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Actually, people try to reinvent oral language all the time! People go into tizzies about whether one should say "who" or "whom," "me" or "I," "gay" or "queer," "black" or "colored" or "negro" or African American."


They have written artificial "universal languages" such as Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido and (my personal favorite) "Volapük." The fact that the word "Volapük" is now used in Scandinavian languages to mean "nonsense" gives an idea of how successful it has been. :D


People have also tried to reinvent their languages for political reasons. When Greece got its independence from the Ottoman Empire, language purists tried to rid the language of all its Turkish loanwords. It didn't work - when you want to buy shoes in Greece, you go to the "papoutsidiko" (< turkish "pabuç" - shoe), nobody ever used the official new word "ypodhimatopoleion." (Would you? :shock:)  Turkey went even further - they changed their entire alphabet and banned huge lists of Arabic and Persian-based words. Today nobody can read or understand anything written before 1927 without special stud"y. A very powerful tool in the hands of a state interested in controlling access to information. The poor Uighurs had their alphabet changed three times in 50 years!


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