Monday 23 January 2023

there is no such thing as a 'pure language'

Peter Trudgill writes in the New European that 'modern Welsh' is a living language spoken by real young people:

Pan dach chi’n defnyddio wide-angle lenses dach chi’n emphasise-io’r foreground (When you use wide-angle lenses you emphasise the foreground), and Oedd hi’n edrych yn stunning (She looked stunning).
Any suggestions that this kind of language use represents “bad Welsh” is incorrect; but, more than that, it is potentially dangerous, because there is a risk that, in the face of this sort of hostility and negativity, young speakers might just give up on speaking Welsh altogether and turn into monolingual English speakers. This is certainly what has happened in the case of other minority language communities, such as those of speakers of some forms of Hungarian in Romania.
The idea of “linguistic purity” is in any case misguided. There is no such thing as a “pure” language. The language this newspaper is written in is full of words borrowed from languages other than English.

Mix and match to keep Welsh alive - The New European

As his colleague Peredur Webb-Davies of Bangor University says:

If the government’s ambition of a million Welsh speakers is to succeed, then we will need not just those people who speak “pure Welsh”, but people that speak Welsh however they wish – even if that means switching in and out of English while doing so.

'Still here': Welsh world cup song Yma o Hyd and how the language is adapting to survive

Chomsky has said it:

Chomsky, linguistics, and justice: No “pure” language – Loving Language

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