[sudo-discuss] revolutionaries and the creation of new language

There is a yin and a yang to everything. Here are a few examples of the "dark side" of reshaping language... I've read a lot of history about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge... these groups were very interested in reforming a corrupt society, finding new ways of doing things. They are not shining examples but I can say that their intentions started out pure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_rule_of_Cambodia#Establishing_the_… On the surface, society in Democratic Kampuchea was strictly egalitarian<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarian>an>. The Khmer language <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_language>, like many in Southeast Asia, has a complex system of usages to define speakers' rank and social status. These usages were abandoned. People were encouraged to call each other "friend", or "comrade" (in Khmer, មិត្ដ mitt), and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as bowing or folding the hands in salutation. Language was transformed in other ways. The Khmer Rouge invented new terms. People were told they must "forge" (*lot dam*) a new revolutionary character, that they were the "instruments" (*opokar*) of the Angkar, and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary times (*chheu satek arom*, or "memory sickness") could result in their receiving Angkar's "invitation" to be deindustrialised and to live in a concentration camp.