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Isn’t Flemish a dialect? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6058 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 9 of 19 28 May 2015 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And of course, if you happen to be a well informed / educated / travelled Arab, you can always start with ten (!) languages. Instant polyglot!
(robarb, I know it's out of context, but I couldn't resist) ;) I still have a vague recollection of the day when I "stopped" learning Arabic and "started" learning Arabic (Written). The joys of participating in a living, changing forum. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4665 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 10 of 19 28 May 2015 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The ''problem'' with Belgian Dutch is: it's a diglossic language,
people don't speak ''standard Belgian Dutch'' in informal situations, you don't hear it in soap operas on Belgian tv etc. If you want to move to Flanders, you'll have to learn Flemish eventually, just like if you want to move to German-speaking Switzerland, you'll have to learn Swiss German. Unlike in Swiss German, the situation in Belgian Dutch is, in fact, post-diglossic: H - hight variant or acrolect - this is the standard Belgian Dutch, used in writing, but not in informal speech M - mesolect -Tussentaal - this is the language used by younger middle and upper class Flemish people in the Brabant region, it may avoid (by grammarians) stigmatized features of Flemish (like ge, gij), but it has many non-stigmatizated features of Belgian Dutch, like using u (object clitic) infiormally, so, in the Brabantian Flemish mesolect: ''Dank je'' sounds more formal than ''Dank u'', the opposite than in the Netherlands. L - low variant are local basilects/dialects, they vary geographically --- Tussentaal The supra-regional, semi-standardized colloquial form (mesolect) of Dutch spoken in Belgium, which uses the vocabulary and the sound inventory of the Brabantic dialects, is often called Tussentaal ("in-between-language" or "intermediate language", i.e. between dialects and standard Dutch).[19] The tussentaal is a primarily informal variety of speech which occupies an intermediate position between regional dialects and the standard language. It incorporates phonetic, lexical and grammatical elements that are not part of the standard language but are drawn from local dialects. It is a relatively new phenomenon that has been gaining popularity during the past decades. Some linguists note that it seems to be undergoing a process of (limited) standardisation[20][21] or that it is evolving into a Koiné language.[22] Tussentaal is slowly gaining popularity in Flanders, since it is being used a lot in television dramas and comedies. Often, middle-class characters of a TV series will be speaking tussentaal, while lower-class characters will use the dialect of the location where the show is set, and upper-class characters will speak standard Dutch.[23] This has given tussentaal the status of normalcy in Flanders, hence it is slowly being accepted by the general population. This evolution has led to some controversy among linguists, who are afraid it dilutes the usage of standard Dutch.[24] Tussentaal is only used in entertainment television however, informative programmes (like news shows) in general use standard Dutch. [Wikipedia] Linguistic survey has shown, that gij is still preferred in informal Belgian speech, except for Western Flanders: http://www.cnts.ua.ac.be/papers/2005/ml05.pdf (this is a great paper on the current sociolinguistic situation of Belgian Dutch) Conclusion of the paper: ''The Standard Dutch (or Netherlandic Dutch) informal pronouns of the 2nd person singular je, jij and jou(w) are still hardly integrated in the supraregional colloquial language of most Flemings. There are considerable regional differences but generally speaking, the Flemish ge-paradigm still dominates Belgian Dutch colloquial speech. This holds all the more for the region which has increasingly determined the development of (informal) spoken Dutch in Flanders in recent years, i. e. the Brabantic area, which comprises the provinces of Brabant and Antwerp. Limburg and to a minor extent East-Flanders adhere to the Brabantic area. West-Flanders does not, whichquite ironicallyimplies that for the variables presented here, the supraregional colloquial language of the region which is known