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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6710 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 65 02 August 2006 at 7:37am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
It is primarily one of simplicity. I think you have written somewhere that there are really only dialects. Well yes in a sense. You could in fact take one person and describe make a full description of that persons language (from phonetics to vocabulary)--> his idiolect. His neighbour will probably speak something close to it, while a person 100 kms away will differ on several points. All these idiolects form a canvas where some idiolects are closer, some further away. If enough people speak in almost the same way, there is a bump in the canvas, and you draw a line around the bump and call it a dialect. If there is a large enough concentration of bumps you draw a line around it, call it a language and hope there is ample distance to the next large concentration of bumps. And then afterwards you find that there are dialects that are not really close to the largest concentrations of bumps (=the languages), they somehow fall between them. And there we have two strategies: some - like The Ethnologue - tend to accept these 'small bumps' as languages, whiles others - like me - tend to lump them with the nearest language, even if the distance may be somewhat larger than desirable. But of course I would recognize a language with even one speaker, if that single speaker was far enough from everybody else. We have spreaders and concentrators in linguistics, and I am in the last group. And of course I rejoice when I see a description that exactly matches my own ideas about how to subdivide the Italian linguistic canvas. Furthermore the scenario in Easyboy82's post describe fairly well the feeling that I have when I travel in Italy, namely that Italian is a language that can be spoken in many ways, but it is one language, and its common denominator - which I will from now on call Raiuno-Italian - is the only one I need to concentrate on. EDIT: I did notice the claim that Venetian and other North Italian dialects/languages are not even from the same subdivision of the Romance languages, and yes, some notable linguists support that. I know that the Romance subdivision is based on a small number of very ancient soundshifts, which put standard Italian (which was based primarily on some Central Italian dialects) in the same group as the extinct Dalmatian plus Romanian, with everything else including French and Occitan in the other group. But sometimes the most practical division lines between languages do not follow these historic separations. I would like to have a look at some very old Venetian texts and compare them to on the one hand the oldest occitan texts I can find, on the other hand to old texts in Central Italian texts. Then I will return to the subject. Edited by Iversen on 02 August 2006 at 8:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6837 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 10 of 65 02 August 2006 at 8:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
I totally agree with you,we share the same view on the subject. And yes,sometimes historical and phonetical factors which are the basis of language families sub-divisions are another thing from the practical facts (Romanian and Italian both belong to the Eastern group of Romance languages but Italian is immensely closer to Spanish and French,which belong to the Western group,than to our eastern cousin ) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6751 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 65 02 August 2006 at 9:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
That's not really the case; you're implying that a language is little more than a 'large dialect', but that's not a distinction any linguist would make, and although it's certainly *a* definition, and a simple one, it doesn't really stand scrutiny.
What do you mean by 'far'? Linguistically or geographically? If the former, what are your criteria for measuring?
Even if it's wrong? ;-)
That's as may be, but before the political unification of Italy, there were many countries in the same geographical space, and they often had their own language, a number with far longer histories than 'Italian'. Those languages didn't disappear or suddenly morph into 'standard Italian' upon unification.
If you find you can't 'accept' Venetian as a language, then you'll have to rule out Norwegian, Ukrainian, Slovak, Gaelic and many others as languages, these 'long-recognised' ones being linguistically closer to neighbours than Venetian to Italian. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6710 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 65 02 August 2006 at 9:55am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Checking the history of the Venetian dialect 'Veneto' (or language) is not a small task, that's the one thing I'm sure of now!
I found a few good literary references, as this one to 'Bilora' ) by Angelo Beolco alias il Ruzante (approx. 1496-1542). I would have liked to see some stuff dating back to 1300, but couldn't find it on the internet. The idea would then be to see whether such an old venetian text looked more like a contemporary Occitan text or a contemparary text in some Central Italian dialect such as Tuscan, - of course there was no "Italian" common language yet. I refer to Occitan because the allegation is that Veneto really belonged to the Gallo-Italian subdivision of the Western Romance languages, and Occitan would be the geographically closest member of that group. Unfortunately the early 1500s is a dark period in the Occitan history, - after the troubadurs and before the Filibriges. Nevertheless, without having done a proper scientific study but just trusting my own untrained eyes the Venetian text by Beolco 'looks' and 'feels' nearer Italian than Occitan. It is my subjective judgement, and I'm definitely not an expert on these matters, but I would be harder to convince about the Italo-Gallic character of Venetian now than I was before looking into the matter myself. I do not deny that from a purely historical point of view, based on sound transformations, the Venetian would sit on another branch than Tuscan, but there are other ways that languages can interact than trou´gh sound developments. By the way, I have learnt that French indeed was in extensive use as a literary medium in Northern Italy from the late Middle age and up, so it would not be unexpected to find some Gallicisms in texts from that period. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6710 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 65 02 August 2006 at 10:55am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Now I have posted my impressions of Venetian, I have had time to read Sinfonia's last post (written while I had my nose down into Beolco & co.).
