dear kwabby and farooq--
there is a fine book by jean-loup amselle called Mestizo Logics, which touches on your exchange. if i were to fault your logic on one point here kwabby it is that at every point in going back to the original language, you ignore that that language was already always preceded by earlier forms on which that language itself was built. there is no original english, only an arbitrary historical moment at which you can stop the process and say, here, these people speaking this language, which came from all those other languages, we will call this one english. yesterday it was old english, before that anglo this or that plus celtic this or that etc
is that correct? and aren't all cultures essentially the same, always mestizo, always mixtures of preceding cultures?
that said, any "standard" version is only the standard for a designated historical period.
and a second small point: all languages and cultures would seem to have been built on predecessors that we can trace back to africa.
ken
On 4/27/11 11:16 PM, KwabbyG@aol.com wrote:Brother Farooq,
Thanks for the follow-up email which helps clarify the basic premise of your article. I quite well agree with you that no major culture (of which language is part) can claim to be pristine and unaffected by other cultural or language influences it has come into contact with.
However, if the above is your position, the original text in your article and your follow-up email appear to be at odds with each other. In the article, you wrote the following: "Many international borrowings into the English language now come by way of American English, precisely because America is the world's most racially and culturally diverse country" (emphasis mine).
In your email response you wrote: "My argument is that American English's relentless borrowing from several languages shows fidelity to the "bastard" heritage of the English language" (emphasis mine).
The devil is in the pre-positional details (that is, "from" versus "into"). I am sure you will agree with me that the phrases "many international borrowings into" and "borrowing from several languages" convey two different meanings in terms of a directional flow. Hence, the two questions I posed in my earlier email were not intended to be - and are not - mutually exclusive.
However, now that I do understand you better with your clarification, I think we are on the same page (with a minor exception that I will subsequently explain).
While I agree that no major language is entirely pure and, therefore, the idea that American English is a bastardized form of the British variant may not be accurate, that in itself does not de-legitimize British English as the more standard/pre-eminent/superior (take your pick). Resting on the theory of periodization, if we are to accept the fact that at some point the English (or British) were the predominant speakers of English, you can then begin to conceptualize this debate within the metaphor of an 'architect' and a 'renovator'. Even though the renovator may tinker with the structure, the credit for the original blueprint (standard) still goes to the architect of the building.
Let me bring it home to our own West African sub-region. Hausa is predominantly spoken by the Hausa people of Northern Nigeria. The Hausas, as I am told, take great pride in their language. Yet, there is no doubt this great language has been influenced (bastardized, if you may), among others, by Islam and Arabic. Banza is the Hausa word for bastard, I believe. In Ghana, Hausa has also become the lingua franca of sorts to people native to the Northern regions. Naturally, over time, Ghanaian Hausa speakers have 'enriched' the language borrowing liberally from their own realities and surroundings. Given the broader diversity of Hausa speakers in Ghana (versus the nearly homogeneous stock in Northern Nigeria), will it be accurate to say Ghanaian Hausa is now 'purer' than Nigerian Hausa? In other words, will it be accurate to say Nigerian Hausa is no longer the standard? There is something to be said about origin and ownership when it comes to determining language standards. I think this is the point Brother Ogugua is making - while I make no pretense to be his spokesman.
Finally, I thought I would clarify, referring to Brother Cornelius' response, that I am not Kwabena Akurang-Parry, a more distinguished contributor to this forum. I am Kwabby Gyasi. Further, I would like to explain that my preference for the word 'offspring' has more to do with underscoring genealogical relationships and beyond that does not have any cultural or moral implication.
Thanks to you, all, for indulging me.
Regards,
Kwabby Gyasi
--In a message dated 4/27/2011 1:02:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, farooqkperogi@gmail.com writes:Chief Kwabby,
Thanks for your thoughtful intervention. Actually, my central thesis in that essay is that there is no authentic, pristine English and that all English, to the extent that it's always been a mishmash of several languages, is "bastardized." But I also pointed out that many idiosyncratic phonological and syntactical features of American English are more proximate to the "proto-language" than contemporary British English if we hold up the most socially prestigious variant of early modern English as the reference point for "authenticity."
