If you had a dispute with a friend over the spelling of a word, and a few dictionaries give different spellings to the word, which would be the definitive one? And why?

Personally, I was taught to take the Oxford English Dictionary as the definitive source of English (or British English at least). The reason is that English originates from England, and the most revered linguistic institution for English is Oxford University and the Oxford University Press, which is the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary. Would it be possible for these experts to be wrong? Who sets the rules in a language? And what gives them the authority to do so?

The same goes for Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka for Malay, and other institutions for Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, French, German etc.

This post has been edited by Thinkingfox: Feb 20 2010, 03:02 AM

Well, what I learnt was that while French, BM, have 'official' bodies that, in some sense, represents the official authority of the language, and this isn't true for English, and the OED, which IIRC does not claim to be 'the authority' on English, but only claims to be a definitive record on English, because the base is much more diluted instead. An example of this is the verb 'to google', which was used widely before it actually got into the OED. Similarly, the verb 'to photoshop' hasn't entered the OED yet, but is used very widely worldwide, and it looks likely that it'll end up into the OED sooner or later.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewan_Bahasa_dan_Pustaka

[please do correct me if I'm wrong though, I'm certainly not a languages student]

This post has been edited by bgeh: Feb 20 2010, 05:34 AM

So some of you might think that language is trivial, isn't it? (Don't worry, I'm not referring to you Bgeh )

Think of it. The language(s) you speak, to some extent, influences your perception of the world around you. For example, there at least five verbs for love in Latin, namely amare, stoge, eros, phileo and agape. See how these words have separate definitions even without adjectives to accompany them. Another example would be the urban myth about Eskimos and the large number of words they have for snow, and how they classify snow by varying thickness and texture.

So since a language can influence your outlook of life, wouldn't you be interested on these people who decides the syntax of your language, how and why they do it?

This post has been edited by Thinkingfox: Mar 5 2010, 12:01 AM

Hm, how can there be an 'official' standing when there are many things colloquial in context. Language is constantly evolving, and much of it will be directly influenced on location/culture.


Do we Malaysians use mate all the time? Certainly not.

You're actually starting to go down the path of philosophy of language here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_language

with the associated questions of how does a language change the way you see the world, etc, etc.

I think in recent times they do more Its western influence from TV, staying abroad and mixing to foreigners in MNC colleagues.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an advocate of the authorities. But then again if we speak a language however we want, could it still be considered speaking a variation of that language? At what point do we mark the change of the variation into a new language? Who sets the rules as to whether it's a variation or a totally different language.

This post has been edited by Thinkingfox: Mar 3 2010, 10:48 PM

I think the variation will be the new way. Langauge changes over time. In the older english whe had the thou and thee which was replaced with you and I today. As it is people are speculating that internet english (i, u, gr8...) will eventually be adopted as acceptable english. The same goes for the malay that was used in the internet (akum, ko).

as rule of thumb, just follow the British spelling here coz we're a commonwealth country so we follow British spelling.

Oxford Dictionary is a good reference for that.

Maybe the wiki entry on dialects can help.

I particularly agree with the following three points regarding dialects being classified as such:

# because they have no standard or codified form,
# because the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own,
# because they are rarely or never used in writing (outside reported speech)

It is very possible for experts to be wrong. And in the case of language, there isn't an 'authority' that dictates what's right or wrong. Language is a fluid thing, and things change depending on context and usage, even the rules of grammar. To determine if something is 'right' or 'wrong', you need to frame it in the context it is used. Colloquial english would be 'wrong' in a formal letter, but within a social setting where it is used, it's correct. Even colloquial language has its own set of rules, which are different from the rules of formal language.

I think Malaysians are too used to Dewan Bahasa dictating language rules that they don't realise language is more complex and nuanced than a rigid set of rules, let alone a rigid set of rules defined by a "single authority".