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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6607 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 225 of 299 28 October 2013 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, a specific example is that everyone uses the Latin alphabet on the Internet and while txt'ing. An ugly version without diacritics too.
On the other hand 5-10 years ago most Russians txt'ed in the Latin alphabet as well, but nowadays all phones have Cyrillics and I'm, like, the only one who still doesn't use them :P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5440 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 226 of 299 28 October 2013 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While looking at this question of the names of official languages, I came across this Wikipedia quote on the
relationship between Dutch and Afrikaans. "In general, research suggests that mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Afrikaans is better than between Dutch and Frisian[24] or between Danish and Swedish.[20] The South African poet writer Breyten Breytenbach, attempting to visualize the language distance to anglophones once remarked that the differences between (Standard) Dutch and Afrikaans are comparable to those between the Received Pronunciation and Southern American English.[25] Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect in South Africa up until the early 20th century when it became recognised as a distinct language under South-African law, alongside Standard Dutch; which it eventually replaced as an official language." I find the last line particularly interesting. How did a dialect of Dutch - Cape Dutch -become a language - Afrikaans? By it being declared official. It's a simple as that. The language didn't change overnight, its status did. Edited by s_allard on 28 October 2013 at 7:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4717 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 227 of 299 28 October 2013 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not as simple as that AT ALL. Afrikaans had developed in isolation
for 300 years already, the grammar has been substantially simplified, and it has taken up an enormous amount of vocabulary and loanwords from other sources. Yes, I can speak to Afrikaans speakers, but yes, it will cost me a lot of energy to do so if they speak quickly. The Cape Dutch dialect is based on old Dutch dialects from 400 years ago. It's not exactly a recent branching off... people who go there (Dutch people) need to actually adapt a bit to the local Afrikaans. They can't just go in and speak. You need exposure to it. Edited by tarvos on 28 October 2013 at 7:55pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7166 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 228 of 299 28 October 2013 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
 Man, the latching onto examples with the political angle is getting really noticeable.
I guess that Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, Min, Mandarin etc. will forever be dialects rather than languages until the Politburo decrees otherwise, right? Um, yeah... So how about that 6WC? P.S. How about the development of Vulgar Latin to Old French, Old Spanish etc.? I highly doubt that those became treated and/or imagined as languages because some gang of nobles or tin-pot dictator in some God-forsaken fiefdom said so. Edited by Chung on 28 October 2013 at 8:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6592 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 229 of 299 28 October 2013 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
For a great introduction to how politics trumps linguistics in China, read section three of this great article by Professor Victor H. Mair. Then read the whole article, because it's great.
Edited by Ari on 28 October 2013 at 8:53pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5344 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 230 of 299 28 October 2013 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
We have been called much worse :-) Besides we tend to think of ourselves as a tiny country. In Poland many years ago I was at a Polish course, and was put next to an Austrian that I was supposed to cooperate on the adjectives with. One of the adjective pairs used was big/small, and when I said I came from a small country he protested, believing I did not understand the difference between the Polish words for big and small. He came from a small country, I came from a big country. I was about to protest, because in my opinion I really did come from a small country, but then I realised that he was right. Norway is almost the size of Poland, or Germany, we are not a small country. But after the tragedy of July 22nd, 2011, one of the most iconic songs was "Mitt lille land" - which means "My small country". Mitt lille land Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 28 October 2013 at 9:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7166 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 231 of 299 28 October 2013 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Indeed, Ari. I just can't quite believe even after the last 25 or so pages in this thread that s_allard (and quite possibly several others who haven't posted yet) or anyone who studies languages comes to assign that much weight to political pronouncements on linguistic taxonomy. I do admit though that before I had embarked on studying several languages and happily revolved in the world of English and French, I could have been more easily hoodwinked and more accepting of second-hand accounts on most languages than I am now. Hell, I was itching to respond directly to s_allard only to have tarvos beat me to it. After having dabbled in Afrikaans using TY Afrikaans a while ago and for fun compared the content with TY Dutch, the elevation of the political to reclassify Afrikaans is totally at odds with what I got a taste of in my own study.
Learning about and remembering the nomenclature is one thing; finding out what's beneath the nomenclature is another. If the name of Afrikaans were still "Cape Dutch" holding everything else constant, I'd be a fool to think that "Cape Dutch" is just a dialect of Dutch rather than a distinct language whose mutual intelligibility with Dutch is indeed lower than suggested with a compound name ending with "Dutch". 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5463 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 232 of 299 28 October 2013 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Let's not forget that Bokmål/Riksmål also was created as a written language because they didn't think that it was appropriate to continue using Danish as the national language. Bokmål is also the result of planned language reform and a series of political and bureaucratic decisions. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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