Your two questions are not mutually exclusive; they are, in fact, mutually reinforcing. This is what I mean: My argument is that American English's relentless borrowing from several languages shows fidelity to the "bastard" heritage of the English language. So my answer to your first question is "yes." You asked how American English's extensive borrowing from other languages is different from Old English's linguistic alchemy. Well, it's not different. That's why I noted in the article that, "the most important reason why American English is not a bastardization of the 'authentic' English, ironically, is that only the American variety of the English language is continuing with English's germinal 'bastard' heritage." In other words, lexical purism has always been alien to the English language and American English, in more ways than the more conservative contemporary "standard" British English, is spurning purism by borrowing extensively from other languages.
Yes, you're right that it should be "bastardized," not "bastardize." That's actually how it appeared on my blog--and in the newspaper where it was first published--but in copying and pasting the article to my email I missed the "d."
Farooq
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On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 9:23 PM, <KwabbyG@aol.com> wrote:
--Farooq,Great article, as usual! While you manage to put together, impressively, a number of examples to show that the British variant of the English Language is more "bastardized" than its American cousin (I prefer offspring), you do not seem, yourself, to be wholly convinced by the central theme of your argument.Towards the conclusion of your article, you wrote the following:In more ways than any other variety, it is pushing the semantic and lexical frontiers of the language and enriching it in the process. Many international borrowings into the English language now come by way of American English, precisely because America is the world's most racially and culturally diverse country (emphasis mine).Are you by the above not suggesting that since "America is the world's most racially and culturally diverse country" it is "pushing the semantic and lexical frontiers of the language and enriching it in the process" by allowing its variant of the English Language to be influenced by its more diverse racial composition?If yes, how is this development process different from earlier ones where British English, to further quote you, "sprang forth from the linguistic alchemy of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Celts"?If no, are you then suggesting that influence of American English when it has come into contact with other racial or national identities has been a one-way street? I doubt that very much since that is not what your other articles ("The African Origins of Common English Words" comes to mind) have suggested.On a minor note, your concluding statement read "All English is bastardize" (emphasis mine). Obviously a typographical error, you will agree with me that the verb should have been in the past tense (as in bastardized).Many thanks for your illuminating articles!KwabbyIn a message dated 4/22/2011 4:24:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, farooqkperogi@gmail.com writes:Is American English Bastardized (British) English?
By Farooq A. Kperogi
Like other Nigerians, I was educated in British English—and taught to disdain American English as inauthentic, debased form of (British) English. But is there any truth to this notion? The straightforward answer is no. As a matter of fact, in spite of appearances to the contrary, American English actually precedes contemporary British English. In other words, contemporary British English is worthier to be labeled "bastardized" English than American English is, as I will show shortly.
But, first, although Brits (and heirs of their linguistic tradition, like Nigerians) cherish the thought that they are the custodians of the "original" English tongue, the idea that there is such a thing as "original" English as opposed to "bastardized" English is itself ahistorical at best and ignorant at worst. English, as most people know, has always been a mélange of several languages. In other words, it has been a lingual "bastard" from its very nascence.
The English language came forth when a vast multitude of West Germanic warriors called Angles invaded what is today Britain in the 5th century. The Angles conquered and later commixed with an autochthonous population known as Celts. Much later, other Germanic people, notably the Saxons and the Jutes, joined the Angles to further overwhelm the Celts. One of the consequences of these invasions and resettlements was that a language (which linguistic historians now call Old English) was born. It sprang forth from the linguistic alchemy of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Celts. In this fusion, according to linguists, the Saxon dialect dominated and the indigenous Celtic language was marginalized. (The Celtic language, more popularly called Gaelic, has survived in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Irish Republic with dialectal variations).
Two centuries later, another horde of northern Germanic warriors invaded what had by then become known as the Land of the Angles (which was later shortened to England) and brought to bear their own dialect in the lexis and structure of the emergent language. In the 11th century, people from northern France, called the Normans, invaded England, overthrew its Anglo-Saxon ruling class, and imposed French (or what some people call Anglo-Norman French) as the official language for over 300 years. This historical fact radically altered the structure and vocabulary of English.
In the eighteenth century, the English (by now an ethnic and linguistic synthesis of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Celts, the French, etc) embarked on imperial conquests in Asia, Africa, and the Americas and found themselves borrowing words extensively into their language from the several languages they encountered.
