Seems disrespectful. Let’s break this down.
Almost all European languages, save for Basque, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, have a common ancestor: Proto-Indo-European.
This, linguists believe, emerged somewhere around the steppes of what is now Ukraine five millennia back and begat a Babel of tongues from Armenian to Yiddish. Hindi, Sanskrit and Icelandic can all trace their origins to this shared heritage.
So, Greek, Old Norse and Latin are predecessors of English but, Paul may be curious to learn, the language of Shakespeare is Germanic. Germany, should she wish to find it on a map, lies between Scandinavia and Switzerland.
In the hectic years after the departure of Rome in 410, England fell to Anglo-Saxon invaders, who created a series of mini-kingdoms known as the Heptarchy. A land that had spoken Latin for four centuries was conquered by Germans. Jesus was out; Thor, and Thursday, was in.
This, linguists believe, emerged somewhere around the steppes of what is now Ukraine five millennia back and begat a Babel of tongues from Armenian to Yiddish. Hindi, Sanskrit and Icelandic can all trace their origins to this shared heritage.
So, Greek, Old Norse and Latin are predecessors of English but, Paul may be curious to learn, the language of Shakespeare is Germanic. Germany, should she wish to find it on a map, lies between Scandinavia and Switzerland.
In the hectic years after the departure of Rome in 410, England fell to Anglo-Saxon invaders, who created a series of mini-kingdoms known as the Heptarchy. A land that had spoken Latin for four centuries was conquered by Germans. Jesus was out; Thor, and Thursday, was in.
Green Party MP Tamatha Paul called English a “bastard language” during a fiery parliamentary debate in July, drawing controversy.
Centuries went by and the Old German became what we now call Old English.
Meanwhile, across the channel in Normandy, the Vikings were becoming gentrified, Christian and, most appallingly, French. In 1066 a chap known as William the Bastard transformed into William the Conqueror. Norman French became the language of the English nobility while Old English remained for the peasants. A distinction that remains.
Today the sophisticated purchase, from the Latin pro (go after) and chacier (hunt), while the less affluent buy, from an ancient Germanic word, bugjaną. We all know the mutton and sheep categorisation, but did you appreciate the peasant lies in a grave while the nobility a tomb? The serf shall ask. The master enquires.
In the intervening centuries the English have been promiscuous in absorbing new words with the same enthusiasm they acquired colonies. Coffee, cotton, alcohol (ironically), mattress and zero are gifts from Arabia. Shampoo, jungle, thug and avatar arrived from the subcontinent. We get our tea from China, drama from Athens, tsunami from Japan and mana from these islands.
In her maiden speech Paul demonstrated the power of the language she contemptuously derides: “We go from our nice homes and our nice vehicles to the Koru lounge and to the front row of the airplane, and from a chauffeur to Parliament.”
“Nice” is from Latin; nescius, meaning ignorant, which morphed to nice in French meaning foolish. The word travelled to London and came to mean pleasant by the 1800s.
Centuries went by and the Old German became what we now call Old English.
Meanwhile, across the channel in Normandy, the Vikings were becoming gentrified, Christian and, most appallingly, French. In 1066 a chap known as William the Bastard transformed into William the Conqueror. Norman French became the language of the English nobility while Old English remained for the peasants. A distinction that remains.
Today the sophisticated purchase, from the Latin pro (go after) and chacier (hunt), while the less affluent buy, from an ancient Germanic word, bugjaną. We all know the mutton and sheep categorisation, but did you appreciate the peasant lies in a grave while the nobility a tomb? The serf shall ask. The master enquires.
In the intervening centuries the English have been promiscuous in absorbing new words with the same enthusiasm they acquired colonies. Coffee, cotton, alcohol (ironically), mattress and zero are gifts from Arabia. Shampoo, jungle, thug and avatar arrived from the subcontinent. We get our tea from China, drama from Athens, tsunami from Japan and mana from these islands.
In her maiden speech Paul demonstrated the power of the language she contemptuously derides: “We go from our nice homes and our nice vehicles to the Koru lounge and to the front row of the airplane, and from a chauffeur to Parliament.”
“Nice” is from Latin; nescius, meaning ignorant, which morphed to nice in French meaning foolish. The word travelled to London and came to mean pleasant by the 1800s.
“Homes” derives from Old English; hām, meaning dwelling, and crosses the North Sea with Hengist and Horsa. Notice the use of ‘home’, not ‘house’. The origins of house, is the German hūs, meaning building. Hām is dwelling, a place, rather than a thing. A house is the building. A home is where your heart lives.
She chooses “vehicles”, not car. Vehiculum; Latin for a means of carrying and today has a hint of class. The word for car is from carrus, which became carre in Old French, morphed into carriage and abbreviated to car.
Which brings me to “chauffeur”; Latin for someone who stokes a fire. The French adapted the term for the servant who warmed the cold-start engines in the 1890s and the noun stuck. She did not use the pedestrian driver, with its Old English meaning of someone who herds sheep.
“Parliament” comes from French, for talking, and “Koru” is the loop of a fern and an example of the ease with which new words are absorbed.
We can run, jog, sprint, bolt, scamper, bound, flee, charge, gallop, streak, stride and even lope. Each hints at a different emphasis. Thanks to this complex evolution and the contributions of giants such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson and Tyndale, we are heirs to an incredible, and global, taonga.
English is my language. I am not diminished by the joy and meaning Paul obtains from te reo and I am pleased that so many find a rich pleasure in learning and speaking something that is important to them and vital to their culture.
Her point in that speech was the waste of time being devoted to the pointless exercise of making English an official language. In that I agree. English does not need the pitiful protection of the New Zealand state. English is not endangered.
Where we diverge is her desire to vilify that which others find meaningful. English may be, as Paul contemptuously declares, a bastard language, but like William, it has also become a conqueror. Rather than denigrate, she should seek to emulate it for te reo Māori. Encourage others to experience the beauty she finds in the vernacular of her ancestors. English is exceptionally accommodating when it comes to engagement with other languages.....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
She chooses “vehicles”, not car. Vehiculum; Latin for a means of carrying and today has a hint of class. The word for car is from carrus, which became carre in Old French, morphed into carriage and abbreviated to car.
Which brings me to “chauffeur”; Latin for someone who stokes a fire. The French adapted the term for the servant who warmed the cold-start engines in the 1890s and the noun stuck. She did not use the pedestrian driver, with its Old English meaning of someone who herds sheep.
“Parliament” comes from French, for talking, and “Koru” is the loop of a fern and an example of the ease with which new words are absorbed.
We can run, jog, sprint, bolt, scamper, bound, flee, charge, gallop, streak, stride and even lope. Each hints at a different emphasis. Thanks to this complex evolution and the contributions of giants such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson and Tyndale, we are heirs to an incredible, and global, taonga.
English is my language. I am not diminished by the joy and meaning Paul obtains from te reo and I am pleased that so many find a rich pleasure in learning and speaking something that is important to them and vital to their culture.
Her point in that speech was the waste of time being devoted to the pointless exercise of making English an official language. In that I agree. English does not need the pitiful protection of the New Zealand state. English is not endangered.
Where we diverge is her desire to vilify that which others find meaningful. English may be, as Paul contemptuously declares, a bastard language, but like William, it has also become a conqueror. Rather than denigrate, she should seek to emulate it for te reo Māori. Encourage others to experience the beauty she finds in the vernacular of her ancestors. English is exceptionally accommodating when it comes to engagement with other languages.....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
15 comments:
Yer know, I hope yer do - but for 'people with little brains, whose whole day is wrapped around [a] social media outlet - that is when 'speaking', it is recorded and posted to her social media a/c' - who since being in Parliament has shown that her education was not up to standard, no doubt 'her' staff' are of a like minded group - that NZ Media and those who post articles to this domain - should ignore her, and stop - yes stop giving the wee lass media mileage.
She is not and will never be a politician, she is a social media icon, thinking she is a an "influencer", who can speak to truth, when most of it is lies.
If one wants to look at the rise of influencer's via social media, then -
- look at who most of them are - females
- look at their appearance at the current NYC International tennis
- look at how many of them are involved in "adults only" content
- look to use their social media domains to "make money" - there are many
and sadly the MSM across the world give them "media mileage". - stupid.
