Talk: Dialect
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The author of this seems to think that non-standardness is an essential part of the definition of dialect. My understanding of the way linguists use this term is that that is not part of the definition at all. The degree of standardness or non-standardness is irrelevant to the question of whether a dialect should be so called. Michael Hardy 21:59 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)
You're right. The problem is rather the common non-linguist usage of the words "language" and "dialect".
I prefer the definitions:
- "A dialect is a variety spoken by a geographically defined speech community."
- "A sociolect is a variety spoken by a socially defined speech community."
-- Ruhrjung 05:35 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Dialects have not died out in France. If you click on the Occitan link you wil discover it's still widely spoken. Perhaps another country could be adduced as an example, or the statement could be clarified. Trontonian
- Since it hasn't been clarified, I removed this bit: "In many countries dialects pretty much died out, for example in France, where many dialects and languages like Occitan (once a literary language) were spoken." Dialects are widespread in France, as are other languages. Breton, Basque, Alsatian, Corsican, and Flemish are widely spoken. Alsatian is often considered to be a dialect, come to think of it, and it could be argued that Flemish is one. Trontonian
I have read that linguistics (maybe not sociolinguistics) refers to varieties of language, whose variations may be shared by members of similar class or education level (the sociolect or social dialect of above) or by members a certain region or town (the traditional dialect). The standard variety of a language is considered a dialect along with less prestigious varieties.
Your socalled "valid" information does not help to understand the problem, it only confuses. Read the Abstandsprache, Ausbausprache, Dachsprache concept and try to understand it and you will learn that it works very well. Get aout of you language closet! (User:145.254.191.8, unsigned)
- English-speaking linguists don't use those words, and they don't define 'dialect' in the way you want them to. Salsa Shark 02:31, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Search Google for ausbausprache or ausbau language in english texts and you will find they do, even if it's only a few educated linguists and not ordinary people, e.g.:
http://www.uni-trier.de/uni/fb2/anglistik/Projekte/stubbs/german.htm indicates that Ausbausprache is a german word often used by english speaking linguists.
The dutch wikipedia site nl:Standaardtaal uses the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache/dialect-continuum-concept without naming the german terms. This concept was developped mainly to explain why Dutch and German are two different languages and why many German dialect are not, even though many German dialects differ more from standard German as the Dutch languages does. This concept today is used to solve many disputes about the question what is a "language" and what is a "dialect", e.g in the case of Scotts, Galego, the french based languages spoken on the channel-island and so on. PLEASE restrain your preconceptions against Germans and German scholarship!
I will continue to label your work as vandalism, for the following reasons.
1. Your argumentative tone ("Dialect IS a linguistic term ...") and your use of "if only" in the last paragraph are not only unscholarly, but violate the neutral point of view espoused by Wikipedia. Such comments are fully appropriate for your own user page (of course you haven't got one - you haven't got the guts to sign in with a proper user name, so of course you haven't got a user page) but they have no place in an article. I will continue to delete such subjective arguments.
2. Your accusation that I - and others who are "watching" this article - are harbouring "preconceptions about Germans and German scholarship" proves to me that YOU are NOT a scholar. Your accusation is completely false. In a lot of ways, I consider myself to be pro-German - and I see nothing wrong with the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache concept AS A USEFUL TOOL for analyzing the dialect/language problem. However, it is NOT the only possible frame of reference. It is good - as far as it goes. Other frames of reference yield different results, however. To say that only the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache paradigm is correct is a subjective judgement, not an objective fact, and should not be presented as a fact.
3. I have read the associated articles. There is nothing wrong with the concept as an analytical tool akin to a measuring device. When you measure something, do you use inches or centimeters? They yield different results, don't they? But neither renders the other invalid. Likewise, there are a number of tools for analyzing the relationship between dialects and languages. They give different results that are not directly comparable. *That is a major part of why the distinction between a language and a dialect is a very subjective one.
As I said, the paradigm you shared has its merits. I would hope that somebody (maybe even you) will incorporate it into the article, along with the other analytical tools that are discussed. If nobody else does it, I'll do it myself when I can squeeze in the time over the next few days. (David Cannon 28 January 2004 02.30am)
- Saidly enough Europeans got used to treated by the current US-administration in away, that damages almost all sober discussion (e.g. "Old Europe", "Freedom Fries"), not only on the field of politics. This administrations is backed by half of the American people and you wonder, that people don't react cool, when they see a smiling Donald Rumsfeld declaring it indisputable that Iraq has weapons of mass destructions and now nothing is found! Or mentioning Germany and Libya as the countries, who don't help in the "war against terror", without a public out cry in the USA. This kind of treating the rest of the world and broadcasting it with the global American media dominance is poisening all sober discussion. And you wonder that people suspect widespead preconceptions in the American people. People are not just machines but human being with emotions, even scholars often can't hide them. Do you think international scientific congresses are sober events? People try to restrain their emotions, but sometimes you just want to cry out and one may overreact. Please keep this in mind. It may help you to understand why "America" and more and more the English language is hated by more and more people in the world.
- Now that we are done bashing Americans, could you explain how the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache categorization system applies to Chinese. Mandarin is clearly a Dachsprache, but I have no idea how say Cantonese, Min-Nan, and Shanghaiese fit into the system. -- User:Roadrunner
- It only fits in this categorization because originally it was used only as a written language in a form of writing, that does not tell anything about the pronunciation. Like 2+2=4 can be unterstood by everybody, who uses western numbers, Chinese characters can be used by everybody, who ever learned them, all the same how they are pronunced. Many Japanese can read a text written in Chinese characters, without having leanred Chinese at all, only because the same characters are also used as "Kanji" in the Japanese writing system. Therefore replacing traditional Chinese writing by the much easier Pinyin system would destroy Chinese unity and Cantonese cold not be seen as a dialect of Mandarin, because it is so different, thus a Abstandsprache. Shanghaiese is not that different, it could be integrated in a system written in Pinyin, as Swiss dialects are intergrated in the Standart German system. Vietnamese adopted a latin based spelling system in order not to be incorporated into "Chinese" and Korean developes "Hangul" for the same reason. Both Vietnamese and Korean are Abstandsprachen in regard to "Chinese". The Chinese writing system in a way can work like a programming language, which can easily used by speakers of different languages.
