General Forum > Gay Culture

Gay Language

<< < (2/3) > >>

Adriano_tv83:

--- Quote from: Feral on Sat, Jul 29, 2006, 06:15 ---In another topic Mogul wrote:

I think this subject warrants a topic of its own.

Language is, of course, an issue for any international movement. The matter came up briefly in the discourse of the Gay Kingdom. While every language has it's partisans, there is much to be said for adopting a separate 'auxiliary' language for ourselves. There are several such languages, and the problem with this sort of discussion is that some clever fellow will invariably suggest Klingon.

The obvious choice is, of course, Esperanto since it is the most commonly spoken language of its type. I have no problem with such an adoption -- my husband and I used to be prone to gossiping quite shamelessly in it. However, the number of people who speak Esperanto is quite irrelevant to its usefulness as a national language. There are several problems with the language, as it's proponents have long been aware. Ido addresses all of these difficulties. It can even be typed on a perfectly ordinary keyboard -- a definite bonus. I could wholeheartedly endorse Ido as well.

But the problem of language extends deeper for gay people than the multiplicity of languages spoken on Earth. That problem is simple to solve: we all agree to learn some alternative. *POOF* Problem gone. The deeper problem remains -- we have no words.

The word 'husband' does not correctly characterize Ninja_monkey's status. Nor does 'marriage' properly describe the relationship we have maintained these past 20 years. They are analogs -- we force them to serve, and then explain. A mere generation ago the gay people popularized the word 'gay' to name ourselves because we lacked a suitable word. 'Schwule' was adopted for much the same reason.

Esperanto (and Ido, which shares the bulk of it's vocabulary) is a fine language for talking about heterosexuals. All languages are fine languages for talking about heterosexuals. It is not our intention to spend all of our time talking about them; it is high time we talked a bit more about ourselves. Language shapes the way we think, and therefore the way we act in the world. No matter what language we speak now or choose to speak in the future, we shall lack important words that describe us, who we are, the things we do, and the things we dream of. There was a time when (in English at least) gays adopted a body of slang in the form of Polari to make up for some of these deficits.

If we were to adopt an auxiliary language (an idea which has considerable merit), we would still face the task of modifying and amending that language to express gay thoughts. We face that task even if we do not adopt such a language.


--- End quote ---

I already faced a "question over language" in my homeland, Veneto (north eastern), Italy. We had an ancient language (Venetic) influenced by latin wich gave birth to the actual "Veneto", a tongue used by the Serenissima Republic of Venice and its people. Problem is that Venice covered a lot of lands with manies languages: greek, veneto, ladino, cimbro, slavic languages etc. She pulled to find a new language, noble and steady... so italian arose and its first grammars where written by people of Venice or inland controlled by the city.
What about gay people? We are everywhere! We speak so manies languages! Do we need a common language? An italian party, the Radicali Italiani (Emma Bonino, Marco Pannella should be known out of Italy for their support to gay people) is fighting to introduce esperanto ad European language, against the discrimination for non-english mothertongue. Esperanto seems to be the better tongue for us but we should evaluate it: it's essential, very simple, easy to understand and learn but could it be used to produce a law text or to write a significative writing?

Frozen19:
I think it is noteworthy to mention that IDO does have a few minor flaws. For example Ido  favors people of European decent over other backgrounds.  What the gay republic needs is a more universal language.  Mabey Ido can be altered to include some japanese and korean words (japanese uses pure vowels like IDO). This could be very helpfull in gaining gay asian support. It is important to add that whatever language is used should be gramatically neutral to most culture groups.
See you all around, Frozen

Mogul:
For those with a sense of self-irony, The Principles of Newspeak:


--- Quote ---Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles in ‘The Times’ were written in it, but this was a TOUR DE FORCE which could only be carried out by a specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The version in use in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary, that we are concerned here.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word FREE still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to DIMINISH the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

[..]

A good deal of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being transformed in this way. Considerations of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures, while at the same time bringing their achievements into line with the philosophy of Ingsoc. Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and some others were therefore in process of translation: when the task had been completed, their original writings, with all else that survived of the literature of the past, would be destroyed. These translations were a slow and difficult business, and it was not expected that they would be finished before the first or second decade of the twenty-first century. There were also large quantities of merely utilitarian literature—indispensable technical manuals, and the like—that had to be treated in the same way. It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050.
--- End quote ---

As always, George Orwell's 1984 is an invaluable source of inspiration.

