The recent WOTD entry for "courriel" mentioned that "Attempts to artificially direct the course of language development have a dismal record." I wonder if anyone has written a history or study of such attempts. I’m aware of a few, such as Esperanto and the attempt (I think by George Bernard Shaw) to standardize English spelling. Adding individual new words or changing the meaning of existing words is comparatively easy, but that’s another topic.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda almost single-handedly revived Hebrew as a spoken language. His “Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew,” published by Langenscheidt in eighteen volumes between 1910 and 1959, was his academic life’s work. He “invented” thousands of new words, and was among the founders of a predecessor organization to the Hebrew Language Academy.

Amazon carries a biography of Ben-Yehuda titled “Eliezer Ben-Yehuda: The Father of Modern Hebrew.”

I think that Agoraphile’s example is a good one.  It takes truly devoted people to revive or revise a language.  It must be a central purpose to an social identity.  

Sitran  

[quote author=Sitran link=board=omni;num=1059497942;start=0#2 date=07/29/03 at 18:09:56]I think that Agoraphile’s example is a good one.  It takes truly devoted people to revive or revise a language.  It must be a central purpose to an social identity.

There must be an extremely strong social/religeous/historical force, I believe. Zionism is a good example. Think of all the new words that were coined during the French Revolution, too. The odd gaggle of professors or state legislatures can’t normally alter the direction of language development at all. I don’t know of any success stories, but I know of several pathetic failures.

- PW