Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 18, 2020 23:31 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
In reply to: Loaded terms in free software by Wol
Parent article: Loaded terms in free software

When applied to the written language, "British English" is perfectly adequate; it refers to the literary norm of the English dialect continuum used in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in contrast to the literary norm used in the United States of America.

(Incidentally, the 2011 census showed over half of the Scottish population had no communication skills in Scots.)

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 1:27 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Are you sure? Bear in mind that Scots (the language) is the language of the Lowlands, and for the purposes of the Americans would be included in "British English", you surprise me!

Or do you actually mean the majority of the Scottish population cannot speak Gaelic? Which would be no surprise because neither the Highlands nor the Lowlands have had a native Scots population for well over a millennia - if ever - although I believe the Picts did/do speak Gaelic. (The Scots have the same relationship to Scotland as the Normans have to England - they conquered it unexpectedly some time about 900AD - I was taught English history not Scottish.)

Scots the language is not the native language of the Scots the people :-)

"The Saxons speak English, the Angles speak Scots, the Scots speak Gaelic".

Cheers,
Wol

Loaded terms in free software - what's English

Posted Jun 19, 2020 9:31 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (1 responses)

Aha - maybe a slight error? Prior to the Roman invasion under Claudius, the British islands and Ireland spoke Celtic languages - largely mutually intelligible across to what is now France, Holland, bits of Germany. With the Romans imposing Roman civilisation, some small subset of the population switched to speaking and reading Latin - for business and culture. [To some extent, this could have been purely a cultural overlay like Russian aristocrats speaking French]. The native populations carried on speaking Celtic languages. In Wales, they still do, in Cornwall they've revived the language. Welsh and Breton are largely mutually intelligible. Scots and Irish Gaelic are mutually understandable with some head-scratching. "The British" are still here, speaking Celtic languages (and there's a few that died out - Cumbrian went up into modern Strathclyde)..

Philologists tell us that "English" is closest to West Frisian. The Danes (in the East and Norwegians in York and chunks of Ireland) left us a very few Norse words but left masses to Orkney and Shetland. The Norman-French influence merged with later reintroduction of Latin derived words - Latin being the language of the Church, education and science until at least 1700. A standardisation in English is only true post Chaucer and Caxton.

British English / Commonwealth English is marked primarily by spelling and some pronunciation differences and is largely down to printing standardisation post 1650 or so. American English is down to, at least partly, Noah Webster wanting to distinguish American from English for national pride. It does depend very much where your teacher learned your English as to what you prefer: large parts of Europe speak British English except, perhaps, the former American sector in Germany whoa had access to US Forces radio :)

Germanic-speaking Keltoi

Posted Jun 23, 2020 7:15 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

It's entirely possible that the languages that were mutually intelligible across the channel between ancient Belgium and Kent at the time of the invasions of Julius and Claudius Caesar were not what we would call Celtic languages today, but Germanic ones. Indeed, perhaps many of the peoples referred to by ancient Greeks and Romans as Celts were Germanic-speaking, and the eastern half of the island of Britain spoke languages of the Germanic family long before the arrival of the Romans. (This theory isn't very popular, nor is there any way to prove or disprove it conclusively at such remove, but I for one find it very plausible).

http://www.proto-english.org/l4.html

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 8:47 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Commonwealth countries (former British colonies and protectorates) also tend to use the British spelling.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 20, 2020 21:54 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> When applied to the written language, "British English" is perfectly adequate; it refers to the literary norm of the English dialect continuum used in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

I think you mean "the norm of the southern half of Great Britain". Why should the literary norm take precedence over the spoken norm? Why should the vocabulary of one half of the country take precedence over the other half?

A lot of the troubles we have here is that - outside of London - a LARGE portion of the country feels marginalised and ignored. Having a separate folk history, the other three nations find it easier to express that dissatisfaction, but northern England feels marginalised too. That's NOT helped by outside forces assuming that "England == Britain". It's as bad as lumping Mexico and Canada in with the US and tarring them with the same brush.

That's why I don't feel English - I don't feel part of the "little Englander" mentality that seems to pervade the attitude of those who buy ink by the barrel ...

Cheers,
Wol