d[030218] x[Kiviaho Allan] z[KivA-32Hnd interlng] r[MulS-32G]
s[Re: Heresia in Interlingua. Standard Average European - English]
[log in to unmask]
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Mulaik Stan 030217: Allan, io pensa que tu debe leger le
attachamento basate super un articulo per Alexander Gode in le
International Language Review, le april - junio, 1962, nro. 27.
Illo es in formato pdf.
Stan
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Gratias, Stan! Io ha convertite le articulo a formato
ASCII usante OCR (Optimal Character Recorder).
Io presenta lo hic al INTERLNG. Alicunos pote esser
interessate.
Car sorores e fratres interlinguistas! Isto esserea
bon material pro trainar interlingua. Traduce iste
articulo a interlingua!
====================
Alicun commentarios:
====================
I often have occasion to listen to or read discussions of why
English cannot possibly function as an international language.
I find the experience frightening.
That's why (not):
Ai oofn häv okkeishn tu lisn tu oo riid diskässhns öv wai
Inglish kännot passibli fankshn äs än intönäshjönl längwidzh.
Ai faind thi ekspiöriens fraihtning.
Le anglese non pote functionar como un lingua
international proque
ILLO SEQUE NULLE STANDARDES DE RELATIONES
INTER SCRIPTURA E PRONUNCIATION
del "SAE/MES" (Standard Average European/Medie Europeo
Standarde).
A proposito, "SAE" era un abbreviation importante a me
quando io startava mi carriera professional al Oy
Strömberg Ab, un famose fabrica electrotechnic - in
1955. "SAE" significava "Society of Automotive
Engineers", lor standardes era importante quando nos
exportava machinas electric al Statos Unite.
Ecce le texto. Correctiones de errores typographic in
le texto anglese son benvenite.
Salutante
Allan Kiviaho
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
d[620400] x[Gode Alexander] z[GodA-62A]
s[STANDARD AVERAGE EUROPEAN - ENGLISH]
ILR (1962 April-June):No. 27
STANDARD AVERAGE EUROPEAN - ENGLISH
by Dr. Alexander Gode
I often have occasion to listen to or read discussions of why
English cannot possibly function as an international language.
I find the experience frightening.
Watching airplanes overhead in the blue summer sky while having
to listen to someone within earshot quietly explaining why
flight is impossible would be similarly eerie. No language ever
in the history of man has functioned as widely or as well as
English does in extranational discourse.
We do have fairly adequate ststistics on the number of native
speakers of the various major languages throughout the world,
but the figures are quite irrelevant to a discussion of
international communication. What we ought to have, but cannot
get for fairly obvious reasons, is similarly adequate (even
though approximate) figures on how many non-natives have
studied English or Spanish or Russian or French or German or
Esperanto or Interlingua -- as a second, third, fourth, fifth
language -- to a point where the acquired knowledge is or could
be of practical use to them. While, as I say, no such figures
seem to be avsilable, s possible approacb to this statistical
problem might be to estimate the weight Of the paper used
aanually in language instruction manuale for non_natives. The
English books would outwsigh all the others put together I do
not know how many-fold.
When a protagonist of Esperanto or Interlingua as international
languages challenges the qualifications of English for the role
of a medium of international coomunication, the situation is
not reminiscent of David challenging Goliath, for that little
fellow was not just arrogant, he had cunning and possibly even
wisdom to help him succeed.
The story of the frog bursting in the attempt to blow himself
up to the size of a bull offers a much better parallel. But
while the question as to why English is totally unqualified to
function as an international language strikes me as positively
mad, I must admit that the question as to what traits of
English enable it to function so gloriously as on
international language does not inpress me as much more
meaningful.
I imagine very few students of English, when asked to analyze
their motivation, would use linguistic or grammatical terms to
explain their interest in our language. Languages are vessels
and one studies them for what one can get out of them. This has
been true down through the ages and remains no less true today.
Indeed, a fascinating study could be made of the linguistic
aspects of the relationship between conquered peoples and their
conquerors through our history, for it is by no means true that
it has always been the superior power and force of the
conqueror that won out in the long run in the matter of
language.
Sometimes the conqueror wound up learning the language of the
conquered and sometimes things worked out the other way around.
But it seems that in all cases the process was governed by the
principle that a language gets learned if something can be
gotten out of it.
And thus I feel that the only truly meaningful question to ask
in reguard to the role of English as an international language
eoncerns the things that san be gotten out of it. Now, to be
sure, there are people who study English because they wish to
read Shakespeare or Yeats, but this explains the worldwide
power and appeal of English about as satisfactorily as the vast
significance of Latin can be illustrated by the anecdote that
Lenin studied it because he wanted to follow the exercises of
St. Ignatius of Loyola.
