On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, Jens Wilkinson wrote:

> 2009/10/28 Zeinelabidin Elhassi <[log in to unmask]>:
>>
>> [trim for brevity]

> This is a bit off-topic, but I think the perspective is interesting.
> Actually in Japan, older people complain that young Japanese people
> are not polite at all! I think it is probably always true in any
> culture, that older people complain that young people have no
> culture. It is a similar issue with languages: people always complain
> that language was better in the past. In Western Europe, we tend to
> think back to Cicero as a golden age of language, but apparently even
> Cicero complained that Latin had deteriorated compared to a prevous
> golden age.

One matter that this puts me in mind of, which has often been alluded
to but rarely addressed, is the matter of how a conIAL design
could/would address differing concepts of social registers in different
cultures and how they are reflected in speech.

Nearly thirty years ago I spent some time among a number of immigrants
and (in most cases) refugees from Cambodia in the USA.  I never learned
Khmer, and my conclusion may be incorrect, but from observation I came
to the idea that in Khmer there were three different words for
agreement (roughly, 'yes') depending on the social registers of the
addresser and addressee.

How would a conIAL deal with this in practice, inasmuch as potential
learners/users might consider a proposed language seriously defective
if it does not reflect social registers used in their own L1's? 
Perhaps a set of optional honorifics.  But in such a case, someone who
does not habitually use them might give offense in a culture which
does.

-- 
Paul Bartlett