Linguistic purism (or
linguistic protectionism) is the definition of one
language varietyIn sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a form of a language used by speakers of that language. This may include dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard language variety itself...
as purer than other varieties, often in reference to a perceived decline from an ideal past or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply to an abstract ideal. The decline may take the form of change of vocabulary,
syncretismIn linguistics, syncretism is the identity of form of distinct morphological forms of a word.For example, in English, the nominative and accusative forms of you and it are the same, whereas he/him, she/her, etc., have different forms depending on grammatical case. In Latin, the nominative and...
of grammatical elements, or
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
s. The unwanted similarity is often with a neighboring language whose speakers are culturally or politically dominant.
Linguistic purism (or
linguistic protectionism) is the definition of one
language varietyIn sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a form of a language used by speakers of that language. This may include dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard language variety itself...
as purer than other varieties, often in reference to a perceived decline from an ideal past or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply to an abstract ideal. The decline may take the form of change of vocabulary,
syncretismIn linguistics, syncretism is the identity of form of distinct morphological forms of a word.For example, in English, the nominative and accusative forms of you and it are the same, whereas he/him, she/her, etc., have different forms depending on grammatical case. In Latin, the nominative and...
of grammatical elements, or
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
s. The unwanted similarity is often with a neighboring language whose speakers are culturally or politically dominant. The abstract ideal may invoke logic, clarity, or the grammar of "classic" languages.
Linguistic purism is often presented as conservative, as a "protection" of a language from the "aggression" of other languages or of "conservation" of the
nationalNationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...
Volkgeist, but is often innovative in defining a new standard.
Linguistic purism is sometimes part of governmental
language policyMany countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
which is enforced in various ways.
It should not be confused with language revival/revitalization.
Cognate languages
In one common case, two closely-related languages or language varieties are in competition, one weaker, the other stronger. Speakers of the stronger language may characterize the weaker language as a "
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
" of the strong language, with the implication that it has no independent existence. In response, defenders of the "weaker" language go to great lengths to prove that their language is equally autonomous.
In this context,
YiddishYiddish is a non-territorial High German language of Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world...
and
DutchDutch is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language, and over 5 million people as a second language.
"1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language...
have in the past sometimes been considered dialects of
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
. In the case of
Low GermanLow German or Low Saxon is any of the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands.-Geographical extent:-Low German in Europe:Dialects...
the debate is still current. Since linguistic science offers no scholarly definition of a dialect, and linguists regard the distinction with scepticism (
cf. A language is a dialect with an army and navy"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" is one of the most frequently used aphorisms in the discussion of the distinction between dialect and language. It points out the influence that political conditions can have over a community's perception of the status of a language or dialect...
), the argument is really about subjective questions of identity politics, and at times it can be conducted in a very emotional tone.
Writing systems
Closely related languages often tend to mix. One way of preventing this is using different writing systems or different
spelling systemsThe orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós and γράφειν...
.
The extreme case was with
MoldovanMoldovan , written in the Latin script, is one of the names of the official language of the Republic of Moldova. The language spoken in Moldova is identical to Romanian, sharing the same literary standard,...
and
RomanianRomanian or Daco-Romanian is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova. It has official status in Romania, Republic of Moldova, and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia...
languages, which are virtually identical in all respects, except that Moldovan used
Cyrillic scriptThe Cyrillic script writing system isan alphabet developed in the First Bulgarian Empire, and used in the Slavic national languages of Russian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian, and Ukrainian, and in the non-Slavic languages of Moldovan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Tuvan, and...
(which is still in use in
TransnistriaTransnistria, also known as Trans-Dniester or Transdniestria is a disputed region in Eastern Europe, located mostly in a strip between the Dniester River and Ukraine...
) and Romanian used
Latin scriptThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
.
Another example is
YiddishYiddish is a non-territorial High German language of Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world...
, which is very close to
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
, but uses the
Hebrew alphabetThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script is the better-known of two script standards used to write the...
instead of the Latin alphabet, and so keeps its separateness. This results in the situation where, for example, an Israeli could read out loud a Yiddish text to a German (who could not read Hebrew), who could understand it, while the Israeli could not.
