Talk:Literary language

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Examples[edit]

The two examples given are not very illuminating to me. I'm left with more confusion than before as to what is a good example of literary English, and what is a contrasting example of spoken English. 131.107.0.73 21:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This article chafes me badly[edit]

Hi. The fact is, I would start a sentence with "consider this sentence." I am a professor. The fact that most Americans choose to speak poor English in most situations--myself, an unrepentant Southerner, included--does not change the fact that there is a correct and an incorrect way to say most things. I choose, from time to time, to speak incorrectly. That is, I choose, from time to time, to mirror the speech idiosyncrasies of those around me. Calling correct English a literary dialect is singularly moronic, just as calling correct Spanish (which is no more derived from Valladolid than it is from Cuenca) a literary dialect is wrong. If you have a problem with this, then you need to think hard about the disadvantages faced by young people who are constantly told that what they do, think, or speak is wonderful, when in fact what they speak is considered garbage by prospective employers. Dave1898 02:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Written language <-> Literary language[edit]

The paragraph duplicated below is about the written language of English. The written language is obviously commonly deployed to write down the literary language, but it is not obvious that the literary language would have anything directly to do with the spelling etc. The paragraph should be moved to the written language page.

Likewise, native readers and writers of English are often unaware that the complexities of English spelling make written English a somewhat artificial construct. The traditional spelling of English, at least for inherited words, preserves a late Middle English phonology that is no one's speech dialect; the artificial preservation of this much earlier form of the language in writing might make much of what we write intelligible to Chaucer, even if we could not understand his speech. When written language comes to be strongly divergent from spoken language, the resulting situation is called diglossia. Tom McArthur suggests that it is at least arguable that written and spoken English have reached that stage.--Ippei 20:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Agreed.--Ethicoaestheticist 21:35, 3 April 2007 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is an excellent page, and I found it absolutely enlightening. Please do not remove it, and take away the experience I just had from other potential readers. Brilliant. Pages like this are the reason that Wikipedia is better than Brittanica. You would never find a page like this in Brittanica. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.21.39.207 (talk • contribs) 18:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC).Reply[reply]

I appreciate your enthusiasm - and I don't think anyone is suggesting it be removed. But, the article as it stands confuses written language with literary language.--Ethicoaestheticist 23:53, 4 April 2007 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There are more literary languages...[edit]

Occitan was a literary language over French in Southern France until it bgegan to die off. Why is this not included? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.98.234 (talk) 08:30, 29 July 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]