About distance: There is certainly a geographical element, - after all we would not talk about dialects if we couldn't find a correlation between where people live and how they speak. But in this case it would be more correct to envisage a huge table over every element in the idiolects. Low distance in this sense would mean that people share a huge number of traits, while long distance means that they have very few traits in common. A 'bump' is a group of people that have a lot in common, and on investigation we might even discover that they live close together. And measurements? We can't count traits, so instead we measure inter-understandability which is supposed to follow with a big number of common traits. Well I find it easier to understand the problems of dialects and languages when I think in these terms. For Sinfonia it may just not function, - that's the problem with analogies. So yes, I really do state that from a linguistic point of view language is just a 'large dialect', and I don't see why that's worse than stating that there really only are dialects. Of course there are more to the definition of a language than just linguistics, - for instance: is there a school system which teaches one standardized form of the language? Is there an academy? Theaters? TV channels? But you could imagine all these things even for dialects. About the list of languages that disappear if I don't accept Venetian as a language. I'll be brief here because this thread really is about Italian dialects. But you mention Norwegian. In fact there are linguists who would say that Danish + Norwegian + Swedish is just one language with three dialects. Well, if you only measure inter-understandability then that would be possible. But there is one linguistic factor (and several sociological factors) that has convinced most linguists to accept them as separate languages: there is no common denominator for these three 'dialects', no raiuno-Italian, and absolutely no sign that there will ever be one. Each 'dialect' behaves like any other language, except that it is rubbing shoulders with the other two. In fact I think the case of Scandinavian language(s) demonstrate fairly well in what sense a language is just a 'large' dialect. And Norwegian is interesting also because it is another case where language history doesn't tell the whole history. It is normally put in the West Scandinavian group with Icelandic and Faroese, while Danish and Swedish are in the Eastern Scandinavian group (together with Bokmå lthat was really just Danish writing used by Norwegians). That system has absolutely no relevance for today's languages, - Icelandic and Faroese have stayed in their historic forms, while the other Scandinavian languages together - across the bondary - have developed away from the old form. As far as I can see it is the just about the same thing that has happened to Venetian. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2006 at 10:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6950 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 14 of 65 02 August 2006 at 10:59am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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The practical "definition" of a dialect vs language is that in a free society a language is expected to be taught in schools, be they national or just regional, and have its peculiarities effectively "codified" for that reason, while a dialect is expected to be getting closer and closer to the "standard" language over time, and is thus effectively slated for slow natural death in a modern society.
This may be in conflict with a linguist's definition of a dialect or a language, but from a learner's standpoint it may be more relevant since ultimately the issue is whether the version of the language one learns is going to be useful for communication and consumption of cultural products. The availability of learning materials is also an important consideration. Edited by frenkeld on 02 August 2006 at 11:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| easyboy82 Pentaglot Groupie Italy Joined 6837 days ago 72 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek | Message 15 of 65 02 August 2006 at 11:10am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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[QUOTE=Sinfonia] That's as may be, but before the political unification of Italy, there were many countries in the same geographical space, and they often had their own language, a number with far longer histories than 'Italian'. Those languages didn't disappear or suddenly morph into 'standard Italian' upon unification.
QUOTE] You don't consider that even when Italy was not united all the inhabitants of the peninsula felt there was a tie between them and the language was one of these ties:even at that time they didn't felt as they were speaking several languages but many varieties of the same language.This language had a litterary form,that given by Dante,Petrarca and Boccaccio,and was given its "modern standard" in the first half of the 19th century by Alessandro Manzoni in "I promessi sposi". Litterary language has been one of the factor that built the Italian identity when there was no Italian state.Standard Italian is born as a litterary language. One thing is theory another one is reality. Ok,theorically Venetians has some carachteristics that make it distinct from other Italian dialects but if everyone in Italy and Venetians speakers themselves think it is a dialect or better a regional form of Italian,substantially mutually intelligible by non speakers,the distinction is pure theory and we must be aware of the social context too and this context say that there are four italian dialects group (Gallo-romace,central,southern.. ) with Standard Italian as "roof-language" of them all: this is the actual situation as it is perceived,no matter what the historical evolution has been in the past. By the way my topic was not intended to open a linguistic diatribe but only to suggest foreigners (who are less aware of the Italian reality) not to study regional forms of Italian in order to communicate better in Italy because this is not the case. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6751 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 65 02 August 2006 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Sad, but all too true. So much in modern life is geared towards making us mass-consuming automatons. Even when it comes to the very language(s) we use to take us through life, the ultimate question seems to be: what will knowing it allow us to buy? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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