From: chandra@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil,soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: I HATE TAMILS (2) (Respect other's)
Date: 19 Aug 92 14:59:24 GMT
Article-I.D.: cis.1992Aug19.145924.17303
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science

In article <19AUG199209392130@utkvx4.utk.edu> raj@utkvx4.utk.edu (S. KANAKA RAJ) writes:
>but not Indhi which is first of all not a
>pure language. It is a masaala language.
>

The notion of "pure" versus "masala" languages is a strange one.
First of al, there is no such thing as a pure language.  Linguists are
still undecided about how languages begin and evolve, but unless each
"race" of humanity evolved completely independently, human languages,
even in ancient times, had inter-connections.  In fact one school in
Linguistics proposes that there was one proto-language from which al
human languages evolved.  If you go back far enough, Tamil itself most
likely was a result of evolutionary changes and mixings of different
tribal languages.

Secondly, the fact that a language was a recent result of mixtures
from other languages is really nothing negative.  The language in
which this conversation is being conducted, English, is a mixture of
old Germanic languages, Latin, French, and enormous number of loan
words from many many languages which give the language its vitality.
English didn't even exist as a language in this form until about a
thousand years ago!  But today it is the language that is most learned
as a second language around the world.

In fact, the notion of purity of a language held by its speakers is a
bit of a suicidal (culturally speaking) notion.  The French of a
generation ago held to this notion of purity and had tried to ban the
import of English words into the language and in fact discouraged the
learning of English by its citizens.  Languages are living organic
entities and the French people went their own ways with respect to
using and changing the language as they saw fit.  Young French people
of the current generation are in fact quite interested in English,
since they see it as their window to the world in which the French are
no longer a major power.

Why can't one develop new words in the local language to retain both
the "purity" of the language and the usefulness of words in the
foreign language?  Well, upto a point it can be done, but often it is
a losing battle.  Again look at the dynamism of English.  They adopt
root words from various languages but "englicize" their phonetics.
When do you think the Tamils will ever learn nuclear physics in
Tamil? If someone goes to the trouble of translating "electron,"
"positron," quark," etc, into Tamil, and our Tamil nuclear physicist learns
the science, he or she will have to learn all the English vocabulary
all over again anyway in order to communicate with other nuclear
physicists and learn from the growing new part of the field.  We end up
in a situation where the language languishes, since everyone who wants
to get ahead ends up dealing with all the new ideas (in science,
sociology, economics, etc) in the foreign language anyway. This simply
enlarges the gap between the educated who actually participate in the
new fields of enquiry and make a contribution to it and the rest of
the language speakers who don't get to learn anything about the new
ideas since Tamil purists insist on purity and no words have yet been
found for these new concepts.  BTW, Japanese use loan words
plentifully as well, and even advanced science is being done and
written about in Japanese.

This tirade is realy against the notion of purity that is actually
adverse to the growth of a language and the cultural growth of a
people.  These purists are actually harming the Tamil people mostly
because the Tamil people end up being isolated from the new currents
of thought in the world.  Not only that, the purists sneer at Hindi as
an "impure" language.  The strange idea that somehow languages came a
long time ago as fully formed gifts from the gods and they have to be
kept pure is based on a model of language that is unbiological and
unorganic.

Regarding Hindi and Tamils, I think it was stupid to try to force it
on them, but it is equally stupid to refuse to learn what is obviously
a useful language for commerce and communication.  And this talk of
linguistic purity is just going to be a nice grave in which Tamils can
lie with a beatific smile coming from the satisfaction that they dug
it themselves.  
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil