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Re: dialectal diversity in English

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Monday, May 19, 2003, 13:19
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.

Replies

John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>