Author: ChrisIlsley » Mon Apr 12, 2010 10:48 am
A sure sign that a language is alive and well is its ability to borrow foreign words and adapt them for its own use. Loan words come about for lots of reasons. This is not actually something to worry about, all languages that survive to the present day are ones that have evolved and survived because of their adaptability. A prime example of that adaptability is English. On the other hand a language that strives for purity on all levels will unfortunately sign it's own death warrant. An example of this process is modern Turkish. A couple of years after the founding of the Turkish Republic a language commission was set up to oversee a purge on all words loaned to Turkish and their replacement by words of Turkish origin. There are many in Turkey that see the work of the TDK as linguistic fascism and believe their work has led to a stagnation of the Language.
I suppose my point is, don't look for purity all the time, you might find that it destroys more than it preserves.