Numerous other influences were brought to bear on the language. For instance, many of the vocabularies we use in astronomy (nadir, summit, acme, etc), mathematics (algebra, etc), and other sciences are derived from Arabic. The modern vocabulary of scholarship and learning is almost entirely Latinate. And several common words we use in modern conversational English are borrowed from other languages.
According to one study, 29 percent of the vocabulary of modern English is derived from Latin. Another 29 percent is derived from French. Germanic languages (that is, the "original" tongue) account for only 26 percent. And 16 percent of English vocabulary is derived from a hotchpotch of other languages, notably Greek, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish, Italian, the Scandinavian languages, Hebrew, Yiddish, etc. (For the contribution of African languages to the modern vocabulary of the English language, see my previous article titled, "The African Origins of Common English Words").
Now, a language that has borrowed this expansively from other languages (which has made the English language the most ecumenical language in the world) can't legitimately lay claim to linguistic purity, although there are several misguided movements for Anglo-Saxon linguistic purism in Britain now.
But let us, for the sake of argument, agree that there was indeed such a thing as the pure, pristine English language before its latter-day contamination by "horrible Americanisms" and by what George Orwell once called "exaggerated Latinisms." Let us periodize this "pure" English from the mid 1550s to the early 1600s when what is called "modern English," that is, the version of English we broadly speak today, emerged. This was the period during which the works of William Shakespeare, unarguably the greatest writer in the English language, appeared. It was also the time that the King James Bible, one of the most decisive influences in the current form and idiomatic universe of the English language, was published. This book's supreme significance to the development and standardization of the English language is evidenced in the fact that it has contributed up to 257 idioms to the English language. No other single source rivals that feat. Not even Shakespeare's prolific oeuvre.
Well, according to many linguistic historians, many of the distinctive features that differentiate American English from British English actually date back to early modern English. In their immensely influential book, American English: Dialects and Variation, Walt Wolfram and Natalie Shilling-Estes point out that, "Contrary to popular perceptions, the speech of the Jamestown colonists [i.e., the first English settlers in America in 1607] more closely resembled today's American English than today's standard British speech, since British English has undergone a number of innovations which did not spread to once remote America" (pg. 93).
For instance, during Shakespeare's time, the most socially prestigious English speech had a rhotic accent. That is, speakers pronounced the letter "r" wherever it appeared in a word—like Americans do now. But contemporary British Received Pronunciation is now non-rhotic. Is that a "bastardization" of the language?
Similarly, many words and usage patterns that are now regarded as peculiarly American have actually been preserved from early modern English. A few examples will suffice: the American usage of the word "mad" to mean angry is faithful to how it was used in Shakespearean times. In contemporary British English, however, the word now chiefly means insane, mentally unhinged. That's a British "bastardization."
And "fall," the American English word for the season when leaves fall from trees after the summer season, is more "authentic" than the British English "autumn." In southeastern England, the cultural pacesetter of England from where the Jamestown colonists hailed, "fall" was the preferred term.
Many idiosyncratic syntactic structures in American English that contemporary British English speakers deride are also derived from early modern, Shakespearean English. For instance, such American past participles as "gotten" (as in: I have gotten my share of his troubles; British English: got), "proven" (as in: He has proven to be right; British English: proved), etc are preserved from the "original." Similarly, in Shakespearean times "don't" used to be the contraction of "does not," NOT "do not." This practice stopped only in the early 20th century. This sense is preserved, interestingly, in African-American vernacular speech (now fashionably called Ebonics) and in informal southern U.S English generally. When I first heard Michael Jackson sing, "it don't matter if you're black or white" in high school, it grated on my grammatical nerves, but that's how people who spoke early modern English would have said it.
But the most important reason why American English is not a bastardization of the "authentic" English, ironically, is that only the American variety of the English language is continuing with English's germinal "bastard" heritage. In more ways than any other variety, it is pushing the semantic and lexical frontiers of the language and enriching it in the process. Many international borrowings into the English language now come by way of American English, precisely because America is the world's most racially and culturally diverse country.
Think about this: Can contemporary British speakers of the language—or any other speakers of the language for that matter— imagine speaking their language without these words: "OK," "movie," "radio," "teenager," "immigrant," etc? Well, those words are distinctively American and were once derided as "horrible Americanisms" by supercilious Britishers.
After all is said and done, linguistic nativism is a treacherous betrayal of the intrinsic hybridity of the English tongue. No variety of the language is authentic. All English is bastardize
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"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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