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You are not a real polyglot if... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 65 of 299 17 October 2013 at 4:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Considering a language based on recognition as a separate national entity causes another problem and only feeds the agendas of politicians. What about languages or even dialects that have no such support? Is Skolt Saami excluded because there's no national entity called "Skoltland"? Is it forever cosigned to being anything but a language because no one has whipped up the speech community to agitate for sovereignty? If you basically let politicians decide what constitutes a language or not, then we'd have the situation that the number of languages is wholly restricted because of the say-so of people outside the profession of linguists (analogous to having mathematical concepts or historical concepts defined by non-mathematicians and non-historians respectively). Taking to this logical conclusion, then if I were to declare the way in which I use English (from prosody to the cultural references in my "wheelhouse") to constitute a separate language, then in this screwy world, my neighbours should seek translators since none of my neighbours speak "my" language. Come on, s_allard, you can't be serious (this is even more odd to me considering that the languages in your profile are all pluricentric so I would have thought you would have been well-versed in the distinction between language as a political/ethnic/tribal marker, and language as a communicative code made up of the "boring" but apolitical elements of phonology, morphology, and syntax). There are an estimated 6000 languages worldwide but when I last checked this total had nothing to do with the number of pieces of turf carved out by politicians or their supporters.
By aligning linguistic division by geographical or political boundaries, then we have absurdities that there are as many Spanish languages as there are countries that declare "Spanish" as official. Or in China there is only Chinese since there're no national borders enclosing or limiting the speech communities that each consist of people speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Hakka, Min etc. Basically this heavily political classification means that linguists have it wrong because the family trees of many languages have gaps. The Indo-European tree would have to be split even further to account for all of the variants of pluricentric languages (e.g. English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Swedish (Rikssvenska and Finland Swedish), Ukrainian (North American/Emigré Ukrainian and Ukrainian in Ukraine), Dutch (Belgian Dutch and Dutch of the Netherlands)). You can tell that I eschew a politically-based division of language but this is not the same as saying that differences are non-existent. Because I consider French to be a pluricentric language and thus Québec French to be a variant of French rather than a language, it doesn't mean that I overlook the differences or diminish them. What ones speak doesn't need to be called a "language" or be associated with a piece of inanimate turf to be worthy of respect or prestige. The content/meaning of what one speaks or uses determines the level of esteem from outsiders. 10 persons have 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 66 of 299 17 October 2013 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Let's see what we are talking about here. I call languages those former dialects that have become identified as
expression of national identities. I would like to add the idea of ethnic identities and not restrict language to a specific nation-state entity. We observe, especially in Europe, that the formation of nation-states has often given rise to a standardized language variety that is given the status of national language that then takes the name of the country or state. French is the country of France, but French is actually a certain dialect that was promoted to national status. There are of course remnants of the other dialects that never made it to the top. There are also distinct so-called regional languages in France that have second-class status. The two most well- know examples are l'occitan and le breton. Why are they called languages? Although Breton is linguistically very distinct from French, the main reason it is called a language is because it was / is the primary form of expression of an ehtnic community within certain political and geographic boundaries. The same goes for Occitan which is associated with old geographic and political boundaries. In Italy, this dynamic of national language versus regional dialects is even more striking because the unification of Italy is relatively recent and many of the dialects are still quite vibrant. Spain is an interesting case because there is some ambiguity about the use of the word Spanish. Spanish or Castillian is the official language of the country, but four other languages are designated co-official in certain regions. It should not be of any surprise that there is a history of social and political conflict over the status of these regional languages and of the underlying regions within Spain. As many people know, there is a strong secessionist movement in Catalonia and considerable strife over the role of the Catalan language. If we look at Africa, there are virtually no languages that have taken the name of the country. For the time being at least, there is no Nigerian, no Malian, no Moroccan, etc. French and English are nearly the only official languages. But thousands of languages are spoken in Africa. Some people like to call them dialects, usually with derogative intentions, but I prefer to call them languages because they correspond to distinct ethnic groups. Of course there are major language families and the component languages have a certain mutual intelligibility. There are also creoles and even pidgins that have risen out of the contact of certain languages. All of this to say that status of language