What is your opinion on 'linguistic purism'?

[Mingle]

Most languages, especially European languages (mentioning them specifically since most users here natively speak a European languages. Loanwords are typically more common in words describing more complex concepts, but can be found in use for concepts as well. Loanwords are very common in both ancient and modern forms of the language. Generally, as time passes by, loans from foreign languages increase.

The loans used often mean nothing in the language its being loaned to and makes the language sound less logical. For example, the word patella (foreign/Latin) means nothing in English whereas the word kneebone (native/English) means something in English and using it sounds more logical. Using foreign loans is also often done because the language the people loaning the word from another language have an inferiority complex towards their own language and want to sound more sophisticated by using foreign words to "sound more sophisticated". Some go to extremes where they engage in 'code switching' which is when people are speaking in one language and then midway through their sentence switch to another language. And they keep doing this back and forth. Engaging in linguistic purism is also often seen as 'returning a language to its original roots' (e.g. "English is a Germanic language so should use Germanic words not a mishmash of words from different languages").

On the other hand, one could argue that the loans have a lot of historical significance (e.g. "We've used these words for hundreds/thousands of years & removing them would be erasing that history"). And using native words that 'sound logical' can be argued to not be very important since native speakers already know them. It also helps as a gateway to learning other languages. For example, learning a Latin-based language is much easier for an English-speaker today because of English having so many loans from Latin and French.

There have been partially-attempted linguistic purification practices in the past such as with Romanian (where many Slavic words were removed & replaced with French), but no full-scale linguistic purification campaign. There exist online groups for it, but its mostly not something that ever crosses the mind of the average person. Almost all modern languages use a significant portion of loans from other languages. Most rural languages may use less English loans but they are more likely to use loans from the country's national language. The only language I can think of that breaks this rule is Mandarin Chinese which uses only 2% of foreign loans, the least by any language I've seen. They come up with neologisms for every complex word, even universal words like "video" and "radio" that are more or less the same in virtually all other languages.

It should also be noted that linguistic purists aren't a monolith. Using the example of people that want to purify English, there are some that say we should change the grammar so it resembles Old English more, some that say only loans post-1066 should be replaced, some that say loans going back to the Danish rule of English should be replaced, some that want to only replace a few words here & there but nothing major, and so on.

This link mentions a number of linguistic purification campaigns in certain languages in case you're interested in reading about them.

So what do you think about this concept? Do you support it? If so, to what extent?

[Óttar]

My real answer is that I support it to a moderate degree. I support the so-called Verdeutscherei ~ "Re-Germanization" employed by some German poets and writers for example. I chose to teach myself German when I was 13 because I wanted to learn the language of my Alsatian great grandparents and I wanted to learn a Germanic language that possessed more of a "Germanic spirit" than English.

Despite being a West Germanic language, German still has much Latin influence like English does. First there are words that come from Latin or Romance conceptually, but have been assembled using German parts e.g. Italian. Verosimile 'probably' lit. 'appearing to be true' --> German. Wahrscheinlich lit. 'True' + 'appearance' + '-ly'.

And then there are words that appear to be perfectly German, but are actually still Latin loans e.g. der Kopf "the head" comes from Latin cuppa. Kaufen vt "to buy" comes from Latin caupere. This same infinitive exists in Icelandic (the 'purest' Germanic language there is), if you can believe it!

One example that really flabbergasts me, is Persian musighi "music" from Greek mousike. Persian is a ~ 3,000 year old culture that existed independently of Greece and yet they use a Greek loanword? Did they really not have the concept of music before Alexander and his men came around?

Latin and "General European" loanwords in German, Icelandic, or Russian disappoint me to be honest. Sometimes I feel like everyone is just speaking a modified version of Latin despite these languages being non-Romance. It's boring.

PS: Ironically, the word used for the linguistic purification of Arabic loanwords from the Persian language is shubiyya, which literally comes from the Arabic word shuub meaning "nation."

