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Re: dialectal diversity in English

From:Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>
Date:Saturday, May 17, 2003, 6:56
 --- John Cowan skrzypszy:

> I say again, there are *three* languages spoken in Scotland: Gaelic > (a Celtic language), Scots (a West Germanic language), and English > (another West Germanic language, the one most closely related to > Scots). The varieties of English spoken in Scotland are more > or less influenced by Scots, but Scots is not a dialect of > English any more than Dutch is a dialect of German.
This made me wonder; back when I was little, I used to satisfy my linguistic interests by reading encyclopaedia entries. And what is so strange: I never saw Scots mentioned as a separate language there (Low German WAS mentioned). Could it be that Scots gained the status of a language only sometime during the last thirty years? Would Luxemburgish be considered a separate language too, nowadays? Jan ===== "Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus For a better Internet experience http://www.yahoo.co.uk/btoffer

Replies

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
John Cowan <cowan@...>