As I have mentioned before in this context and on this topic, if there is any language that has benefited from pretending to be more than it is by 'borrowing' words from English and transliterating them to appear an actual part of maori language, it is the maori 'language'. I put it in quotes because in its original form it served a very simple Neolithic world view, but now is overly inflated with borrowings from, and bastardisation of, English. The ignorance and hubris of Ms Paul knows no bounds.
If English is a "bastard language" what does that make Maori, which today is mostly mispronounced English?
Because te reo isn't mainly a form of pidgen English?
Paul (part-white) likes to use the word bastard as some kind of abuse...the rebels out there will nod, yeh, those English bastards...and brain-screwed nutters like Kneecap see mileage for it in their tour of hate. Maori is also a bastard language...aren't they all. Komiti ???
But her silly stuff works with a large whack out there.
Green Party MP Tamatha Paul has simply aired her total ignorance. Deserves to be ignored - totally... Dowtless a product of resint edjicashin... like all her mates.
English is a "bastard" language and the sooner Paul and it's acolytes stop using it the sooner the English-speaking World will become a better place.
And given Maori descended from East Polynesia this would make Maori language a bastardisation of Tahitian, Rarotongan etc.
English is a COMPOSITE language and incorporates elements in varying degrees from most of the other European languages which is why it became a lingua franca in most parts of the world.
English is a predatory language. Always has been. Grant's erudite essay illustrates the point. English is constantly absorbing words from other languages, thereby refreshing its usefulness as a medium of communication. That's how it has become the closest thing to a world language since the tower of Babel.
Te Reo on the other hand is a niche language that used to be spoken by a niche society in a geographical location largely ignored by mainstream civilisation until relatively recently.
Yet English is now the language of our law, our commerce, our diplomacy, our science, and a hundred other things that drive our society. Te Reo is not. Why? Because the English language arrived in New Zealand fully equipped to enable the adoption of a modern society. The Treaty of Waitangi was drafted in English and translated into Te Reo (albeit badly perhaps), not the other way around. Over a remarkably short period of time the resulting society delivered benefits to the incumbent population beyond their wildest dreams. Benefits all New Zealanders are still enjoying today. Te Reo simply did not have words for these things.
Demonising English is just a part of Paul's attempt to turn back the clock to pre-European times when Maori society was not just stagnant but was arguably in decline as a result of the Rifle Wars. Language is the glue that binds society together, and if Maori want to reinvent that pre-colonial society by promoting Te Reo over English that's their prerogative. But don't expect the rest of us to to pay the price of letting a significant portion of our population turn their backs on the 21st century. It's not going to happen.
The Tabatha Pauls of this world come and go. English is here to stay. And along the way, English will absorb the words necessary to incorporate the useful bits of pre-colonial Maori culture into the language. Te Reo will increasingly become a historical oddity that people are quite at liberty to indulge in the privacy of their own whare, like Latin or Esperanto, but which has no role in building the nation they inhabit.
Sir Apirana Ngata knew this, as did a number of influential Maori chiefs in the late 19th century who petitioned Parliament requesting English tuition in native schools, including the restriction of tuition in Te Reo. If they could grasp the issue, why can't Tamatha Paul?
Re Jones Boy comment on predatory. An academic in NZ on one of the msm stories recently called it a predator but her spin, of course, was in a nasty way as to eradicate Maori . English has absorbed words such as robot but it seems Maori does not want to do that. Instead we invent waka topatopa for helicopter rather than say helicopter. Why bother?
Listening., reading anything from supposedly responsible people in government, local authority, the media is cringe worthy.
I dread the Air NZ flight I am about to take with their proudly mangled indoctrination te reo that are about to inflict on 300 trapped people.
Na mehee,
Tipene
If they could grasp the issue, why can't Tamatha Paul? Answer: because she's arguably not very intelligent and mostly because she has an ideological axe to grind which takes presidence over REALITY. She's enslaved to woke and the neo-Marxist "march through the institutions and post-modern relativism. "If all cultures are equal, then canibalism is just another culinary preference."
She got noticed and spoken about - that was the point. Nothing much else, so she did 'win' her point.
Tamatha Paul is correct and ol’ mate Damien says she is correct. I don’t get the 2000 word filler opinion piece. Grievance peddling articles pay by the word maybe?
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