From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Basque
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 19:17:22 +0100



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "chris wright" <cwright.21stcentury-AT-rcn.com>
To: "aut-op-sy" <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: 28. februar 2003 17.23
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Basque


Chris; I take the critique. It was well deserved.

But two marginal points. There is no way around
some degree of  standardization of written languague
if it is to serve as communication tool at all. If all wrote
precisely as they spoke most people probably would
have a problem understanding even what they had written
themselves. Of course, as always, rules are to be
broken, but to play, you first need a framework to
play within and without. That the standardarization
norms almost always is based on the language of
the elites, is another thing, and comes as no
surprise.  I seem to recall  that modern Swedish -- 
oddly enough -- partially is an excepetion. So is originally
certainnly also the formentioned so-called Nynorsk.,
based as it is on peasant dialects, although it
increasingly has evolved into a academic an
bureuacratic language.

So to the following << 'races' (which as Thiago correctly
pointed out, obviously do not exist in biological or
cultural terms.) >>

Races do not exist. Period. But the notion of such do.
And these notions are wedded to biology -- to some-
thing you supposedly intrinsically are, and are born as,
and not merely something you do. There is a slippery
path to this from other forms of chauvinist generalizations,
but it is still an important difference.

Harald



  







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