Talk on linguistic purisms in comparative regional context
The study of comparative linguistic purisms is Eszter Tarsoly’s work in progress. While numerous primary sources are available, little has been written about purism itself (the standard work in English is George Thomas, Linguistic Purism, London, Longman, 1991).
Two methods of linguistic purism may be identified: (i) purifying and (ii) enriching. The former focusses on the removal of ‘alien’ elements from the language, is frequently xenophobic in intent and may propose either an archaising of the language, or the retrieval of ethnographic forms of speech into the standard variant. The latter proposes a supra-dialectal renewal of the langauge (e.g. the Hungarian late C18-early C19 nyelvújítás). Purist activities may of course incorporate both purifying and enriching elements; the two are by no means mutually exclusive. Both types, however, aim to create norms that will govern language use and, at least in the Central European context, provide enlightened speakers the linguistic and conceptual tools with which to express themselves ‘correctly’. While purisms are utilitarian to a certain extent, one should never underestimate the importance accorded to the ’spirit’ or Geist of a language, that mystical thought-world imputed to native speakers of x language in Central Europe. In other words, while the reformulations of ‘correct’ speech may in part endeavour to catch up with the West, the designation of what is ‘intrinsically’ Hungarian, or Slovak, or Estonian, etc., is more random, but no less crucial to purists.
Eszter’s comparison of Hungarian, Czech and Romanian linguistic purisms is fruitful not least because these languages belong to different families (Uralic, Slavonic, and Romance respectively). While Czech and Hungarian purists adopted German as a model for language reform, Romanians drew on Italian. The first language regulation academy established in Europe was the Accademia della Crusca (est. 1582, Florence, first Italian dictionary 1612), ‘L’istutio nazionale per la salvaguardia e lo studio della lingua italiana’, which took Tuscan as its model. The Académie Française followed shortly thereafter, established in 1635. Its founder, Cardinal Richelieu, wrote:
La principale fonction de l’Académie sera de travailler, avec tout le soin et toute la diligence possibles, à donner des règles certaines à notre langue et à la rendre pure, éloquente et capable de traiter les arts et les sciences.
German purist writings influential in Hungary and Bohemia were provided by Johann Christoph Gottsched (alternate spellings Gottshed and Gottséd), whose 1748 Grundlegung einer deutschen Sprachkunst nach den Mustern der bestern Schriftsteller des vorigen und jetztigen Jahrhunderts advised against ‘Gallicisms’ while using the Académie Française as a model for the Deutsche Gesellschaft in Leipzig/Teutschübende Gesellschaft (1697); Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s revitalisation of German poetic language, and Johann Christoph Adelung’s attempts at codification in the Magazin für die Deutsche Sprache, 1782 (‘Die wahre und einige Absicht der Sprache ist die möglichst leichte Verständlichkeit in dem gesellschaftlichen Lebe …’).
On language-external factors affecting the nature of Czech, Hungarian and Romanian linguistic purisms, Eszter presented the following findings:
None had enjoyed the continuation of a literary norm prior to language renewal, although an earlier literary norm had existed for Czech; Czech was also the only language community to have a counter-balance to purist tendencies in its linguistic tradition. In Hungarian and Romanian, purist tendencies continued to prevail after the period of language renewal; while Hungarian produced the most intense form of purism, as well as the most vehement disagreements.
In terms of anchorage, only Romanian could claim affinity to a prestigious language of Western Europe. Czech and Hungarian used German as a purist model; Czech and Romanian incorporated borrowings from genetically related languages; all three linguistic reforms defended language from ‘alien’ elements, and only Czech purists defended the language from elements from related languages. Claiming linguistic affinity to a prestigious language, past or present, allows for emotional connections to be made with more prestigious nations, the farther away the better (say, a Golden Age, or Roman civilisation). Such an option was not available for Hungarian; increasing awareness of its linguistic relationship to Finnish fuelled the national inferiority complex with regards to language. It is no surprise that counter-theories to the Uralic origins of Hungarian are (increasingly) popular to this day.
Each language reform used different approaches to methods of coining new words: calquing, rejuvenation of old stems, assimilation from dialectal varieties and/or foreign languages, truncation, back-formation, compounding, and derivation. Only Romanian purists had difficulty in recognising the origin of a neologism; script also posed a problem.
Finally, it is worth noting that all language users will have opinions about what is good or bad, right or wrong, if not the conviction that their language (be it a global or endangered language) is in a state of decay, polluted by outside influences and its own speakers. Defining linguistic purism, however, is much harder for its practitioners.