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Old 24th March 2005, 01:23 AM   #28
tom hyle
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Location: Houston, TX, USA
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[QUOTE=tom hyle: Usually the determining factor is which tribe the speaker comes from or has made a special study of....)[/QUOTE]


I think I explained my misuse of "provincialism" quite thoroughly, though I left out that in the N American English language it has slightly different connotations than nationalism, other than just the size of the defining body (nation/province), and people seem so prickly around here concerning the word nationalism....

To say a spelling is nationalistic implies that it is defended out of pride in nation. To say it is provincial carries more of the idea that its sense of sole validity is based on ignorance of matters in far places; the assumption that whatever is around you is "it".......all there is; all that matters; all that's proper.....This is at the heart of "proper spelling" "proper dress" "decent haircut" and other such concepts. Further, it is not exclusively used in a political/geogrphic literal sense, but can refer to conceptual provinces, such as sociology, Egyptology, etc.
I'm not sure why you keep talking about Arabic as if you were contradicting me? All I said about Arabic is it is Afrasian and I don't know if it has vowels. All I said about Hebrew is it is Afrasian and doesn't have vowels (though I think there may now be a new version that does have; how accepted/widespread it is I don't know.

Last edited by tom hyle; 24th March 2005 at 02:34 AM.
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