Do dialects count as �languages�? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Do dialects count as �languages�?
Tags: Language Politics \| Dialect
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

27 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4 Next >>

Julie
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Message 10 of 27

03 May 2009 at 2:54am | IP Logged

Earle wrote:

Can't believe this oft-resurrected topic has proceeded thus far without anyone stating "A language is a dialect with an army and navy." Of course, that's not strictly true, but it could be modified to "A language is a dialect with political clout."

Exactly what I wanted to write! And Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian make a good example of it. The dialect vs. language discussion may often have political significance and if so, the choice of one over the other may not have much to do with linguistics.
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Earle
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Message 11 of 27

03 May 2009 at 7:39am | IP Logged

Quote:

And Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian make a good example of it.

Julie, I was thinking of exactly that when I wrote. And when did Norwegian become a language, instead of a dialect(s)? Thinking about politics and dialect, I have a close friend and neighbor of several decades who spent her early life in what was then the Sudetenland. Their family name was "Mrazek," but they considered themselves German. I once remarked that their family name was probably the same as Jan Masaryk, the considered founder of the Czech nation. I'd characterize her reaction as indignation. Years later, after the latest round of Balkan troubles, the topic came up again. In the meantime, she'd found out that most of her family was Bosnian and was linguistically German only by accident. We are are all one race, originally out of Africa, and there are no bright lines between dialects and languages...
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phouk
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Message 12 of 27

03 May 2009 at 9:20am | IP Logged

Raistlin Majere wrote:

There are significant differences in grammar - if you are interested, have a
look at the grammar of the related bavarian dialect: http://www.bayrisch-lernen.de/
(choose "Grammatik" in the menu).

While there are for example books and plays written in Swabian or Bavarian, this is
the exception. Normally, written German is High German.
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Chung
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Message 13 of 27

03 May 2009 at 9:20am | IP Logged

Back to the original title of this thread, dialects CAN or CAN NOT count as languages. It depends on which communities we talk about.

At opposite ends we have Chinese and German "dialects" with low mutual intelligibility and Balkan "languages" with very high mutual intelligibility (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian form one group, Bulgarian and Macedonian form another group, Romanian and Moldavian form a third group).
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minus273
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Message 15 of 27

05 May 2009 at 12:42pm | IP Logged

Raistlin Majere wrote:

That depends: Fanatic, what kind of differences are there between Schw�bisch and High German? Are they merely differences in vocabulary and pronunciation, or do they also affect grammar? And, how big is the difference in both kinds of written German?

If it's just vocabulary and pronunciation, Schw�bisch shuuld be regarded as just a dialect of German. On the other hand, if differences are really present in grammar too, then perhaps they are different languages.

However, I must agree with ElComadreja; that's cheating.

But anyway, learning several Romance languages would be cheating too.
Are there any beeping differences between Italian and Spanish?
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Volte
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Message 16 of 27

05 May 2009 at 1:21pm | IP Logged

minus273 wrote:

Raistlin Majere wrote:

But anyway, learning several Romance languages would be cheating too.
Are there any beeping differences between Italian and Spanish?

Sure - if I try to talk to a Spaniard in Italian, he won't understand me.

The written languages are very similar (not identical - I can read Spanish newspapers, but Spanish novels are hard), but the spoken languages differ a bit more - both in pronunciation, and in colloquial words.

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