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Re: dialectal diversity in English

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Saturday, May 17, 2003, 16:30
Jan van Steenbergen scripsit:

> And what is so strange: I never saw > Scots mentioned as a separate language there (Low German WAS mentioned).
The 20th century was about the low point for recognition of Scots as a living language.
> Would Luxemburgish be considered a separate language too, nowadays?
To a dialectologist, it's a dialect of German. To a sociolinguist (and to the Ethnologue), it's a separate language. That's my point. To a historical linguist, it may even make sense to treat Dutch as a dialect of German, whereas for all other purposes, it's obviously separate. -- Long-short-short, long-short-short / Dactyls in dimeter, Verse form with choriambs / (Masculine rhyme): jcowan@reutershealth.com One sentence (two stanzas) / Hexasyllabically http://www.reutershealth.com Challenges poets who / Don't have the time. --robison who's at texas dot net