John Fairbairn wrote:I think the point of the (journalistically very badly written) story has been missed, as has also its direct relevance to go.
I'm certain Mr Takahashi realises that a huge proportion of his native language is borrowed from Chinese. This is taught at school. He is not jibbing at borrowing per se, or worrying like Gaelic speakers that his native language is under threat of extinction, or agitating like Scots speakers for his native language to get a fair share of the limelight. He is simply objecting to NHK's response to a very strong trend that is making it hard for him and his ilk (the vast majority) to understand basic things like the news.
Is it? I certainly don't know a lot about the japanese news or the language, but from the article it seems to me that they use english words that are used in the (spoken)language a lot anyways, so it should be easy for most people to recognize them.
This trend (long standing) is for Japanese people to throw in, at a vey high rate, English words that are unnecessary in that a perfectly good native equivalent exists, and sometimes these English words are even mispronounced and misunderstood. More to the point, they are not in the dictionaries which ordinary Japanese people own and consult in much, much higher proportions than western people seem to. The special relevance of NHK is that, like the BBC and likewise a public, national body, it has a specific role as a guardian/arbiter of the national language. E.g. it keeps and publishes a dictionary of the acceptable accents/stresses for contentious words (as, for us, controvErsy or contrOversy). Mr Takahashi is saying that NHK is falling down on its obligations. He may be wrong but his stance is far from ridiculous.
Is that guardian role specified or is it something that people just imply? If a foreign term becomes common in a language, to the point where most people recognize it, it would make sense to me to just incorporate it as part of the language, regardless of its origins.
As to the trend and its baleful influences, it seems to have various underlying causes. It is not limited to young people aping Amerian pop culture or trying to appear 'cool', although no doubt that's a big part of it. It happens in technical works and legal works, too. It is normal, for example, to see 'porimaa' and 'juugoutai' used in the same document for 'polymer'. A patent has the status of a legal document, where you'd expect language to be important, yet I saw one this week where 'otosaamaru' popped up out of the blue, undefined. I'm not sure what Mr Takahashi would make of that word (authothermal) unless he was a chemical engineer. He might, however, understand a word that has become ensconced from English, but would you understand it as an English person (gooruin - even telling you it's from goal-in probably won't help, yet you will see this wod quite often in go texts).
That might be a problem, but thats probably because the people who write those documents fail to use the proper legal language. Legal documents are often worded in a way that no normal person would speak, for the sake of clarity. If some words on a newsshow affect that I would certainly look into the people that are responsible for those kind of documents.
The relevance to go is that too many westerners indulge in the same egregious habit when they pepper their talk with kifu, goban, moku and the like just to appear 'cool' or because they ar too lazy to settle on an English equivalent.
I don't think thats a problem, but thats just personal preference. I recognize go as a game from asia, so I don't mind using the words that are used over there, I think it has a nice ring to it. But again, everyone is entiteled to their own opinion.
I would argue from my German experience taking roots (for new things, concepts etc.) from another language is a much smaller problem than messing up the grammar by not integrating the new roots. The problem here are less the kids, but more the educated and half-educated who insist on Greek and Latin plurals while rejecting "ugly anglicisms" etc. The purists are partly responsible for the problem they try to solve, the language would cope much better with new roots without them. With less rigidity in language, many new roots would be unnecessary or could easily substituted - but the purists usually disapprove of "ugly innovations" just as much.
true dat
Yet, ironically, the notion that cultural heritage should not be preserved at all is uniquely German.
I'm not against preserving cultural heritage or anything, but language shouldn't fall into that. It is to be used and therefore has to change to fit the situation. Our language is different from what it was in the middle ages because the change was needed to fit its purpose. Given that constant change it seems strange to me to try to justify keeping it a certain way, when it was not in that way before and will most likely not be that way a little later down the line.
