Re: dialectal diversity in English

 --- John Cowan skrzypszy:

> > We are definitely no Dagestan.
>
> No, indeed.  Nevertheless the Ethnologue identifies 12
> languages currently spoken in the Netherlands, in addition
> to Frisian, two flavors of Romany, and Dutch Sign Language.
> See http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Netherlands .
> The family tree groups Standard Dutch, Afrikaans, and Vlaams (which
> overlaps 3 countries) as "Low Franconian", and Achterhoeks, Drents,
> Gronings, Plautdietsch (Canada), Sallands, Stellingwerfs, Low Saxon
> (Germany), Twents, East Veluws, North Veluws, Veenkoloniaals, Westphalien
> (Germany), and Westerwolds as "Low Saxon".
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.
Linguistically, the Ethnologue might be right, although it surprises me that
Limburgs is not mentioned at all, although I have seen it referred to as a
separate language, a Dutch dialect, and a Low German dialect elsewhere.
Besides, I wonder why Romany is mentioned, and not huge immigrant languages
like Turkish, Moroccan Arabic, Sranan, and Papiamentu.

> Note that some of these names have ambiguous reference: "Vlaams" in
> Flanders may refer to the local variety of Standard Dutch, or to the
> local language.
That is true, indeed. What we consider "Vlaams" here in Holland is usually
Standard Dutch with a Flemish accent; we tend to forget that realy Flemish
dialects exist, which are almost ununderstandable to us.

Jan

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

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