is the expression of some combination of national, political and ethnic boundaries. Is it really absurd to say that there are as many Spanish languages as there are countries that declare "Spanish" as official? Sure there is a written standard language that is nearly identifcal in all the countries, but as soon as you go out into the street you discover that the differences can be quite enormous and many Spanish-speakers will tell you that the street varieties are not very mutually intelligible. I take a simple approach to this whole issue by asking how do the users call their language. If they say Spanish, then I call it Spanish. If Nigerians say they speak English, then it is English, regardless of the fact that spoken Nigerian English may be not very intelligible to many Londoners. As I pointed out, Quebec French will become a separate language, Québécois, when the political status of Quebec changes. As a prelude to that, we have plays, films and books written in Québécois. One of our HTLAL members has written a book called Le québécois en 10 leçons. To come back to the question at hand, the reason for calling Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montanegrin languages is that those are the terms used by the countries concerned. The fact that they may be 95% mutually intelligible is besides the point. If they are not distinct languages, what should they be called? Edited by s_allard on 17 October 2013 at 7:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5117 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 67 of 299 17 October 2013 at 6:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ok then.. I have seen on here "Lowland scots" being described as a language. To me, as a Northern Englander by birth - it is just a different accent.Due to the forces I have vast experience of interracting and understanding people from many different regions. I can understand them but could maybe not reply in Doric (insert local slang) etc.
I can understand, and if needed, produce speech in the Lancashire dialect as in "on Ilkley Moor Bah t'at. I can also understand broad Devonian accents, and indeed dialects. Cockney also. I'm hereby declaring myself a polyglot based on that. / And what about Norwegians with all their dialects... The point I'm making is -the goalposts are always seeming to be moved.It would be better to do away with the term "polyglot". On this website at least it appears to be more of a rank than a noun. I just have great respect for anyone who has demonstrable knowledge (or even interest) in several languages. Ask yourselves (and I've said this ages ago)...How would Mezzofanti be treated on here were he to post with his claims? There is a HUGE wealth of knowledge on here but I really think arguing the toss over what exactly constitutes being a "polyglot" undermines what the website is about. 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 68 of 299 17 October 2013 at 6:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree with @HMS here. I think there is much ado about nothing. How many people go around claiming that they
are polyglots because they speak four or more varieties of English or French? Nobody on this site. So where is the problem? Is anybody claiming that the person who claims to speak Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Catalan is a fraud because those languages are related? No. There is no problem. 2 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 69 of 299 17 October 2013 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's an interesting way to look at it. What about the sinitic languages? Sure, there was a Southern Yue country for a brief period of time that included some portions of the country that speak Cantonese, and lots of people in modern Taiwan speak Hokkien (though this isn't the official language, and it's not the home of the language). But Wu has never had a nation state, nor Gan, nor Hakka. And these are all spoken by ethnic Han people. Do you, like the Chinese government, consider them dialects of the same language despite huge differences in vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar? 3 persons have 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 70 of 299 17 October 2013 at 7:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I wish I could answer the question, but I know nothing about this part of the world. Maybe someone else more knowledgeable could weigh in. 1 person has 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 71 of 299 17 October 2013 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The most concise way to look at it is that the number of self-declared distinct ethnic groups/nation-states/territories is independent of the number of languages. It's a product of 19th century nationalism and an arguable perversion of Herderian thought that distinct ethnic group/distinct nation-state can only have a distinct language (as opposed to a variant of something pluricentric) (cf. Herder: "The soul of a nation is carried in its language") 2 persons have 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 72 of 299 17 October 2013 at 7:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well I don't know if what happened in the former Yugoslavia can be called a product of 19th century nationalism and an arguable perversion of Herderian thought. All I know is that four national languages came into existence following the break-up the political unit called Yugoslavia and the demise of a language called Serbo-Croatian. Call them variants of something pluricentric if you wish but the fact remains that four languages have now entered the dictionary. As I keep saying, if they are not four distinct national languages, what should we call them ? We have French French, Belgian French, Swiss French, Quebec French, British English, Canadian English, etc. So, what do we call the languages of the former Yugoslavia? Bosnian something, Serbian something, Croatian something, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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