to have the highest dialect vitality in Dutch speaking Belgium, approaches the standard language most closely. The findings for the realization of the diminutive suffix are highly comparable, but both the linguistic and the geographic distribution of the Standard Dutch variants and the Belgian Dutch equivalents are more complex for the diminutive variable than for the pronominal one. Generally speaking the Standard Dutch diminutive suffix appears to be better integrated in colloquial Belgian Dutch than the Standard Dutch pronoun je, which is linked to its distribution in northern Belgian dialects. However, one finding which is highly symptomatic of the present-day condition of Dutch in Flanders is clearly corroborated for both variables: precisely in the region which increasingly appears to set the linguistic example for Flanders, the younger generation shows a significantly higher preference for the endogenous Belgian Dutch and more particularly Brabantic variants than the older one. This is even more striking in view of the fact that, first of all, all of these younger informants were required to speak Standard Dutch and that, secondly, all of them have a high level of education. The latter factor implies that their language choices cannot be ascribed to a limited command of the Standard Dutch paradigm. The question is whether these choices reveal a growing Flemish self-confidence or a growing anti-Hollandic attitude. Both factors might hold and reinforce each other, but several Dutch linguists have remarked upon the latter tendency in the past decade.The SDC has allowed us to corroborate this tendency with present-day spontaneous language data. They reveal that the pronoun je and its strong variants jij, jou andjouw have still not been assimilated to the extent that they are treated as endogenous forms by speakers of Belgian Dutch. On the contrary, they are still considered to be Netherlandic (Hollandic) import. Although this probably is not applicable to the Standard Dutch diminutive suffixes to the same extent, we also observe an increase of Brabantic variants for this variable. More than half a century of official language policy promoting the use of the northernbased (Netherlandic) standard language could not prevent or suppress this evolution, and appears to be increasingly unsuccessful in doing so. Consequently, the attitudinal component will have to be a major point of interest in future research on language use in northern Belgium in order to reveal the ultimate causes for Belgian colloquial Dutch diverging from Standard Dutch instead of converging with standard (Netherlandic) Dutch, and, more particularly, in order to explain why, through an ‘informal standardization process’, Dutch is increasingly becoming an pluricentric language with two centres of standardization. '' --- 1. In West Flanders, the situation is diglossic: Western Flemish vs Standard Belgian Dutch (there's no t much mesolect) 2. In the rest of Flanders, the situation is postdiglossic: L: basilects/flemish dialects vs M: Tussentaal vs H: acrolect Standard Belgian Dutch Edited by Medulin on 28 May 2015 at 2:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 11 of 19 28 May 2015 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Bosnia and Montenegro have only tried to develop their separate standards very recently. It wasn't that big a thing when the administrator was still around - Montenegro had barely become independent! The big divide is whether you know Cyrillics and use the Ekavian pronunciation, as these are generally considered Serbian features. There used to be a Hindi/Urdu option, not sure why it was removed. I think all natives are expected to know (and write) both bokmål and nynorsk? And even advanced learners generally work on their understanding of both, it seems. Edited by Serpent on 28 May 2015 at 4:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5056 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 19 28 May 2015 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, if you actually are a well educated and traveled Arab who can readily understand, and to some degree speak or write Classical, Modern Written, Gulf, Iraqi, Maghribi, Egyptian, Hassaniyya, Levantine, Sudanese, and Yemeni Arabic, then you are a polyglot, albeit one with rather low language diversity. I suspect (with no evidence) that most Arabs are comfortable with somewhere between 2 and 7 of these, and all 10 is exceedingly rare.
Aha. That explains that.
