Re: Intergermansk

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 10:55:42 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:
>
>[snip]
>> None of these differences make a language. I mean, I'm speaking a dialect
>> that is not mutually intellegible with the standard language and differs
>> from the standard language phonologically, lexically, morphologically and
>> grammatically.
>
>This, of course, depends on what one considers the distinction between
>languages and dialects to be. Unfortunately, the army-and-navy criterion
>does not work well with Afrikaans, since SA has got a few too many official
>languages. :)
>
>If we do want to take socio-political factors into account, the facts that
>Afrikaans has a separate written standard from Dutch (Nederlands), and that
>it has status as one of the official languages of the Union of South Africa
>would seem strongly suggestive of it being a separate language.
I just wanted to point out that it's not because of any of the linguistic
features René Uittenbogaard had mentioned that Afrikaans is considered a
separate language. I just forgot to mention that I definitely would consider
it a separate language. I think the existence of a standard written form is
especially important. Well, the point is not about writing, but about the
cultural use. A similar kind of prestige standard could perfectly exist in a
non-written language.

kry@s:
j. 'mach' wust