This week, we learned about what's a language, how it can be different one and another?
Based on the textbook, there are two criteria, it is Mutual intelligibility and various socio-political. Mutual intelligibility means that the two speakers can understand each other. Based on this criteria, it means when the two speakers can understand each other, the languages are the same.
Another criteria is various socio-political criteria. The parts of this criteria are national borders, cultural borders, religious borders, and uniting linguistic varieties into one language. For this criteria, 1 language is different to another it is caused by national borders, different political, etc. Every criteria has a good side and also the bad side. None of these criteria are perfect. So, based on your opinion, which criteria you think as the best one to make a differences between 1 language to another?
In common sense mutual intelligibility would be the best way, because we cannot really say two languages are the same if the two speakers do not understand each other at all. However, given the case of the similarities of Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia, can we say they are of the same language then?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, i am not so fond of the socio-political criteria, because language has nothing to do with politics. We see the example of European countries where they speak exactly the same language and can understand each other perfectly by refuse to admit that the language is the same because of politics.
We go back now to the case of Bahasa Indon and Bahasa Malaysia. We have mutual intelligibility. However, there are actually more differences than we notice. Malays in Malaysia can understand Bahasa Indonesia with no problems at all. However, if we bring the case to other races in Malaysia, for example, Chinese and Indians actually do not really understand Bahasa Indonesia as well as the Malays do. Remember that, Chinese and Indians are speakers of Bahasa Malaysia too.
In my case, I say that mutual intelligibility is the more practical way for language differentiation and integration. There is certainly no way we can call two languages the same of none of the speakers understand each other.
For some points I agree with Aaron. It's true that we cannot say 2 languages are the same if the speakers cannot understand each other. (Mutual Intelligibility criteria). But, if we see from different side, if we use MI as the criteria, it will has some problems. We decide the differences of language based on the speakers. It's quite difficult I think because every speaker has different ability in language. For example, if there are 2 Malaysian speakers, it is possible when 1 speaker can understand Bahasa Indonesia, but another speaker cannot understand. it is influenced by situation, skills, knowledge, and ability. The Indon speaker may understand bahasa malaysia well when they are live in Malaysia.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see the socio-political criteria, it's easier to make differ 1 language to another. Because they have national borders, cultural borders, religious borders. I agree that we can say 1 language is different to another because of these reasons. What I know, there are no exactly the same PMSL of language, but they are different language because of socio-political criteria. So, I choose socio-political criteria as the best one.
As for me, I would go for socio-political criteria to differentiate one language from another. Mutual intelligibility may be used in some way in the differentiation of languages but the problem is, not everyone finds the languages are mutual intelligible. For example, Chinese may find Mandarin and Cantonese have mutual intelligibility but to the Westerners, they are two different languages. As a result, naming languages according to countries in order to differentiate one language from another is a better way to me. There is no pure linguistic definition of a language, nor is there a real distinction to be drawn between language and dialect. Language is a social notion, a boundary marked between groups of people with different culture, religion and history. Thus, language is not just simply a system of sounds, words and sentences, but also a tool for communication and a way of identifying social groups.
ReplyDeleteBoth criteria, which is mutual intelligibility and socio-political factors have their own benefits and drawbacks. But I would have to agree with Aaron in choosing the mutual intelligibility criteria. As said above, mutual intelligibility is two speakers can understand each other, it equals understandability. I will go with an example of Aaron's again, where Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia have the mutual intelligibility. The language is almost similar and Malays and Indonesians can understand each other very well. There may be some words that have totally different meaning in Malay and Indonesian. For example, the word "gampang", it is a curse word if its used in Malaysia. However, when used in Indonesia, it means easy. But other than that, i think mutual intelligibility is the best way to differentiate a language to another.
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