There are obviously a great many historical and political
factors involved in this question, but while it is dangerous to
overemphasize one of the expense of the others, the assertion
that English functions throughout the world as the messenger of
facts and ideas of scientific or technological importance would
seem to be vague and general enough to be accepted by all. This
assertion, vague or otherwise, is really extremely bold for,
aside from functioning as an international language Engliah is
and has always been a national language -- the native speech of
the people of a nation (or of several netions) -- while science
and technology are certainly not national products in any sense
of the term. This means that English functions as an
international messenger of values that are not the peculiar
product or property of the people or peoples whose national
language it is. This is unique.
It is customary nowadays to think of science and technology (as
we know these entities in the twentieth century) as universally
valid and in no sense culture-bound. However widely this view
may be held it nonetheless is untenable. The forms of thought
we call scientific do have the peculiar chsracteristic that
they can be practiced by peoples of diverse historico-cultural
antecedents without centuries of apprenticeship.
But while this ease of diffusion has not been characteristic of
the thought-forms peculiar to any earlier civilisation, the
fact that a Japanese or a native African is perfectly qualified
to become a great scientist cannot cast doubt on the
Greco-Roman-European descent of twentieth century scientific
endeavor. I hope I have formulated these ideas cautiously
enough to be safe from being misunderstood as wishing to claim
science and technology as the property of one particular
segment of mankind. I merely assert that the simultaneously
mystical and factual truth of the old formula, "Ex oriente
lux", has a counterpart in the no less fundamental truth, "Ex
occidente scientia."
Here my argument reaches its climax and in a sense its conclusion. I
have pointed out that English as an international language is not the
vector of values of a restrictedly national culture. It represents and
opens up not just England or America but the occident as a culturally
homogeneous entity. I do not suppose I need be artificially modest and
call the foregoing a thesis or theory. It is an historical fact, which
assumes tremendous importance for those amongst us who are convinced
with Benjamin Lee Whorf, and all his predecessors back to Wilhelm von
Humboldt and beyond, that thought and language are functionally
interdependent and culturally specific.
Linguistically speaking, the occident seems to be hopelessly
fragmented but the emphasis here restst on the word "seems",
for while the German who studies French or the Spaniard who
studies German may run into various kinds of minor
difficulties, if he approaches his task through a method ever
so slightly more ambitional than that of robot-like
memorization, he is bound to reach a point where he realizes
that his native and his second language are actually no more
than variants of a common norm. The aforementioned Benjamin Lee
Whorf has designated this common norm as Standard Average
European (SAE). It might be called, more ambiguously, but
historically more pregnantly, modern Latin. Whatever it is
called, it is my thesis that English operates internationally
as the representative of it.
* * *
There is among the various constructed-auxiliary language
projects only one consciously conceived as a codification of
the common norm which is embedded in the multiple linguistic
variants of the Greco-Latin European tradition. This is
Interlingua. By virtue of the many centuries of its historical
growth English has come to be, as a tool of worldwide
communication, a symbol and a summary of the West. Next to it
stands Interlingua claiming boldly no more and no less than
that it is a streamlined embodiment of all that English stands
for.
At first blush there is something ludicrous this juxtapoaition
of English and Interlingua, particularly in view of the implied
stipulation of their twinship. However, there should be no
thought at this juncture of either David and Goliath or of the
frog and the bull. Surely, there are many occasions where a
particular objective is to be achieved that makes the help of
Interlingua extremely useful and commensurately welcons. There
is a very simple reason for this.
If English as a medium of international communication functions
in a sense as a mouthpiece of the Occident, it may be at
present the most powerful but it certainly is neither now nor
historically the only language so qualified. I do not wish to
evaluate comparatively the usefulness of French or Spanish and
the several variants of Standard Average European as
instruments of international communication. I just wish to
observe that all those languages do have such potentialities
and put them to use on a larger or smaller scale. If now, in
this discussion I had been concerned with French and its
functions as an international language rather than with
English, I would likwise have wound up with the assertion that
there are occasions when French could make excellent use of an
unobtrusive ever-ready helpmeet like Intorlingua, I have used
the term "twinship" to characterize the relationship of
Intsrlingua to English. The same term will serve excellently
to designate the relationship of Interlingua and French,
Interlingua and Spanish, Interlingua and German, and, of
course, Interlingua and Latin.
The languages of the Wlestern world cannot and must not abandon
their independent individualities. Interlingua, equally related
to them all, symbolizes their identity and hence can link them
as a bridge and also, on occasion, can help each one in its
work abroad.
(Dr. Alexander Gode, 80 East 11th St, New York 3, N.Y., U.S.A.)
* * * * *
Dr. Gode was born in Bremen, Germany, and did graduate work at
Vienna, the Sorbonne, and Columbia. He came to the United
States in 1927 and in 1939 was granted a Ph. D. degree in
Germanics by Columbia University. He has taught modern
languages at Columbia and Chicago and has been active in
interlinguistics since 1934. He was editor of reference beoks,
1943-46, and in 1946 founded Storm Publishers. Dr. Gode was
Director of Research, International Auxiliary Language
Association, and is now chief, Interlingua Division of Science
Service.
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