[Mingle]

My real answer is that I support it to a moderate degree. I support the so-called Verdeutscherei ~ "Re-Germanization" employed by some German poets and writers for example.

Can you define "moderate degree"?

I support it "full-scale" but I think it wouldn't hurt if a few words here and there and the grammar were to be left alone.

One example that really flabbergasts me, is Persian musighi "music" from Greek mousike. Persian is a ~ 3,000 year old culture that existed independently of Greece and yet they use a Greek loanword? Did they really not have the concept of music before Alexander and his men came around?

Even though musiqi has a Greek origin, it came to Persian via Arabic. You can tell because its spelled with the letter ق in Persian and ق represents the /q/ sound which doesn't exist in Persian. Persian uses a LOT of Arabic words even when local equivalents already exist. Like they use the Arabic adam or shaxs for "person" instead of the Persian kas or tan. Though I think all of them are used, just that the Arabic ones are more common. Or maybe they're all equally common and I'm mistaken, but the Arabic ones are very common nonetheless. Ironically, we use the Persian equivalents for "person" in Pashto rather than the Arabic ones (though a different Arabic word xalq is sometimes used) and the native Pashto one sounds completely alien and is never used outside Pashto purification circles. There are also some Arabized Persian words they use, though this is fairly tiny e.g. wadhu, Fars.

Latin and "General European" loanwords in German, Icelandic, or Russian disappoint me to be honest. Sometimes I feel like everyone is just speaking a modified version of Latin despite these languages being non-Romance. It's boring.

Well Latin did have a huge influence over all of Europe historically. To change the status quo, you have to work against it actively instead of hoping it'll naturally change with the passage of time. There hasn't been a compelling reason so far to have it changed. I still like how German uses native neologisms a lot unlike English e.g. Sprachwissenschaft ("Speechwitship") vs. Linguistik ("Linguistics").

PS: Ironically, the word used for the linguistic purification of Arabic loanwords from the Persian language is shubiyya, which literally comes from the Arabic word shuub meaning "nation."

Wouldn't shuubiya mean "nationalism" if its stemmed from an Arabic word meaning "nation"? Yeah, kind of weird.

[itilvolga]

I support it and try to use the words with Turkic roots instead of foreign ones in my daily life. For an instance, i say “sözcük” (Turkic) instead of “kelime” (Arabic) which means “word” in English.

[Mingle]

I support it and try to use the words with Turkic roots instead of foreign ones in my daily life. For an instance, i say “sözcük” (Turkic) instead of “kelime” (Arabic) which means “word” in English.

I try to do with the same. What do you think about reviving archaic/extinct Turkish terms & replacing their modern non-Turkic equivalents? To what degree do you support linguistic purism? Like should 100% of non-Turkic words be removed from Turkish or just get reduced to a degree instead?

[Turul Karom]

There is a lot of Roma slang that is used in Hungary, but I always use Hungarian words. I also like to use old Turkic words when appropriate and understood, and although not the most used alphabet, I prefer using rovásírás when writing to friends. Even about mundane everyday stuff; I have gotten quite good at reading right-to-left. I have the unicode and files for writing Old Hungarian on my PC and other places too. Here's a good site for getting them, that can also be used to write Old Hungarian to copy-paste, but be aware that sometimes special character punctuation won't copy over well reading right to left without proper files.

https://oldhungarian.eu/index_en.html

Here's a great practice and tool for writing rovásírás on mobile:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...siras&hl=en_US

There is a fun video about this concept of language purism regarding English and Germanic languages. English is largely a blend of Romance-Latin over Germanic, but the majority of everyday causal words are Germanic.

[Yaglakar]

I try to do with the same. What do you think about reviving archaic/extinct Turkish terms & replacing their modern non-Turkic equivalents? To what degree do you support linguistic purism? Like should 100% of non-Turkic words be removed from Turkish or just get reduced to a degree instead?

Which ancient language or languages are they going to use as a prototype though or already have. To me it looks like modern Germans adopting words of Visigothic origin, which makes no sense.

[Voskos]

I support it but not full scale.