Re: dialectal diversity in English

Daniel Ryan Prohaska scripsit:

> Mutual intelligibility/incomprehensibility has never been a criterium
> for deciding wether a specific variety is a dilect or a separate
> language in comparison to another variety.
Of course it's a criterion.  It's not the determinative criterion, but
that's for two reasons:  1) there is no determinative criterion, and 2)
there isn't even any set of determinative criteria.  The language/dialect
distinction is inherently fuzzy.

As Uriel Weinreich said (in Yiddish), a language is a dialect with an
army and a navy.  Which means that Afrikaans is now a dialect of Xhosa.

--
John Cowan
        jcowan@reutershealth.com
                I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin