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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: State Intervention onf behalf of English
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References: <5dq4ns$r49@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> <33047544.167EB0E7@pia.bt.co.uk> <E62tzF.Gn4@midway.uchicago.edu> <3311A572.167EB0E7@pia.bt.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 23:14:43 GMT
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In article <3311A572.167EB0E7@pia.bt.co.uk>,
Alwyn Thomas  <alwyn@pia.bt.co.uk> wrote:
>Daniel von Brighoff wrote: 
>> In article <33047544.167EB0E7@pia.bt.co.uk>,
>> Alwyn Thomas  <alwyn@pia.bt.co.uk> wrote:
>> >Hasn't it struck you that state intervention is being used extensively
>> >in England and the USA to keep the English language in reasonable shape?
>> 
>> What do you consider "state intervention"? 
>
>Schools - most of which are run or subsidised by the state - tend to
>teach a standard variety of English; without them that standard would
>probably break down very quickly.

I wonder.  After all, most countries had a national standard before the
advent of universal public education.  State intervention was responsible
for broadening acquaintance with that standard more than anything else.
In fact, bringing the standard to the masses allowed them to influence it
to a degree that was unthinkable when it was the province of an elite.
Ultimately, publilc education may have done surprisingly more to "break
down" the standard than to uphold it.

Nowadays, it is probably above all the the visual media who keep the 
standard unified (in the USA at least), especially considering the state
of English teaching in public schools.

>It may well be that governments (especially perhaps in the US) do not
>say explicitly that they are intervening to preserve standard English,
>but that is effectively what they are doing.

Many state this as their intention (think of the recent Ebonics debate).
Whether they *succeed* is quite a different matter.

>I also believe that the Irish government's language policy is by no
>means a total failure: many people who are proficient in Irish today
>would not know it at all if they had not first been taught it at school.

It depends what you mean by "proficient".  I've yet to meet an active
Irish user who learned it in school.  (Of the two I have known, one was a
native-speaker from Connemara, the other an autodidact from Armagh in
Northern Ireland, where Irish Gaelic has no official standing in
education or otherwise.)  Most of the Irish I know look back on their
mandatory Irish classes as, to quote one, "the bane of year luife!"

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
