Re: More miscellaneous: affordances of English

From: Martin Owen (mowen@rem.bangor.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Jan 23 2000 - 09:25:30 PST


xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>I should think Martin O. will also have experienced
>this in his work with networking between linguistic minorities.
 Oh English is such a seductive language. It is the lingua franca of
course. It also has political connotations some times:

It means that Gallegas, Eurskari, Catalans, Valenciennes and Majorquins do
not have to speak Spanish. Bretons, Alsatians and Corsicans avoid French
and so on. This means of course that I tend to be in a minority of French
speakers ;-), and when in mischevious mood it is just fun annoying the
French ( joke honest!)
>
Eva adds:
> I often
>feel much too like the affected ladies of 18th century Sweden who kept
>code-switching between Swedish and French. I guess THEN it was OK for the
>nobility, and it was when the habit seeped down in the class hierarchy it
>got called affected..

My grand parents never spoke the same language as each other (including to
each other). My grandfather, a coal miner, would always speak Welsh. My
grandmother , of petit bourgouise shopkeeping background, always spoke
English: "I'm educated you see" (Of course she did speak Welsh on
Sunday... Welsh being both the language spoken in heaven and the language
of religion). They were married for over 60 years.

Martin O.



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