29 November 2010

Linguistic Engineering






Maju said...

Well Spanish language has one of the oldest official academies in the World and it's long established that it dictates the norms (according to their best erudite understanding and pragmatism) that are to be used in proper written Spanish (and even pronunciation to some extent, though less so nowadays). This surely has helped prevent a disconnection between written and spoken language.

It's not really important: just a reference to consider: when in doubt you consider what's the stand of the Academy. You do not have to agree with everything but some things like alphabetical order or usage of accents are handy.

Totally unrelated, I suspect you may enjoy this "reconstruction" of "real" USA geography based on money flows: http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2010/11/29/worth-a-thousand-words-32/

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Cute map. The biggest surprises to me are the strengths of the divides between Oklahoma and Texas, and between New England and New York City. Most of the rest of the lines are about what you would expect if your familiar with the areas.

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Incidentally, the probably closest thing to the academies in the U.S. are newspaper style guides (particularly the Associate Press), and academic style guides (the University of Chicago, the Modern Language Association and the "Blue Book" for lawyers are the most prominent).

Maju said...

I'm not really that familiar but I imagined it could interest you. I'm maybe a bit familiar with parts of Virginia (for example I recall being mentioned that border counties by the South were more North Carolina than Virginia in practical terms and I can imagine easily a Lynchburg-centered area over there, as well as the Norfolk one.

As for academies, they seem a Latin/Jacobin concept, like military police corps, the inquisitorial justice system, overtly centralized states and such. The French at least also have their academy and, with such influences, we Basques do too - not always for good.