Re: dialectal diversity in English
| From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, May 17, 2003, 16:30 |
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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.
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