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Catalan is not a dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6454 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 9 of 46 02 November 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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I had a friend in Spain who grew up speaking Castilian Spanish and was mystified when he first heard Catalan. To my way of thinking, that indicates that Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish.
I would argue that if the speakers of one language take or can take classes to understand the writing or speech of another group of people, then it is a matter of separate languages rather than dialects. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 46 02 November 2010 at 12:53am | IP Logged | |||||
You may have to be careful here. In theory, there would be nothing stopping say the British Ministry of Education from mandating that all foreigners who haven't learned Received Pronunciation must then take classes in order to understand or become fluent in British English. However I doubt that people from Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa or the USA to name a few would be learning a "new" language. Although your argument generally holds true when things are, shall we say, less politically-charged. A monolingual speaker of Mandarin needs to take classes or at least get lots of exposure in Cantonese (with some Mandarin intermediation to make the connections clearer) if he were to begin trying to understand Cantonese properly. This contradicts the central government's (and some non-politicians') insistence that we're dealing with nothing but dialects or idiolects of rather high mutual intelligibility in China, implying that such classes would be unnecessary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kerateo Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5441 days ago 112 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 11 of 46 02 November 2010 at 3:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm from Mexico, and Italian is easier for me to understand than Catalan. Anyway, I DO think that Catalan is a dialect... also Spanish and Italian, they are LATIN dialects ;).
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6377 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 12 of 46 02 November 2010 at 7:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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A: "X is a language, not a dialect of Y, because some people who speak Y have trouble understanding it, and 'dialect' means the same thing as 'mutually intelligible'!"
B: "X is a dialect of Y because some people can sorta understand it and 'dialect' means the same thing as 'mutually intelligible'!" C: "X is not a language because of political implications!" D: "X is a language because of political implications!" E: "What about the Scandinavian languages? Huh? Huh?" F: "What about the Chinese dialects?" G: "Hey I heard this cool quote 'A language is a dialect with an army and a navy'!" H: "There is no accepted definition of what is a dialect and what is a language." A: "X is a language, not a dialect of Y, because some people who speak Y have trouble understanding it, and 'dialect' means the same thing as 'mutually intelligible'!" B: "X is a dialect of Y because some people can sorta understand it and 'dialect' means the same thing as 'mutually intelligible'!" C: "X is not a language because of political implications!" D: "X is a language because of political implications!" E: "What about the Scandinavian languages? Huh? Huh?" F: "What about the Chinese dialects?" Moderator: "This thread is now closed." There, I saved you all a lot of trouble. Now can we move on? (I'm 'H' in the above scenario. Now watch as the thread continues unabated.) Edited by Ari on 02 November 2010 at 7:38am 13 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5135 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 13 of 46 02 November 2010 at 7:39am | IP Logged | |||||
I presume from your statement below that, at least you could still understand abit of Catalan due to your knowledge of Spanish? :) From my case, even though I speak Mandarin, Hokkien and Hainanese, I seriously have not a single clue at all to Cantonese, Sichuanese, Shanghainese, which are considered as Chinese dialects. :(
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| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5135 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 14 of 46 02 November 2010 at 7:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Oh my, I think I am speaker F ;)
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| kerateo Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5441 days ago 112 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 15 of 46 02 November 2010 at 7:55am | IP Logged | |||||
I think I read in wikipedia that Romance Languages are actually closer between each other than chinese dialects :S
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Talairan Tetraglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6387 days ago 194 posts - 258 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English*, Gypsy/Romani, Dutch Studies: Spanish, Flemish, Galician, Aramaic | Message 16 of 46 02 November 2010 at 9:33am | IP Logged | |||||
8 persons have voted this message useful |
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