Does your culture have anything similar to the Académie Française? What does Pinker think about it? Do you agree with him?So there is no contradiction in saying that every normal person can speak grammatically (in the sense of systematically) and ungrammatically (in the sense of nonprescriptively), just as there is no contradiction in saying that a taxi obeys the laws of physics but breaks the laws of Massachusetts. But this raises a question. Someone, somewhere, must be making decisions about "correct English" for the rest of us. Who? There is no English Language Academy, and this is just as well; the purpose of the Académie Française is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly argued decisions that the French gaily ignore. Nor were there any Founding Fathers at some English Language Constitutional Conference at the beginning of time. (p. 372)
How would you answer Pinker's question about "correct English"? What about correct Thai? Korean?
Please share your ideas on these questions or anything else that Pinker's ideas made you think of.
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References
Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language. New York NY: Morrow
I'm so regret and shameful that i don't understand this article even though i read it several times. But i think "correct english" is systematical and prescriptive english as in korea also has our own prescriptive grammar. Therefore, correct Korean is written and spoken Korean according to the prescriptive grammar.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand what is the Academie Francaise. Is it similar meaning with Academic English?
Michelle's question was a good one, and of course, it's hard to undersatnd Pinker's idea if you have no idea what the French Academy is. L'Académie française is the official organization that says what is "correct" French grammar, vocabulary and usage.
ReplyDeleteThe link in the previous sentence is to the Wikipedia article, which gives a good basic account.
Just from the context, what do you think you could guess about the meaning of the term Académie française? What part of speech must it be? What sort of thing is it?
This is difficult for me to completely understand it, but I think maybe it has somethings similar to Thai language. Thai language is has prescriptive grammar. I not sure that Thailand has the official organization that says what is "correct" Thai grammar, but I think Thailand has the organization that warn about the correct words or vocabularies. Because the new generation always use the wrong word and create the word that never be in Thai dictionary.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Gus about the new words. I often see words that are not in Thai dictionaries on some of the Thai websites I look at, most often young people posting to Blogs, Hi5, and so on, who are obviously (I guess), writing the way they speak rather than in formal written Thai. And I see it even more in English language web forums and Blogs.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this a problem or undesirable. What do you think?
I'm not sure whether I understood Académie française correctly.It's
ReplyDeletethe official organization in Frace.
They try to preserve their langauge from widespread English and fight.In Korea, we have some organization, but they're not strong enough yet to fight it.People in korea tend to speak Korean with English and young generation creat new language when they chat in internet. Sometimes this new word settle as normal. Today, Korean suffer from English and new word which is not correct.
I think it's a good time to think how I can do preseve my language, Korean.
I think that using English itself is not a problem. But it's important to use correctly. Sometimes people don't know what does it mean and how they can use it.They just use it as trend. It's a problem when people abuse English.
ReplyDeleteThis message is quite difficult to understand even I have read the attached link of Pinker which tell about the relation of language and brain. By the way, according to Peter's question, there is the language institution in Thailand, Larchabundittiyastan, is working for making decision about vocabularies and gramma. However, this institution isn't strong enough to dominate throughout Thai language user because the new words still are frigured out everyday. In my opinion, I've never been worry about how to preserve Thai language because I believe language is one of the human ability ;therefore, it's possible to be adapted by the users accordance with Pinker's theory. Moreover, the first dictionary of Webster has ever publish the message like "In each of the countries peopled by englishmen, a distinct dialect of the language will gradually be formed; the principal of which will be that of the United States. In fifty years from this time, the American English will be spoken by more people, than all the other dialects of the language, and in one hundred and thirty years, by more people than any other language on the globe, not excepting Chinese".
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult topic for me because when I read it in the first time I don't understand anything, so I try to read it again and read peter's guideline that make me to understand more about it. In Thailand, it has the official organization like the L'Académie française it is "The Royal Institute", its function is to correct Thai grammar vocabulary and usage for preserve and promote Thai language.In addition,to compile dictionaries, encyclopedias, terminologies in all fields of knowledge, and coin new words.I think that is necessary to have an official organization for correct language because today, the young generation use incorrect language such as spelling,pronunciation and create some new words,so it make many people to confuse what's right or wrong? For this reason,it's important to set a standard for make everybody understand and can communicate effectively.
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ReplyDeleteI really don’t understand Pinker’s ideas but I’ve to say that I agree with Michelle that systematically makes “correct English”. In addition, Thailand also has an official organization; it’s the royal institution (Called in Thai “Rachabandhitayasatarn”)which publishes an official Thai dictionary. It’s the same as L'Academie Française.However, Thai language is a monosyllabic word so it’s make Thai grammar more easily than Western languages. For an example, it’s no gender like German or France and we don’t have to modify words for tenses so it’s really easy to make sentences.In additional, I do agree with Peter’s idea that is not a problem or undesirable to created a new words or to use the words incorrectly way. The reason is every language requires an improvement or an innovation such as they cut some alphabet of Thai language that they think is not necessary and no one uses it anymore like “ฃ, ฅ” or you will see the new words in dictionary created by new generation replace the old words.
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