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Apparently you are an atheist but what does that have to do with the language topic we are discussing?
Language is an artifact, a human construct. It has a history, an origin. Language has been recorded for a fair amount of time in print, and so we have a corpus we can work with. Individual words can be tracked to likely beginnings, tracked through changes in meaning, stress, pronunciation, contact/loan from other languages, and so on.
So when you say that the past is dead and gone, I disagree. The evidence is all around us - in history, religion, language, culture in general. We work with the language inheritance of that past every day - we can hardly think without using language.
It is like the Star Wars Force - it surrounds us and permeates the World, the universe. The past speaks to us directly in the voice of languages long past, some not even spoken any more as live languages, some resuscitated by sheer force of will.
Language is an artifact, a human construct. It has a history, an origin. Language has been recorded for a fair amount of time in print, and so we have a corpus we can work with. Individual words can be tracked to likely beginnings, tracked through changes in meaning, stress, pronunciation, contact/loan from other languages, and so on.
So when you say that the past is dead and gone, I disagree. The evidence is all around us - in history, religion, language, culture in general. We work with the language inheritance of that past every day - we can hardly think without using language.
It is like the Star Wars Force - it surrounds us and permeates the World, the universe. The past speaks to us directly in the voice of languages long past, some not even spoken any more as live languages, some resuscitated by sheer force of will.
My response about the past was to a poster who basically said "well some immigrants in the past hung unto their native language rather than assimilating to English" (or something like that). The person was trying to justify doing that today based on the past. My response was mainly, those people are all dead now and we aren't them nor does it justify doing it today. Get it now?
My response about the past was to a poster who basically said "well some immigrants in the past hung unto their native language rather than assimilating to English" (or something like that). The person was trying to justify doing that today based on the past. My response was mainly, those people are all dead now and we aren't them nor does it justify doing it today. Get it now?
It's interesting that some of you speak of what is "rude" and you are offended by certain things in society (hearing a word of a foreign language being the one on display here), yet a few of you are the very same people that come down hard on others when they say they are offended by things, especially certain things that are very traditional to the founding of the country and the traditions of the country since then. Seems a bit hypocritical to me. Remember that calling on "tradition" can be a really sharp double edged sword.
My next comment is that it really doesn't matter if you or I are offended by something, does it? I may be totally offended by something you do in your life and consider it rude. And visa versa. But should that in itself mean anything at all to anyone besides me or you? For example, I'm very offended by things I see these days that I didn't see much in the past: I'm offended at seeing men's (and women's) butt cracks; I'm offended at seeing metal objects embedded in all parts of folks' bodies; I'm offended by green ink covering their skins; I'm offended by males walking around with no shirts--it's disgusting; I'm often offended by people's lousy English; I'm offended by the thumping stereos in the cars that go by; and I could go on and on and on...
But guess what? I don't want folks to be forced to stop doing any of those things (except for maybe the loud stereos) just because I don't like it. I should certainly have the right to say I don't like it, but that's about as far as it should typically go. I want them to do what they wish to do whether it offends me or not (unless, of course, they are doing something to me personally).
The reason I brought all that up is to point out that we think differently about these matters, and our thought process is totally foreign foreign to one another. We don't get each other. I simply cannot see why hearing another language would offend you. And I'm sure you can't see why seeing a tattoo would offend me. The big difference though is not so much the fact that we feel differently on the specifics, but that we have differing philosophies on what should be done about our "feelings." I feel nothing should be done about mine. You feel the world should change to accommodate yours.
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