The next example is
HindiStandard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
and Urdu, which are traditionally kept separated by using
DevanagariDevanagari , also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, lacks distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together. Devanāgarī is the main script used to...
and
Arabic scriptThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
, respectively. This is a well-known example often cited in linguistic texts; however, in recent decades, it has been observed that the languages are tending to drift much further apart, due to the Sanskritization and Anglicization of Hindi and the
ArabizationArabization describes a growing cultural influence on a non-Arab area that gradually changes into one that speaks Arabic and/or incorporates Arab culture...
and
PersianizationPersianization or Persianisation is a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-Persian becomes Persian. People may also be Persianized/persified; an immigrant to Iran becomes Iraninized as he or she acclimates to the culture.Historically, it was commonly used in...
of Urdu.
SerbianSerbian is a South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and in the Serbian diaspora...
and
CroatianCroatian is a South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Croatian minorities in some neighbouring countries, in the Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croatian diaspora....
languages also differ mainly in using Cyrillic and Latin scripts, respectively. Both of them exhibit high degree of mutual intelligibility as both standard Serbian and Croatian are based on essentially the same dialect (stylised form of Neoštokavian).
Unrelated or distantly related languages
Often one language has a higher social status, or has an established tradition from the time it had a higher social status. However, it may be a minority language and actively threatened by the majority language. An example is Swedish in Finland: the educated upper class was Swedish-speaking prior to the 20th century, and the rules and regulations protecting the Swedish language remain in force. Although the Swedish-speakers represent a 5% minority in a country where 93% speak Finnish, Swedish is an official language and a test in Swedish is required for all public servants.
Based on the approach
- Archaizing purism: This occurs when a speech community tries to resuscitate the language of a perceived golden age of literature. Examples: Arabic
Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
, Tanittamil IyakkamThe Thanittamil Iyakkam is a movement of linguistic purism in Tamil literature attempting to emulate the "unadulterated Tamil language" of the Sangam period, avoiding Sanskrit, Persian and English loanwords. It was notably initiated by the writings of G...
in Tamil languageTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius and Réunion as well as emigrant communities around the world...
, IcelandicIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Its closest relatives are Faroese and certain Norwegian dialects such as Telemark dialect and Sognamål....
(see also: preservation of Icelandic), KatharevousaKatharevousa , is a form of the Greek language conceived in the early 19th century by Greek intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais . A graduate of the University of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris...
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
, SanskritSanskrit revival is the accumulation of attempts at reviving the Sanskrit language that have been undertaken.-History:In 1891 there was organized activity among the Theosophists in India promoting and participating in the revival of Sanskrit...
, LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
(puristic obsession with classical forms during Renaissance). See also Language revivalLanguage revitalization, language revival or reversing language shift is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to reverse the decline of a language. If the decline is severe, the language may be endangered,...
.
- Ethnographic purism: This form is based on an idealization of the countryside, folk stories and dialects. Examples: Nynorsk
Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of the two official written languages in Norway, the other being Bokmål. Just above 10% of the Norwegian population use Nynorsk as their primary written language...
(New Norwegian), some versions of Demotic Greek.
- Elitist purism: Associated with the language spoken at the court.
- Logical purism: For several centuries, English grammarians have condemned double negative
A double negative occurs when two forms of negation are used in the same clause. In some languages , negative forms are consistently used throughout the sentence to express a single negation. In other languages, a double negative is used to negate a negation, and therefore, it resolves to a positive...
s on the grounds that two negatives make a positive.
- Reformist purism: The main feature here is to break the bonds with the past. An example of this is the removal of Persian
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
and Arabic words during Turkish language reform under AtatürkMustafa Kemal Atatürk was a Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, and founder of the Republic of Turkey as well as its first President....
in order to break with the Persian- and Arabic- influenced Ottoman Turkish languageOttoman Turkish is the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic and Persian languages and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
. Other examples are the purist efforts in languages like HausaHausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more.-Classification:...
, Swahili and HindiStandard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
to break with the colonial past. In addition, language policiesMany countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
may seek to decrease similarities between mutually intelligible languages for ethno-political reasonsIdentity politics refers to political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of social minorities, or self-identified social interest groups. Not all members of any given group are necessarily involved in identity politics....
, as has been the case with Dano-Norwegian, HindustaniHindustani or Hindi-Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language that spans several closely related dialects in Pakistan and northern India. Although Hindustani is based largely on the Khariboli dialect, it also includes several nonstandard dialects of the Hindi languages...
(Hindi and Urdu), MalayMalay is a group of languages closely related to each other to the point of mutual intelligibility but that linguists consider to be separate languages. They are grouped into a group called "Local Malay", part of a larger group called "Malayan" within the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the...