Of course, essentially all natives can understand both bokmål and nynorsk because they're both Scandinavian languages, and therefore almost mutually intelligible with no experience at all. You can also typically assume that Norwegian people will be able to understand Swedish, and at least read Danish. Because nynorsk is less widely used, educated nynorsk speakers might need some ability to write in bokmål for audiences outside the nynorsk-speaking region. I'm less sure that they need to speak it, as I've heard plenty of nynorsk-type dialects used by educated people on radio programs (since everyone is expected to understand both types and Swedish, and Danish if spoken clearly). When learners approach Norwegian, it's essential to achieve listening comprehension in both varieties, as they're so mixed up in the media, you never know what you're going to hear. But you can get by without learning to read or write nynorsk; as a foreigner you won't be expected to write it, and you can sort of read it anyway by mutual intelligibility. From a purely linguistic perspective, bokmål is very close to Danish, while nynorsk is somewhat close to Swedish and not that close to Danish. Of the four big varieties, the two Norwegian ones are linked only by nationality. So yeah, it makes sense to put on your profile that you study "Norwegian." But that does not mean they are the same. The purpose of the profile options is to give everyone the ability to list their languages in an adequate way. It is not, and should not pretend to be, a list of the languages that exist and are single languages distinct from the others. Edited by robarb on 28 May 2015 at 5:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 13 of 19 28 May 2015 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, from what I know every native speaker learns both forms of written Norwegian at school. One is treated as the main form (hovedmål), and the other as a side form (sidemål). In some situations a person in a position of power can choose which form you should use (e.g. a university professor).
Also, both forms are written-only. While there are more differences than between British and American English, maybe that explains it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4518 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 14 of 19 28 May 2015 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Officially those are variants of the same language called "Norwegian". Practically they are more different though.
You have to learn both at school (one of them like a foreign language almost), but many don't seem to get very competent at writing the side form (reading is no problem though, at least anything modern). Translating Bokmaal to Nynorsk word by word is considered bad style by the nynorsk community for example. Policemen having to write twitter messages in nynorsk get extra courses for it because they don't feel competent enough (yes, the Norwegian police uses twitter to warn and inform the public :) ). It's interesting to read news about it, much going on there at the moment. For example the digital tests at University of Oslo are Bokmaal only at the moment, which the nynorsk community is absolutely not amused about. And in the classic exams there are lots of mistakes in the questions written in nynorsk, even though they are of course written by native Norwegians (but probably bokmaal writers). Edited by daegga on 28 May 2015 at 8:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4665 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 15 of 19 28 May 2015 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is bad style. But, ''automatic'' translations are more due to people using translation software like Nyno than due to Bokmaal-users not writing Nynorsk correctly. Nynorsk avoids -st passive, and prioritizes verbal constructions over noun ones, Bokmaal is extremely prone to substantivsjuke. It may be true that many foreigners (and Norwegians) don't need nynorsk. But the opposite is also true, if you want to live and work in Vestlandet, you'll need it. Even the University hospital of Bergen uses nynorsk as their main form. It's not true nynorsk is more difficult for foreign learners than bokmaal, I find nynorsk much easier, words are shorter, and the overall sentence styling is more dynamic. Nynorsk may have more irregular verbs than bokmaal, but the the neutral noun declination is the same for all nouns unlike in bokmaal: bein, beinet, bein, beina; hus, huset, hus, husa; problem, problemet, problem, problema; Because, nynorsk is in fact ''standard vestnorsk'', it is now being promoted heavily in Bergen, and 3rd graders will start learning it (instead of being offered only from the highschool age): ''Bergen er nynorskhovudstaden i Noreg, seier Erlend Horn (V) etter at fleirtalet i bystyret vil overkøyra Høgre.'' http://framtida.no/articles/vil-innfora-nynorsk-for-tredjekl assingar-i-bergen#.VWdfllLsegY The Bergen dialect already uses many nynorsk words like eg, ikkje, aleine and sjøl(v). --- Nynorsk is very vital in its core area (see the map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk#/media/File:Målformer_ i_Norge.svg), and on the internet (Nynorsk wikipedia has 120,694 articles), Norwegian laws are being written also in nynorsk, you can take Bergenstesten in nynorsk as well, and you can enjoy translations of foreign books into Nynorsk (Anna Gavalda's books were a commercial success). Even youngsters find ''Game of Thrones'' subtitled in Nynorsk awesome. Bokmaal would be too technical for such an epic series where poetic style is needed. Edited by Medulin on 28 May 2015 at 8:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6906 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 19 28 May 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Or rather the other way around - Nynorsk uses many Bergen words. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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