GoogleTranslate Service


A deep puritan psychosis

December 13th, 2007 by Graham Attwell

Pretty active debate on the Capetown Declaration on Open Educational Resources.going on through the Unesco OER list server.

And it has featured one or two good side lines.

This contribution from Francis Muguet is brilliant:

“Another example of the deficiency of the English language has been the suppression of the thou/you distinction as the result of a deep puritan psychosis that has been implemented in the language, and that English mono-speakers are carrying unknowingly until now.

It appears that if English wants to fulfill its role of a worldwide communication language, it must accept to be enriched with words in relations to concepts it is unable to render properly and concisely.

The fact that a native English speaker would have to make an intellectual effort to understand the word libre (although libre seems an understandable adjective corresponding to liberty… ) is not an obstacle, in fact this would be a good thing.

A statement in this Capetown declaration concerning Linguistic Diversity (and the right for everyone to be able to get a basic education in his/her mother tongue) would have been welcome.

3 Responses to “A deep puritan psychosis”

  1. Nick says:

    Reading this I thought about the diversity of categories of knowledge in Welsh. You wrote about it somewhere Graham, but I couldn’t find it quickly so I thought I’d write, because that made me think that it is more than just the right for everyone to be able to get a basic education in his/her mother tongue, it is also about the need to preserve diversity, the same kinds of arguments apply to language and to biology.
    So how about a post on the Welsh words for knowledge?

  2. Nick says:

    Notwithstanding my previous comment, I think one could take issue with Muguet’s characterisation of the suppression of the you /thou distinction. It is alive and well but carried by the modal verb and other constructions, instead of being limited to the pronoun choice. (You, not thou, you, might consider this Francis, as distinct, for example, from Why don’t you consider this, Francis…a different issue is the deliberate choice of more familiar constructions by most native users which may or not respond to a range of motivations)

    Most languages serve the purpose of codifying the world their speakers inhabit. They may however do it in different ways, that may escape the non-native speaker. To assert otherwise could be construed as arrogant, and destructive of the worldwide communication that Muguet would appear, perhaps tentatively, to an preciptivevalue. Most analyses of English as worldwide communication tool point to simplification(arguably impoverishment though the term is value-laden) rather than enrichment. Muguet’ usage might, in some circles, even be used to support this view.

    However the other side of the argument is that, despite perceptions, English arguably due to its reduced complexity of inflection and resultant flexibility, is by far the world language with the largest number of loan-words. It has been and continues to be enriched. And for the record it doesn’t “accept to be enriched” there is no Academy (or Cathedral) to “accept” the enrichment, it just happens. The tradition is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and the language evolves with the user community (the Bazaar). Sounds quite similar to Open Source :)

  3. Nick says:

    Notwithstanding my previous comment, I think one could take issue with Muguet’s characterisation of the suppression of the you /thou distinction. It is alive and well but carried by the modal verb and other constructions, instead of being limited to the pronoun choice. (You, not thou, you, might consider this Francis, as distinct, for example, from Why don’t you consider this, Francis…a different issue is the deliberate choice of more familiar constructions by most native users which may or not respond to a range of motivations)

    Most languages serve the purpose of codifying the world their speakers inhabit. They may however do it in different ways, that may escape the non-native speaker. To assert otherwise could be construed as arrogant, and destructive of the worldwide communication that Muguet would appear, perhaps tentatively, to value. Most analyses of English as worldwide communication tool point to simplification(arguably impoverishment though the term is value-laden) rather than enrichment. Muguet’ usage might, in some circles, even be used to support this view.

    However the other side of the argument is that, despite perceptions, English, arguably due to its reduced complexity of inflection and resultant flexibility, is by far the world language with the largest number of loan-words. It has been and continues to be enriched. And for the record it doesn’t “accept to be enriched” there is no Academy (or Cathedral) to “accept” the enrichment; it just happens. The tradition is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and the language evolves with the user community (the Bazaar). Sounds quite similar to Open Source :)

Leave a Reply

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree Plugin

  • Search Pontydysgu.org

    News Bites

    From a Jisc press release:

    Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal for teaching, research and general interest.

    EUscreen – the result of a collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.

    The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.

    John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”

    The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.

    By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.

    Explore the EUscreen footage


    Open online seminar

    Jisc are hosting an open, online seminar on ‘Making Assessment Count (MAC)’ on Friday 3rd Feb – 1-2pm. The presenters are Professor Peter Chatterton (Daedalus e-World Ltd) and Professor Gunter Saunders (University of Westminster).

    The mailing for the seminar says” “The objective of Making Assessment Count is primarily to help students engage more closely with the assessment process, either at the stage where they are addressing an assignment or at the stage when they receive feedback on a completed assignment. In addition an underlying theme of MAC is to use technology to help connect student reflections on their assessment with their tutors. To facilitate the reflection aspect of MAC a web based tool called e-Reflect is often used. This tool enables the authoring of self-review questionnaires by tutors for students. On completion of an e-Reflect questionnaire a report is generated for the student containing responses that are linked to the options the student selected on the questionnaire.”

    You can find out more ans sign up for the seminar at  http://jiscmac.eventbrite.co.uk/


    EC-TEL 2012

    The EC-TEL 2012: Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills takes place on 18-21 September 2012 at Saarbrücken in Germany.

    The focus for the conference includes:

    - How can schools prepare young people for the technology-rich workplace of the future?
    - How can we use technology to promote informal and independent learning outside traditional educational settings?
    - How can we use next generation social and mobile technologies to promote informal and responsive learning?

    The deadline for proposals is April 2.


    Visitors and Residents

    David White (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) have been attracting quite a stir with their JISC-funded work on Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?, being undertaken as part of the Developing Digital Literacies programme webinar series.

    Slides, audio and a recording of the Blackboard Collaborate session where they presented some of the findings of their work can be found at http://bit.ly/jiscdiglitvr.


    ECER 2010

    The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:

    On the ECER 2010 website.

    Taccle handbook for teachers order form

    Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.

    Twitter

    Follow Graham Attwell on Twitter Follow Cristina Costa on Twitter Follow Dirk Stieglitz on Twitter

    Other Pontydysgu Spaces

    • Pontydysgu on the Web

      blip.tv
      Watch the Pontydysgu Videos
      pbwiki
      Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
      Sounds of the Bazaar Radio LIVE
      Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.

      Our next programmes will be live from the German Moodlemoot in Emsden. Full details coming soon

  • Sounds of the Bazaar AudioBoo

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Meta

  • Upcoming Events

      There are no events.
  • Categories