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Catalan is not a dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| julinait Newbie New Zealand Joined 4947 days ago 1 posts - 2 votes | Message 1 of 46 01 November 2010 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hello everybody!
I just want to remark that Catalan is a language and not a dialect. Catalan language has its own roots, rules and its own and National Language Academy. In addition, I must say that the beauty as well as the difficulty of Catalan language is much higher than the Spanish one. I would appreciate if this site could amend this mistake. best wishes! Julinait Edited by julinait on 01 November 2010 at 5:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5377 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 46 01 November 2010 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Who said Catalan was a dialect?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6966 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 46 01 November 2010 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
We could argue over this 'till the cows come home and you won't get as far as you'd like. However mutual intelligibility between Catalan and Spanish from what I've observed is less than what is sometimes claimed by those who state that Catalan is not a "language" because it's supposedly too close to Spanish.
This may or may not be of much importance in determining whether something is a language or a dialect of some other language. Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian each have their own prescriptions and language academies while the historical development of each of these idiolects differs in certain ways (from a restricted or literal point of view, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian have different roots). However the existence of prescriptions or preordained elitist bodies does not necessarily mean that we're dealing with separate languages (i.e. mutually unintelligible communicative codes). In the same vein, Portuguese is regulated by four academies/institutes: IILP, CPLP, ABL (Brazil) and ACL (Portugal). Are we to simplistically think then that there are four Portuguese languages? What matters more for differentiation is the degree of inherited or natural mutual (un)intelligibility between the relevant speech communities (i.e. the speech communities cannot seamlessly and fully understand each other because they are physically/intellectually unable to do so, NOT because they choose not to).
This as enlightening as saying that the beauty and difficulty of Spanish is much higher than Catalan and has next to no relevance for most linguists outside those specializing in sociolinguistics.
What mistake? Catalan is treated separately here thus allowing people to state that they can be diglots by being fluent in Spanish AND Catalan. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6392 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 46 01 November 2010 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Oh, God. The dialect-language fight again.
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| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4983 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 5 of 46 01 November 2010 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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A BBC book I once read (Lingo, for those interested) stated that a language was a dialect with an army, navy and airforce, or something like that which is probably about the most logical and scientific a distinction which could be made. Claims could be made linking this language with that language; people usually object to the word "dialect" because it implies subordination to the language and is taken as a disparaging term by its speakers. Probably it's a more contentious issue in Spain as Franco tried to crush dialects during his rule.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5821 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 46 01 November 2010 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That was a quip, not a rule. It pokes fun at the fact that so many people use the term dialect without being able to define it, and it points
The term "dialect" is mostly used by people who want to extinguish language variety. Italian "dialects" range from a variety of Catalan, to something more closely related to (Northern) French than standard Italian, to the living language said to be most like Latin. "Italian" was an invented concept seeking to increase unity in the newly formed country. In Scotland, Scots has long been denigrated as "a dialect of English" and Gaelic as "a dialect of Irish. You'll find that there are many people outside the borders of Spain that take issue with the common use of the word "dialect". 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6913 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 46 01 November 2010 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Happy to agree with the first statement.... the following is, however, crap:
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6513 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 46 02 November 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Cainntear has a point: people who want to unify and centralize speech in a country (or area) tend to reduce anything that is different from the norm to a dialect and then proceed to eradicate those dialects. And people who like linguistic diversity and who want to preserve or even augment all differences tend to see languages all over the place instead of dialects. Politics and attitudes is as much a part of of the definition of languages/dialects as purely linguistic factors like intercomprehensibility and history.
In the case of Catalan versus Castilian it is clear that they have been distinct entities for at least 1000 years, and as Chung observes the mututal comprehensibility is not as perfect as some might think. But there is one factor more: the Catalan area has been under Castilian influence for a very long time, so logically people there understand both languages fairly well. To measure true intercomprehensibility you must find native speakers from both camps who haven't had contact with the other camp. And Catalans who haven't heard Castillian are almost non-existant. On the other hand it should be easy to find Castillian speakers who never have heard Catalan, for instance people from Latinamerica. And my guess is that they would have problems with that language (anybody out there who can confirm this?). For me there is no doubt that Castilian and Catalan are two distinct languages, even though the latter has been influenced quite heavily by the former. And on top of purely linguistical factors Catalan also has all the formal paraphernalia of a language: an academy, television, printed press, books, systematic use in schools and a lot of devoted native speakers. It has also both a norm and internal dialects. And this forum of course treats Catalan like a full language. So I don't really see any reason to amend anything. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2010 at 12:36am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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