/IndonesianIndonesian is the official national language of Indonesia. It is based on a version of Classical Malay of the Riau-Johor Sultanate. It was first declared the official language with the declaration of Indonesian independence in 1945, following the 1928 unifying-language declaration in the...
and BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite...
/MacedonianMacedonian is the official language of Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian language and to a certain extent with Serbian and Croatian...
.
- Playful purism: This form existed early in the 20th century and is aimed at making a mockery of purism or merely for the sake of amusement or literary aesthetism.
- Xenophobic or patriotic purism: involves the elimination or exclusion of foreign elements. Examples include High Norwegian
Høgnorsk, meaning "High Norwegian", is a term for conservative varieties of the Norwegian language form Nynorsk. In practice, Høgnorsk is the same as Landsmål, but has other connotations. Professor Torleiv Hannaas is often credited for introducing the term in an article in 1922,...
and AnglishAnglish is a form of linguistic purism in English which favours words of Germanic origin over those of Romance and Greek origin.The earliest form of English emerged during the 5th century, when Germanic-speaking tribes migrated to Britain and eventually established the Kingdom of England...
. Many EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
writers of the 19th and 20th centuries extolled the virtues of "strong" Anglo-Saxon words such as foreword, which was coined to replace the "weak" Romance word preface. FranceFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
, GermanyGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
and GreeceGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
are known for their preference for coining words over borrowing English words.
This classification of puristic orientations made by George Thomas represents ideal forms. In practice, though, these orientations are often combined. We may also add other approaches, such as the following:
- Democratic-oriented purism: This is aimed at replacing linguistic items associated with an elite norm with linguistic items regarded as more representative of the language society as a whole.
- Anti-purism: A puristic reaction to a manifestation of purism, directed at the removal of neologisms originating from a puristic intervention.
Based on the goals
- Democratic purism: Aims at safeguarding the intelligibility of (modern) concepts for a larger group of language users through enforcing their expression by the means of common, every-day words or expressions (for example, “to back up / backing” instead of “sustain[ment]”)
- Unificatory purism: Aims at better uniting the overall user group of a language by reducing certain regional or professional linguistic peculiarities which could separate varying aspects of life, or even obstruct interconnectivity, between individuals or sub-groups of different regional provenience or professional background.
- Defensive purism: Aims at defending a language from external threats. Mostly, these are to be understood as influx of foreign ideas which a given language group (or its political system) disdains or has overthrown, or influx of foreign words or expressions which tend to substitute innate vocabulary, thus diminishing and/or endangering supra-regional or inter-generational intelligibility within a language area or between its present speakers and the literary remnants of their venerated ancestors, i. e., some kind of “classical” heritage (as e. g. Shakespeare's usage is already no more widely understood amongst many of today's English speakers).
- Prestige purism: Aims at varying prestige functions.
- Delimiting purism: Aims at establishing some kind of separating functions.
Based on the intensity
- Marginal purism: In this pattern purism never becomes at any stage a value-feature of the speech community. On the contrary, there is a certain openness to all sources of enrichment, at the same time characterized by a lack among the language elite of intellectual digestion of foreign influxes, or by a lack of such an elite as a whole. Examples: English
English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
, RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
, PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
, Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
.
- Moderate, discontinuous purism: In this pattern, a moderate attitude is discernible over a long period of time. Examples: Spanish
Spanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
, FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
, PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
and ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
.
- Trimming purism. A reactive correction to a potentially dangerous trend in the development of a standard language. Examples: Danish
Danish is one of the North Germanic languages , a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany where it holds the...
, SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish...
, DutchDutch is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language, and over 5 million people as a second language.
"1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language...
, SlovakThe Slovak language , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages ....
.
- Evolutionary purism: In this pattern purism is seen early in the development of a written language. There are no radical changes or orientation. During the standardisation process, the purism gains momentum after which it slows down. Examples: Hungarian
Hungarian is a Uralic language unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries...
, FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
, EstonianEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
, HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
, CroatianCroatian is a South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Croatian minorities in some neighbouring countries, in the Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croatian diaspora....
and Slovene.
- Oscillatory purism: Involves repeated swings between intense purism and a more inclusive attitude. Examples: German
German is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
, CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak and, to a lesser extent, to Polish and Sorbian. - Official status :Czech is widely...
and Yiddish.
- Stable, consistent purism: In this pattern no interruption or fluctuation in intensity is seen. Purism is a constant value-feature of the speech community. Examples: Arabic, Tamil
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius and Réunion as well as emigrant communities around the world...
and IcelandicIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Its closest relatives are Faroese and certain Norwegian dialects such as Telemark dialect and Sognamål....
