Old world mindset versus new world mindset
The world, generally speaking, seems to be divided into two groups of people. The ones who embrace change, to an extent, anyway, and the ones who yearn for the days of yore and are unwilling to change. You see it on all levels of society, starting with religion, of course. I was surprised to hear that some traditionalist-Catholic groups aren’t allowed to enter Churches where worshippers accept the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) as the Catholic faith standard. The Mass not in Latin is the Devil’s doing. Same with even walking into the Church where worshippers accept the non-Latin Mass and pray in their own languages. That is a mortal sin – resulting in perdition, i.e. eternal damnation. What a profoundly perplexing mindset, wouldn’t you say?
That religious zealotry reminds me of debates taking place in linguistics. I’m sure there’s a lot of debate and conflict when it comes to Hebrew as well. I haven’t read up on the details but Hebrew is an ancient language, so there must be a lot of varieties involved, i.e. language used for prayer, formal, informal, by women, and so on. It’s my understanding Hebrew is a phonetic language (every letter, every consonant that is written is also pronounced). Same as with Polish. It’s also a phonetic language. English, modern English at least, of course, is not, though rhoticity (pronouncing the Rs) is present in some dialects/varieties/what have you. Thank God for that.
In English, of course, we have the American English versus British English debate and conflict among some people going on to this day. These conflicts, and I use the word conflict deliberately, can turn nasty, even to the point of bordering on religious fanaticism (minus theology). To British English language purists, if you will, American English is a corruption of British English, same as to religious traditionalists, more modern interpretations of religious texts are anathema. Essentially, at its core, it’s the same mindset. The old world mindset likes prescriptivism in language (rigid rules), while the new world mindset likes descriptivism (observing language use rather than judging and even condemning). Except, American English has preserved many aspects of British English from centuries ago, so the argument that American English is a corrupted version of British English is total nonsense and points to one’s lack of understanding of how languages evolve. Hardly surprising. It’s not true that William Shakespeare sounded like Americans today but he certainly sounded more American than what we consider to be modern British English.
What’s your mindset? Old world, new world, or something in between?