Reading the Dutch (nl:Dialect) and German (de:Dialekt) article about dialect may be VERY helpful. With the obove mentioned concept the long lasting confict if Dutch is a German dialect was solved! [[]]
For your information, I'm not even American - as you would know if you had bothered to check my user page. Irrelevant controversies such as the Iraq War have NO bearing on a discussion of linguistics, and give the appearance of a man grasping for straws. Stop bringing up irrelevant side-issues. (David Cannon)Davidcannon 19:21, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the rearrangment, incorporating and giving equal preference to the viewpoints of numerous contributors. Sometimes a hardy controversy may result in a better mutual understanding of different viewpoints. "The evil vandalizer"
- Thank you, too. I'm sorry I called you a vandal - I no longer think you were. Just a passionate person who got a bit carried away; I can see that I got a bit carried away, too. Yes, vigorous debates can eventually lead to a more comprehensive article, too. Again, I'm sorry I used the word "vandal" too carelessly. (David CannonDavidcannon 02:07, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC))
Hey folks. I just wanted to point out, in this bit:
- Parallel examples abound. Macedonian, although mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and often considered to be a Bulgarian dialect, is touted by Macedonian nationalists as a language in its own right. Taiwanese nationalists make similar claims for Taiwanese to be recognized as a language, rather than a Mandarin dialect.
This is misleading. You begin by talking about Bulgarian and Macedonian being mutually intelligible languages/dialects, and then go on to suggest that Mandarin and Taiwanese are similar. This is not correct. If anything, this parallelism could only be used to suggest the dynamic nature of the dialect/ language divide: that is, Macedonian/Bulgarian -- considered seperate languages for political reasons, in fact very closely related, and Taiwanese/Mandarin -- considered dialects for political reasons, but in fact not more closely related than French and Spanish and certainly not mutually intelligible.
Further, no one has ever suggested that Taiwanese is a dialect of Mandarin; even the very pro-Mandarin ROC government does not suggest this. Rather, it is suggested that Taiwanese (and Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka, etc) are all dialects of an overarching 'Chinese Language' with anchors in a common written form. Whether or not this is true is more a question of politics than Linguistics, of course -- as is pretty much any argument about languages and dialects, as this article demonstrates quite well.
At any rate, I would suggest that someone clarify that Mandarin is not to Taiwanese as Bulgarian is to Macedonian, which is currently being (falsely) implied.
Latin languages are very easy to learn by Latin language speakers
Only a person that isn’t a Latin speaker believes that the Latin language are the same. They are not; thought a cult Latin speaker can easily read any Latin language. In the past few days I attested that when I’ve read Occitan and another language of France (I would NOT consider it a dialect!!!) that I don’t even remember its name. I’ve never eared that language and I didn’t know its existence. Thought I could understand most of it. Why… because we all have the same origin. And because of Etymology, the written languages are similar cause they are based on Latin. We in Portugal write and speak differently. We write “ouro” (gold). Doubt we say (in my region) “ourum” (in English would sound like awooroong) though “awoouroo” is also valid, and in Spanish is “oro” (sounds like awraw) In the writen language, Ouro is very similar to Oro. But is spoken very differently. We really only use the O in the end, just because we had make it always. I thing is also almost impossible that two speakers from different Lantin languages don’t understand something of those languages. If they say that is it probably a nationalist/regional pride or lack of interest in understanding. Between Portuguese and Spanish. This is what happens:
- A Spanish speaker can easily read Portuguese
- A Portuguese speaker can easily read Spanish
- A Spanish speaker normally gets confused with the sounds of Portuguese and doesn’t understand half of the conversation. If he is smart and interested he could understand most of it, but will have difficulty to do the Portuguese sounds and use proper portuguese grammar.
- A Portuguese speaker understands Spanish. Some call it “simplified Portuguese”, or Portuguese as “complex Spanish”. Or say that Spaniards are lying when they say that don’t understand them.
Because Latin languages are so connected some stronger languages declare the others are dialects of it. And start a real dialectization of that language. Others that are the same language are declared different, by the same reason. For me a dialect is a slit different pronunciation, some different words and some small different grammatical differences. At least is what we use in Portugal, Brazil, São Tomé, Angola and others (locally speaking, we only declare Brazilian and São tomense as a variety, and this varieties and the other are composed with dialects).
Portuguese dialects are fully understandable locally and by other Portuguese-speaking country, with some rare exceptions - some say that dont understand any dialect of the other because of Pride Portugal-Brazil Angola-Mozambique (false unintelligible dialects), dought when speakers of the other dialects are put in the environment of the other, they dont say that. Others like Açoriano (Azorian) are really difficult to understand for other dialects, but it is because of the strong and different accent and not words or grammar. Portuguese dialects normally form a continuum of very small differences from the neighbour dialect, and to very different dialect. In Portugal Transmontano-Açoriano In Brazil: Nordestino-Gaúcho. The link dialects between Portugal and Brazil (form a continuum by the north of Brazil (Nortenho or Alto-Minhoto or Beirão to Nordestino) by the south of Brazil (Estremenho - Carioca) = Lisbon - Rio de JaneiroPedro 20:42, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
