant) managed to confuse me in asking what I wanted for Breakfast in such a way that it sounded like "rifle". Given the lack of any "ifle" sounds in "Breakfast", that is no mean feat.

I would instead say that it is not a case of favorable evolution of the English language given that the general purpose is to be able to communicate. Some evolution is needed to encapsulate new concepts and simplify the means of transmission. To some extent this can be handled and the new terms and pronunciations assimilated. There however reaches a point where the differences are too great for an ordinary mind and the ability to communicate perishes in a flurry of unknown words.

Over time, languages separate an become new ones. Some look upon this process and see nothing amiss when dialects and variants appear. Admittedly, there is some ability to handle them and languages survive and are sometimes enriched by their dialects. Despite that, the argument that "if the point is understanding, the specifics of spelling and grammar (and to some extent pronunciation) do not matter" is worrying to all but the more complacent.

While languages can survive and others grow and appear, the process is rarely pleasant for those in that process. The suffering of the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the West was softened by educated men knowing Latin and Greek to communicate. In places where such skills were absent, the fall was harsher and the recovery took longer. The eventual growth of Latin into various Latinate languages such as French and Spanish began to divide the educated people from each other. The adoption of national languages instead of Latin did however ease to integration of most common people into civic life whose ignorance of Latin had little impact on their needs.

Languages evolve over time and interaction to the point where one language can split either according to social ties or linguistic ones. These are not always the same as the joys of modern Bosnia show. Serbo-Croatian is/was considered one language with two scripts. Despite some differences between the two, they would have been considered the same had it not been for the recent hostility between the two communities since WWII. Bosniak is now a language supposedly distinct from Croat (they are both written in Latin characters) and are written slightly differently for the sake of differentiation.

The question is if those differences are due to any major differences between the way Muslims (now categorized as Bosniaks) speak or due to dialects that overlap the different groups. Official Bosniak dictionaries contain spelling primarily of one dialect found in parts of Bosnia but is only one of the major dialects in the Former Yugoslavia. One dialect is spoken mainly in what is now Serbia, another in Croatia and southern and eastern parts of Bosnia, and yet another dialect in parts of Bosnia and parts of Serbia. The overlap with the various ethno-religious groups is more scattered than a purely "ethnic" approach would give.

The result is that A Muslim who feels no need to express his identity might speak his dialect and consider it Serbian. Another would speak the same and consider it Bosnian. Yet a third Muslim would speak a different dialect and still consider that Bosnian. The term "language" is thus used where the actual differences are slight.

The more applicable problems ensuing from excessive variety in a language is the near incomprehensibility that one suffers approaching Transylvanian or Swiss German. They are technically considered German but the pronunciation is so distant from most German that in practice Swiss and Transylvanian German speakers have to switch to a more understandable dialect for the sake of a regular German even understanding them.

Slavic eventually was one language and one finds traces of it in the various Slavic languages where there are numerous similarities between Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Ukrainian and Serbo-Croatian (interestingly, Romanian also has many slavic import words and possibly grammar although this is strenuously denied by many). A similar process is taking place in Arabic so that an Arabic speaker from Morocco is essentially incomprehensible for an Iraqi unless a more common dialect is used such as Egyptian Arabic.

The use of Television has substantially eased comprehensibility between dialects either by homogenizing them or by broadcasting both enough that people learn both. One the other hand, the idea that understanding is achieved easily can lead to divergences that begin the process again.

In my view, one can choose a rigorous enforcement of received pronunciation, a rigorous enforcement of spelling, or a clear division between terms. One can still operate with two but not on one. Each then may be considered non-essential and so some conclude that enforcing them is irrelevant given that the common language is usable with just to. The problem is that people cannot decide which two. Many people do not bother with maintaining a common pronunciation having judged already too divergent to enforce or "racist" and oppressive of other cultures using the same language. One cannot then chastise a person for badly mispronouncing "breakfast".

As for spelling, people grow weary of the enforcement of spelling and grammar seeing it as an impediment to quick communication. Misspellings are then seen in messages sent by University professors who see the task of communicating whatever his intent is being unhindered by a need to maintain consistency of spelling. The process simply encourages a division between a formal language and a common language (the lack of which has been one of the more distinctive aspects of English). Already many students have difficulty reading long passages of books using the common terms of a few decades ago and we of today find it requires specialization to read Middle English and Shakespeare's spelling are politely updated for the sake of legibility.

The overlap of terms becomes problematic at points. While this is not the most polite example, it is a very acute one. The term "Ethnic-Cleansing" is frequently used yet rarely defined. Is it, as some use it, mass murder of members of an ethnic group not of a scale to warrant the term genocide and with the intent to intimidate survivors? Is it mass expulsions with the threat of force is people stay? Is it the exclusion from the standard of a society such as the revoking of citizenship? The term has been used in describing the Croatian actions in the Krajina in which people incapable of fleeing were found later with their throats cut even when they were elderly incapable of posing a military or demographic threat to Croatia. Serb mass expulsions of Muslims with the occasional demolition of a house were also called ethnic-cleansing" even when few people actually died. The term has also been applied to the Croatian citizenship laws that revoked Croatian citizenship from non-Croats and thereby made life very difficult for anyone so living in Croatia.



When is the term clarifying? When GEN Rose and several journalists discussed the devastation in Gorazde, they used the term ethnic cleansing. The damaged houses were used by GEN Rose but he used the term with the understanding that it could mean mass murder or intimidation. An article in the Slavic review used the term to describe Croatian citizenship laws. Each use intends to present with clarity but placing each term next to the other does not clarify. Certainly GEN Rose in no way intended to say that the destroyed houses were the result of an administrative process and Mr. Hayden likely did not intend to say that Croatia was destroying Serb houses and killing them in Zagreb (which was taking place but not the consideration of the article). The term is thus too broad to be of use. Instead the terms "mass killings", "intimidation", and "administrative harassment" provide the information and specify what exactly is taking place.

Understanding requires any two of the three but ability to jettison any one inadvertently results in the abandonment of all even if all three are maintained perfectly. All three provide some degree of redundancy that allow some failures in all of the areas but which still allows people to understand each other. In that spirit, I wulod lkie to odrer smoe hsah bonrws peslae.

Understandable? Only if one believes that the mind only pays attention to the first and last letters of a word and one has the patience for anagrams in everyday life.