.
- Revolutionary purism: An abrupt and violent change from the previously mentioned patterns to another. Examples: Turkish
Turkish is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other...
.
Based on linguistic level
- Lexical purism: directed at the lexicon, first of all against direct lexical loans, often combined with the development of loan translations (such as in Norwegian: hand out > støtteark and snowboard > snøbrett).
- Orthographic purism: directed against foreign orthographic elements (such as in Norwegian: genre > sjanger, in Czech: obauwat > obouvat).
- Morphological purism: directed against foreign inflection and declension (such as the resistance to plural -s in noun endings in Scandinavian languages).
- Syntactic purism: directed at syntactic features from other languages (such as the stylistic resistance in Nynorsk against some passive constructions and some constructions with the genitive).
- Phonetic purism: directed at foreign phonemes and phonematical combinations.
Other forms
- Regressive purism. The eradication of very old loan-words. It is one of the main features of ultrapurism.
- Ultrapurism: The extreme upper limit of purism. In this pattern, everything expressed by human speech can become a target for puristic intervention, even geographical names, proper names, and names of physical elements, chemicals, etc. The only two recorded examples of this are High Icelandic
High Icelandic or Hyper-Icelandic is an artificial language started by the Belgian Jozef Braekmans, aimed at removing loan words from the modern Icelandic language. Its vocabulary is described by its creator as an "ultra-purist" compilation of already existing Icelandic neologisms, and other...
(Háfrónska), and the usage of the German renaissance humanist Johann Georg TurmairJohannes Aventinus was a Bavarian historian and philologist. He wrote Annals of Bavaria, a valuable record of the early history of Germany...
who even translated the name of the ancient Roman general Fabius CunctatorQuintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator , was a Roman politician and general, born in Rome around 280 BC and died in Rome in 203 BC. He was Roman Consul five times and was twice Dictator in 221 and again in 217 BC. He reached the office of Roman Censor in 230 BC...
into „Zauderer Bohnenmaier“ (i. e. literally “Laggard Bean-Mayor”).
Linguistic purism by language
- Croatian
Croatian is a South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Croatian minorities in some neighbouring countries, in the Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croatian diaspora....
– Croatian linguistic purismOne of the features of the Croatian language, common to many Central-European languages is word coinage.The Croatian tradition of neologisms and linguistic purism goes back to the earliest documents of literacy , but it was in the Renaissance Croatian literature that this characteristic has become...
- English
English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
– AnglishAnglish is a form of linguistic purism in English which favours words of Germanic origin over those of Romance and Greek origin.The earliest form of English emerged during the 5th century, when Germanic-speaking tribes migrated to Britain and eventually established the Kingdom of England...
- Greek
Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
– KatharevousaKatharevousa , is a form of the Greek language conceived in the early 19th century by Greek intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais . A graduate of the University of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris...
- Icelandic
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Its closest relatives are Faroese and certain Norwegian dialects such as Telemark dialect and Sognamål....
– Háíslenska/High IcelandicHigh Icelandic or Hyper-Icelandic is an artificial language started by the Belgian Jozef Braekmans, aimed at removing loan words from the modern Icelandic language. Its vocabulary is described by its creator as an "ultra-purist" compilation of already existing Icelandic neologisms, and other...
- Norwegian
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants ...
– Høgnorsk/High NorwegianHøgnorsk, meaning "High Norwegian", is a term for conservative varieties of the Norwegian language form Nynorsk. In practice, Høgnorsk is the same as Landsmål, but has other connotations. Professor Torleiv Hannaas is often credited for introducing the term in an article in 1922,...
- Tamil
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius and Réunion as well as emigrant communities around the world...
– Tanittamil IyakkamThe Thanittamil Iyakkam is a movement of linguistic purism in Tamil literature attempting to emulate the "unadulterated Tamil language" of the Sangam period, avoiding Sanskrit, Persian and English loanwords. It was notably initiated by the writings of G...
See also
- Inkhorn debate
- Language policy
Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
- Language planning
Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of a language or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
- Language revival/revitalization
- Language secessionism
Language secessionism or linguistic secessionism is an attitude consisting in separating a language variety from the language to which it normally belongs, in order to make this variety considered as a distinct language...
- Language imperialism
Linguistic imperialism, or language imperialism, "involves the transfer of a dominant language to other peoples. The transfer is essentially a demonstration of power—traditionally, military power but also, in the modern world, economic power—and aspects of the dominant culture are usually...