Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers

From:    Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...>
> Your email address suggests you're in the UK (and I think tiscali
> isn't in NI, so I can probably conclude you're outside of Ireland);
> But I wonder does "langer" have the same meaning over there as it
> does for us (in Ireland)? Not that I can adequately describe what
> it means, apart from saying that it doesn't have anything to do
> with languages. Damn, now I've started to see "langer" in words like
> "conlanger" and "nonlanger", which previously appeared innocent.
I feel fairly certain that this is not common to most of the
English-speaking world.  As for me, I have only the vaguest
idea what this might entail.

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Sally wrote:
> Damian wrote:
> > Think of the former policies toward Native American languages
> > in the United States, where speaking Injun in school was a
> > punishable offense.
>
> Ahem!  Think of nineteenth-century Wales.  Little miners' sons in school
> with signs on them: "Do not speak Welsh to me."
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that every European, and certainly every
anglophone, nation has had oppressive policies towards language
minorities.  Canada and Australia had much the same attitude toward
their indigenous communities. And of course France didn't give up
its openly Francophonization policies until very recently.  This
lead to bombings in Corsica, and has almost succeeding in extinguishing
Occitan and other Romance languages of the south of France which
were, IIRC, quite healthy at the time of the Revolution.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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