Requests for comment/Start allowing ancient languages/Note on claim that Classical languages cannot coin new terms

Claim that Classical languages "cannot coin new terms"

To be clear, this highlights these views because they are the only remaining explanation we have for the current policy (assuming that it is accepted that Classical languages are in fact long standing purely second language vehicles). It appears these views hold a lot of sway, and seem decisive for LangCom in keeping the policy as it is now.

The current justifications being made on the Committee list for the blanket ban on Ancient Languages are that Classical languages, are incapable of new language formation:

When a classical language is to accommodate new terminology, it follows that this does not represent the culture that is the source of the classical language. It then is no longer that classical language it has become a (re)constructed language. As a consequence it fails criteria for admissability.

This is a very problematic viewpoint. The position as stated above appears to be that "post Classical" linguistic formation, in the long and continuous second language periods of Classical languages , is somehow linguistically invalid.

This view appears to invalidate around 99.99% of the usage of these languages. Sanskrit, for instance, stopped having "native speakers" around 2000 years ago; Latin say 1400 years ago and Classical Chinese say 1800 years ago. As we discussed above, the most productive periods are during these latter periods, not the Classical periods. Being linguistically productive, naturally means that new words are created while the language is exclusively used by second language people, up to the present day.

The view that only Classical (native) formations are "valid" would not, in my opinion, find support from scholars of those languages, who tend to view the different vocabularies used in second language eras, including up to now, as differing kinds of style, eg "Medieval Latin", "Neo Latin", "Modern Latin", rather than "linguistically invalid" as this appears to claim.

Similarly, the Classical Chinese language is sometimes divided into a "Classical" period, with following (initially featuring diglossia and latterly wholly second language) production classed as "Literary Chinese", lasting as the main vehicle of Chinese writing up to the 1930s. The stated policy position above dismisses the dominant portion of Chinese cultural production from 200 AD to 1930 as somehow "invalid".

The correct standard to apply therefore would be "well-established methods of extension of the language to modern topic areas" or similar, as we proposed originally, alongside criteria to esablish that the language has significant use today.

Again, if the supposed linguistically invalidity of non-Classical vocabulary is the justification for not making these light adjustments to the policy, or maintaining the position where Classical languages including Sanskrit and Classical Chinese are discriminated against, then I think it is based on sand. --JimKillock (talk) 07:25, 23 September 2021 (UTC)