Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1301111554070.1343@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: The Standard National Corpus
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:54:51 -0500 (EST)
The Standard National Corpus The following was written for Scott Kildall's "Imagine 2049" project, at http://www.imagine2049.com . Scott wrote "Do you want to submit an invention for the future? Taking online submissions for the next few days only. All of this goes in a time capsule." I was delighted to take part. The Standard National Corpus Around 1962 I was at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; the Hebrew language was undergoing rapid change as it was continually updated to adapt to contemporary life. I remember in particular, when I arrived, the word for 'airplane' was 'aviron'; it was later formally changed to 'matos' which stemmed from Hebrew, not European roots. Today either word is acceptable according to Segal/Dagut's English-Hebrew Dictionary. The basic concept behind these changes was to create a purified language with as little linguistic borrowing as possible. Later, I noticed the same thing in Montreal, in the debate over the Quebecois language - whether or not to eliminate anglicisms, whether the anglicisms were inherent to Quebecois, and so forth (see 'joual' in Wikipedia for exampe). These debates have occurred all over the world as nationalisms put up barriers in order to create theoretically-pure lexicons reflecting theoretically-pure national groups. I propose a formal software program for linguistic purification. It would examine the current state of a language, as well as its history for at least several centuries. This can be accomplished by collating acceptable vocabularies. From this, it should be possible to weed out words of 'foreign' origin, especially if they're of recent appearance. The definitions of these words could be then be used to create alternative words based on the language's 'native' roots and resources. Once all of this is done, of course, it will be announced to the local population who will surely adopt the substitutions; everyone is happiest with purity! Furthermore, the updating can be continuous; in this way, eternal vigilance is the guarantor of the strength and depth of native stock. No GMOs (genetically modified organisms) here! Finally, of course, this idea of automated purification can be applied to any number of different areas - don't worry, we'll stay away from eugenics but we will include animal breeding! - ensuring that any nation's natural culture and inclinations (as well as borders and tariffs) will continue forever! - Alan Sondheim