But spoken languages are learned socially, via interactions with more knowledgeable individiuals, not though any formal education. No one ever teaches you to speak your native language; you just learn it through interactions with your family when very young.
Exactly. (I've been known to go further and say no one ever *learns* any language. We each individually make it up, but that's another discussion :P)
Also, keep in mind that dialects that aren't considered standard by the larger society are still internally consistent.
Absolutely true! "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." But I was working from Eo's observation that the elves don't all make the same mistakes speaking English, they aren't internally consistent.
A pidgin lacks a full grammar and might be inconsistent in this way (a true pidgin, many languages that are called Pidgin are actually creoles and do have a full grammar and are as consistent as any other languages). But if elf language learning is the same as human language learning, than the only way they could still be speaking a pidgin is if they are still learning "Elfish" (or whatever) as a first language.
So either, (A) the elves have maintained a seperate spoken language that we never see and that all elves learn as a first language and never attain fluency in English (but learn languages basically like humans); (B) Elves just poor at language compared to humans; or (C) Elves have sufficiently different brains that English is an alien language to them which they are never able to attain fluency in, even as a first language.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 04:29 pm (UTC)Exactly. (I've been known to go further and say no one ever *learns* any language. We each individually make it up, but that's another discussion :P)
Also, keep in mind that dialects that aren't considered standard by the larger society are still internally consistent.
Absolutely true! "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." But I was working from Eo's observation that the elves don't all make the same mistakes speaking English, they aren't internally consistent.
A pidgin lacks a full grammar and might be inconsistent in this way (a true pidgin, many languages that are called Pidgin are actually creoles and do have a full grammar and are as consistent as any other languages). But if elf language learning is the same as human language learning, than the only way they could still be speaking a pidgin is if they are still learning "Elfish" (or whatever) as a first language.
So either, (A) the elves have maintained a seperate spoken language that we never see and that all elves learn as a first language and never attain fluency in English (but learn languages basically like humans); (B) Elves just poor at language compared to humans; or (C) Elves have sufficiently different brains that English is an alien language to them which they are never able to attain fluency in, even as a first language.