Re: dialectal diversity in English

En réponse à John Cowan :

>Jan van Steenbergen scripsit:
>
> > Well, to me as a Dutch person this looks very strange. What we are
> taught is
> > that all these are Dutch dialects; only Frisian is a separate language.
>
>Sure, the usual story.
Actually, not only it's the usual story, but it has some linguistic reason
to it (intelligibility for instance. Although I am not fluent in Dutch, I
have little trouble understanding most of those dialects (and I've only
ever learned Standard Dutch), just like I have little problem understanding
Flemish dialects, except the most divergent from "standard Flemish"). On
the other hand, I can't understand a word of Frisian. Of course, I know
that intelligibility is not the only criterion, but if intelligibility is
there and people think they are speaking dialects of the same language, I
don't understand why their word should be doubted in this case.

If find all this strange, because checking France I agree with their
classification in this case, although they forgot Chleu, the Normand
language of the North of Normandy, which is as much a language as Picard
can ever pretend to be (and no, it's not just a French dialect, as there is
nearly no intelligibility between French and Chleu - I can't understand it
myself, except the words that have been borrowed in the Normand dialect of
French -).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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