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You are not a real polyglot if... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Belardur Octoglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5392 days ago 148 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: English*, GermanC2, Spanish, Dutch, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Lowland Scots Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Italian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean | Message 105 of 299 18 October 2013 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Right, so we agree in principle (though I disagree with the implication that Schwäbisch and Schwyzerdütsch aren't also different languages, haha). In regard to variation, though, there is the fact that one can take small language-community steps (say, Salzburg-Munich-Augsburg-Ulm-Stuttgart) and retain 90+% intercomprehensability in that continuum. So the significant difference is only when comparing "centers" - and I think this is pertinent to the definition of languages, if we are prepared to retain the opinion that they are different when they are in such a continuum. Of course, this would also require an intersting look at the idea of being polyglottal; let's take an Augsburg native with grandparents in Switzerland (if you will allow my distinction above as well). This individual probably hits 4 languages, "standard German", Mittelbairisch, Ostschwäbisch, and Schwyzerdütsch. I'm ok with calling that polyglottal. I grant your point about business, I can get away with it even where a native speaker would not due to my field and being a non-native speaker. It works out useful for me also with older folks whose comfort zone is definitely not in "standard German", but it is hardly a common situation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4403 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 106 of 299 18 October 2013 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Although it has been statistically proven that people are more likely to buy a product if the seller speaks their regional dialect in a situation where it wouldn't necessarily be expected. So perhaps in certain sales situations there is a place for more locally flavoured language. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5211 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 107 of 299 18 October 2013 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For a different perspective on this whole question, it may be interesting to look at countries where the official
language is not the languge of the majority. Such is the case of much of subsaharan Africa where French, English and Portuguese are the official languages. In Côte d'Ivoire, for example, French is the only official language but around 60 languages are spoken in its borders. I'll let other people fight over whether these are true languages or dialects. The main point here is that there is no common Ivoirean language. Does everybody speak French? Of course not. Only a very tiny elite and the expat population speak French as a native language. To highly varying degrees the population speaks Ivoirean French but the most widespread common language is Dioula a language of trade spoken throughout most of West Africa. This situation is typical of that of most of the West African countries, but there is an interesting twist here. There is a new language called Nouchi created by young people in the slums of the capital, Abidjan during the 70s. Nouchi is a mixture of French and indigenous languages. After the predictable phase of universal condemnation by school teachers, the media and the elite, Nouchi has been spreading like wildfire. Books, dictionaries, radio programs, courses on Nouchi are now available. Will Nouchi evolve into the Ivoirean national language? I don't know but there is a good chance. What I see happening here is another example of the fundamental need of a form of expression of national identity. French was and still is to some extent a colonial language imposed by France. It's just a matter of time before a new indigenous national language emerges to replace it. Edited by s_allard on 18 October 2013 at 3:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5564 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 108 of 299 18 October 2013 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Sadly a "yes vote" is looking unlikely. If we do vote for independence, English will definitely be an official language, that much is for sure. I don't know whether Gaelic or any other language will be given co-official status or not. I think George Galloway pointed out a few years ago that (at the time) there were more native speakers of Polish than Gaelic in Scotland. The assumption that number of native speakers should be the primary criterion for deciding whether to give a language official status is obviously naïve and I mention it because it somehow seems relevant to the thread to my mind, not quite sure how. [  Edited by Random review on 18 October 2013 at 9:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4034 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 109 of 299 19 October 2013 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Bickering about what is a language is pretty useless, as if mutual intelligibility means something is not a language if there is a similar language and they can understand each other. This would render language isolates as more "true" languages than others. Mutual intelligibility also varies; basic sentences in related languages of the same dialect continuum can be very transparent; almost identical, but the further away one drifts from there the lesser the transparency becomes.
For example any Finn will understand the following Estonian sample; Paberipuu hinnad on jällegi suhteliselt madalad. The next one is not so transparent; Otsusel pole aga mingit mõju enne, kui senat otsustab ta parlamendist välja heita. [Source: www.postimees.ee] 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5211 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 110 of 299 19 October 2013 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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One of the interesting aspects for me of this debate or discussion is learning how diverse most if not all
languages are. We say that the language of Norway is Norwegian and that of Germany is German, but when you scratch the surface, you realize that besides a standard written form taught in schools, the spoken language has all sorts of variations that are a reflection of the geography and the social history of the language. When I hear people speaking Quebec French, I can usually tell their approximate age, where they grew up, how educated they are and usually the kind of work they do. British English sounds all the same to me, but I know very well that for native Brits accent is extremely important and says much about the social class of the speaker. My Brazilian friends tell me that there are many different accents in their country. It's the same in American English where one can even speak of African-American English that some people call Ebonics ans say it's a separate language. Edited by s_allard on 20 October 2013 at 3:24am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4034 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 111 of 299 19 October 2013 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I forgot to mention this. A language is not something set in stone. The name "German" is a blanket for all of the people who speak an idiolect all others can understand and it has nothing to do with written or standard German. All of their idiolects work with more or less similar principles and so they are able to understand each other. All too often we confuse standard language with the actual language. For example, the standardized Finnish could be called a constructed language because no one speaks it, hence its name; "book-language". It just ties the ends together. Our professor at uni told us that one of his colleagues went to the army in the seventies and he had major trouble understanding other men of his age who were from the other side of the dialect-line; Finnish can roughly be split into two dialect-groups, east and west dialects, that vary in usage of cases (some east dialects actually have preserved a case that has died out everywhere else) and the way to construct the imperfective tense is different. Yet all of these are Finnish through mutual agreement. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 112 of 299 19 October 2013 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Although there are weaknesses in relying on mutual intelligibility in linguistic taxonomy, the alternative of appealing to non-linguistic criteria (e.g. political boundaries, emotions (i.e. "Respect our feelings! Everyone else must agree that we speak a different language from our neighbours of a different ethnic group/religious affiliation even though none of us can't reliably tell if what those neighbours use is ungrammatical to us whenever we hear them or read their messages!")) seems less helpful. By trying to admit non-linguistic elements into the discussion at the expense of mutual intelligibility and comparative analysis using structural linguistics, it smacks of the fallacy of perfection. Not even with the most strained arguments using mutual intelligibility could someone honestly conclude that Estonian and Finnish are anything but different languages. Finnish and North Karelian, or even more heatedly Finnish and Meankieli would be better examples but even then the intrusion of politics is not helpful and only seems to inflame emotion and make the discussion more subjective and political (it certainly is with the case of Finnish and Meankieli because of the Swedish government's policy of differentiating the two as part of its policy on minority languages despite the low divergence between the two as gathered in dialectological work, compared to Finnish and North Karelian to say nothing of Finnish and Estonian). In any case, even though it'd seem rather pointless because Estonian and Finnish are that divergent, I wonder if there's a study comparing the two like this one for BCMS/SC that uses structural linguistic analysis to address a matter of linguistic taxonomy. On one hand, it'd seem obvious to conduct a linguistics experiment using findings from the nuts and bolts of language (i.e. grammar, lexis and phonetics), but because of the (IMHO unfortunately) willing allowance/promotion of non-linguistic elements in certain linguistic matters, it seems as if linguists need to apologize that their scientific approach ignores elements that are qualitative, subjective or incapable of being proven or disproven (to a certain degree this means that the scientist almost apolgizes for not being unscientific). Edited by Chung on 19 October 2013 at 7:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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