Is there a right way to speak/write your language?
I've had another glance at Quenya, Tolkien's made-up elf language, in the last few days. One of the more amusing elements is figuring out the proper forms as they changed from time to time according to Tolkien's whim, here, and his reasoning about linguistic change, there. Then there is the question of transliteration - some like k, some like c and Tolkien used both, sometimes apparently on the same page. I read all this and cannot help but muse on how shocking it is that a language might not have a perfectly regularized grammar and orthography, or that the orthography might not lend itself to obvious English transliteration...
I jest, of course. I have Uzbek resources in Cyrillic script, Uzbek resources in transliterations from the Cyrillic, Uzbek resources in transcriptions of the authors' own devising (no less than two) and a few resources, astoundingly enough, in the new more or less accepted Latin orthography. I've remarked more than once that if I'm curious about how to notate a word, all I need do is pick up three books, note the three different ways of writing it suggested and go back to square one.
Breton finds itself in another place: There are orthographies from the old days, as well as spelling schemes to accommodate all the different dialects or three of the four... But it's not a state language, which means not merely that there's no governing body like the Académie française to govern its usage (without which English does just fine) but there's also no mandate to use it in that many official communications. It's used by its speakers as they choose to use it. So, as long as there are at least ten Breton speakers, I'm sure there will be at least three ways to write their language.
The truth is that language is complicated. The advent of the printing press smoothed only seemed to smooth over the complications. If you look at Chaucer, Shakespeare or the King James, it can be confusing, but anything since about Milton will look pretty familiar save for the thees and thous. On the other hand, if you look at a Middle English anthology without regularized spelling, forget it. Sight reading is out. Sometimes all you can do is read aloud while imagining what you think you'd get from it if you were listening on a cell phone with a bad connection. What's worse is for all that the ME texts won't tell you what ME sounded like - they'll tell you how moderately educated monks thought it should be transcribed with some of their local habits coming through and others suppressed. But does this mean that with our standard dictionaries and wide distribution of edited texts, the mess of Middle English has been sorted out? Not exactly.
When you're learning a language, real or made-up, one of the struggles you're going to face is that no resource is going to be completely accurate, at least not for the time you're learning it. Study French and you'll think that "I don't know" is je ne sais pas, pronounced "zhuh nuh say pah." But you're more likely to hear "shay pas." Orthography hasn't caught up to speech - and probably won't. That's because of the strange byplay between orthography and speech: People will still say "zhuh nuh say pah" for emphasis because when you're carefully sounding something out, you sound it out as it is written, not as it is transcribed. Likewise in English, "I'm gonna go ta New York tamara" turns into "I am going to go to New York to-morrow" if you're asked to repeat yourself. So writing isn't always great for everyday speech, but it's marvelous if you want to talk to someone as if he is half deaf.
In learning a language, you need to be alert to the gaps between "correct" speech, the vernacular of the educated and the various muddle-headed ways the pedants try to codify them. So whether you're just starting a new language or have been working on it for awhile, be sure to use audio resources wherever available, and be prepared to hear native speakers say things that aren't in your textbook. And when you hear those native speakers, emulate them - unless you want to be one of those people who is "plus français que les français" (more French than the French) or is identifiably foreign because of speaking the Queen's English better than the Queen.
I jest, of course. I have Uzbek resources in Cyrillic script, Uzbek resources in transliterations from the Cyrillic, Uzbek resources in transcriptions of the authors' own devising (no less than two) and a few resources, astoundingly enough, in the new more or less accepted Latin orthography. I've remarked more than once that if I'm curious about how to notate a word, all I need do is pick up three books, note the three different ways of writing it suggested and go back to square one.
Breton finds itself in another place: There are orthographies from the old days, as well as spelling schemes to accommodate all the different dialects or three of the four... But it's not a state language, which means not merely that there's no governing body like the Académie française to govern its usage (without which English does just fine) but there's also no mandate to use it in that many official communications. It's used by its speakers as they choose to use it. So, as long as there are at least ten Breton speakers, I'm sure there will be at least three ways to write their language.
The truth is that language is complicated. The advent of the printing press smoothed only seemed to smooth over the complications. If you look at Chaucer, Shakespeare or the King James, it can be confusing, but anything since about Milton will look pretty familiar save for the thees and thous. On the other hand, if you look at a Middle English anthology without regularized spelling, forget it. Sight reading is out. Sometimes all you can do is read aloud while imagining what you think you'd get from it if you were listening on a cell phone with a bad connection. What's worse is for all that the ME texts won't tell you what ME sounded like - they'll tell you how moderately educated monks thought it should be transcribed with some of their local habits coming through and others suppressed. But does this mean that with our standard dictionaries and wide distribution of edited texts, the mess of Middle English has been sorted out? Not exactly.
When you're learning a language, real or made-up, one of the struggles you're going to face is that no resource is going to be completely accurate, at least not for the time you're learning it. Study French and you'll think that "I don't know" is je ne sais pas, pronounced "zhuh nuh say pah." But you're more likely to hear "shay pas." Orthography hasn't caught up to speech - and probably won't. That's because of the strange byplay between orthography and speech: People will still say "zhuh nuh say pah" for emphasis because when you're carefully sounding something out, you sound it out as it is written, not as it is transcribed. Likewise in English, "I'm gonna go ta New York tamara" turns into "I am going to go to New York to-morrow" if you're asked to repeat yourself. So writing isn't always great for everyday speech, but it's marvelous if you want to talk to someone as if he is half deaf.
In learning a language, you need to be alert to the gaps between "correct" speech, the vernacular of the educated and the various muddle-headed ways the pedants try to codify them. So whether you're just starting a new language or have been working on it for awhile, be sure to use audio resources wherever available, and be prepared to hear native speakers say things that aren't in your textbook. And when you hear those native speakers, emulate them - unless you want to be one of those people who is "plus français que les français" (more French than the French) or is identifiably foreign because of speaking the Queen's English better than the Queen.
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