LINGUIST List 13.880

Fri Mar 29 2002

Qs: Greek Dialects/Lang Change, "Blending" Words

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Evans, Ann, Greece, and Montclair, New Jersey
2. Oebel, blendwords

I will be traveling to Greece at the end of May, and would like to make
contacts there who could introduce me to communities within Greece where
either 1) other languages are spoken, such as Albanian, Bulgarian, Turkish,
Romani, etc., or 2) "extreme" dialects of modern Greek are spoken, such as
on isolated islands or areas of Greece, where special educational or other
activities would need to be undertaken to learn standard modern Greek.

I am also hoping to do a project on language change in one town (Montclair,
New Jersey). The base of this research is two subjects, white women, 91 and
22 years old, who were raised in or near Montclair and are college educated.
I have present-day matches (other such women in their 80's or 90's, and
young women in their 20's) but am looking for recordings of women who would
today be in their 80's or 90's speaking when they were in their 20's, 30's
or 40's. 

Any help or leads would be much appreciated. My email address is
evansannearthlink.net. Thanks.

Dear all,

As I am working on a contrastive study (particularly
English-German-Japanese), I wonder why English and Japanese seem to be
much more blend-friendly languages than German is. As far as English is
concerned, its unique status as lingua franca thus having impact on most
other languages world-wide vice-versa might be a sensible explanation.
Are there other reasons, i.e., etymological or historical ones, for this
phenomenon?

For Japanese, I guess, the most obvious reason is its adaptability to
implement foreign and loan words in its vocabulary, e.g. remote control
becomes rimocon. Can you think of another explanation besides the
necessity to apply specifically Japanese spelling, ie. phonetic rules?

Now, about German? To my knowledge and experience it has proved to be
quite poor at creating own blendwords. Why that? On the other hand it
can be a very creative language, just consider the composed nouns that
especially Mark Twain had driven crazy.

Thank in advance for any helpful advice! I am going to post a summary,
provided there are - hopefully - sufficient replies! Happy Easter!

Guido Oebel
Saga National University