One should, however, not forget that while his analysis of technics of totalitarian propaganda are quite accurate, there is no causal relation between grammar complexity and limitation in thought. In fact, there are several historic examples when simplification of the formal structure of the official language lead to a larger accessibility to intellectual goods and a boost in free thinking. It was not before Luther translated the Bible into German that the middle class was able to understand what that book actually meant, and it was not before the introduction of the list of tōyō kanji in 1946 that an average Japanese would be able to fully understand the newspaper or an official proclamation.

felneymike:
In Britian in the 50's and early 60's there was a kind of "gay language" called Polari, but it was really a series of "code words" so people could talk about gay activities or pass admiring/bitchy comments about people without drawing attention to themselves. Ones i can remember from a site i saw ages ago where "Riah" for Hair, "Bona" for good, "Naff" for bad (which found it's way into normal British language) and "Dish" for arse (which gave rise to the word "Dishy" meaning attractive, i never had the heart to tell the homophobic woman at work who always said it about that XD).

But personally i think any Gay homeland should adopt a common language. The Internet and "dominance of the west" has made English common throughout the world (oh and the British empire helped a bit XD). But the language with the most speakers is Mandarin, i think the homeland should adopt one of those and provide intensive language courses for free to new immigrants (to avoid the counterproductive notions of the ghetto, or multiculturalism)

Mogul:
There is a yahoo discussion group for gay and lesbian Idists: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/glidisti/. It would be interestingly to discuss the issue of gay vocabulary with the (few) folks there as well. 


--- Quote from: Feral on Tue, Aug 01, 2006, 08:33 ---The Esperantists are rather chauvinist about the "purity" of their language. Perhaps Idists are as well, perhaps not.
--- End quote ---

Why, yes?  >:) Both IDO and Esperanto are so-called planned languages, which only advantage (in comparison to other languages) lies in the purity and perfection of their grammar and vocabulary (that's why I consider IDO be "better" then Esperanto). If everyone would start doctor around on the official version of IDO as he/she likes, after a few decades the language would be ruined and offer no advantage in comparison to English, French or Spanish.  :+ That's why I would advocate to leave the core language under scholars' control, even if this means we must fund our own Instituto por IDO gaya.


--- Quote from: Feral on Tue, Aug 01, 2006, 08:33 ---Some enquiry into what words already exist (or can be reasonably formed) is certainly called for, but I was not thinking of asking anyone's permission to speak my mind -- in Esperanto, Ido, or any other language. Alas, language is a flexible thing, and it mutates quite rapidly when it falls from the tongues of gays.
--- End quote ---

The flexibility of a language is on one side a necessity dictated by the changing reality (new technologies, changed social realities, novel philosophical concepts), on the other side it is too often an aftereffect of an unfortunate decay of read-and-write skills. We shall be welcoming to new creations, but we should not officially accept any wrong-spelling of already existing vocabulary. The reason for such conservatism on my side is pretty simple - readers shall be capable to understand a text written in a particular language even 10.000 years later.

Of course, the actual use of the language in everyday life is quite another thing - people do not care much of the official guildlines and talk the way they like - with all the impossible and weird costructions which make our language funny and enjoyable. Only a fool would insist on ignoring such developements or (even worse) try to prohibit their use. Therefore, the linguists will have to analize the vocabulary of the living language and provide the compillations of new and imported words (for people who failed to make their black belt in google-fu).  >:)

There is a difference, however, in the academic approach of studying a language and the normative approach of establishing a language for everybody (Idiomo Di Omni). To bring this two contradicting tendencies to a peaceful coexistence, I think it smart to issue two separate dictionaries: a standad IDO dictionary for educational and official use, and the supplementary IDO dictionary reflecting the additional words actually used by the population.


--- Quote from: Feral on Tue, Aug 01, 2006, 08:33 ---The important thing is to stop being chained by heterosexual vocabularies. They are just words. We must seize control of our own mouths and our own thoughts.
--- End quote ---

Sure. :P Partially we already have created our own gay sleng in almost every language of this world - by reclaiming mainstream words or creating new ones. Thanks to the growing cultural exchange between various national gay communities, expressions such as butch, drag queen, rice queen, seme and uke, Urning became wide-spread among gays around the world, not to mention all the local gay slang. Certainly, copying 1:1 the words from the heterosexual language usage might lead to not intended results, e.g. adopting the content of the institution described by the word - the recent example being the words "marriage", "family" and "children".

There are indeed some gay cultural institutions, which are actually unknown in the (western) heterosexual world. How shall we describe a young gay boy who was informally "adopted" by a gay couple or by an entire clique, whereby some of the olders have sex with this "adoptee", others being rather somewhat of a tutor? In Russian language there is an ironic expression for such a lad: "Сын полка" ("son of the military brigade"), referring to the times of WWII, when lost/runaway kids often were taken in care by army sub-divisions or partisan units. 


---------------------------------------------------------
A notice somewhat off topic:

Perhaps one of the first expressiones uniquely used for same-sex relationships was paed erastes describing the older man (erastes) desiring adolescent boys (paedika, eromeni). The gay community sees this expression with a loughing and a wheeping eye: though it exactly describes what many of our friends are, the aura of "child molestors" was long (and still is) used as a weapon against our community. You see, not only we gays can re-claim words for own purposes.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page