Luxemburgish (jara: dialectal diversity in English)

 --- Henrik Theiling skrzypszy:

> > Would Luxemburgish be considered a separate language too, nowadays?
>
> Yes: a) it's sometimes incomprehensible to Germans,
Is it? If you live in Saarbrücken, your regional dialect should come pretty
close to Lëtzebuergesch and Alsacien, no?

> b) Luxemburgians say it's a different language. :-)
Not all of them! Besides, as I tried to show in my message about the Lemkos,
the opinion of the speakers themselves does not always matter IMO.

> There is an official writing, of course, too.
Yes, but this writing is something from the last thirty years. And this
official writing is still far from standardised. Does an official writing make
a dialect into a language? Or does it at least help it become a language? Or is
this just proof number nnn for the thesis that a language is a dialect with an
army and a navy (I'm not sure about the navy in this case, though)?

> And to me, that's the language with the most hilarious
> vowel mapping (compared to German).  No offence, I like it a lot. :-)
Haha, so do I! Frankly, it is one of the ugliest languages I ever heard: some
vowel combinations sound as if a person is suffering a severe attack of nausea
:) . But both the sound and the spelling are incredibly funny, and I have a
terrible weakness for this language.

> You get a lot of webpages in Luxemburgish when searching for
> some typical words: ech dach net mech ass.
Oh, I even have a few books and newspapers in Luxemburgish. If I would have
stayed there much longer than I actually did (ca. 1 year), then I definitely
would have learned it!

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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