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Re: Of accents & dialects

From:Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>
Date:Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 16:29
Den 21. okt. 2008 kl. 16.30 skreiv Benct Philip Jonsson:
> > I don't know if the situation > in Norway is markedly different, although my > hunch is that the slogan "speak dialect, write > Nynorsk" if anything makes the situation even > more confused; can a Southeasterner who writes > and mostly reads only Bokmål tell the difference > between someone speaking a Western or Northern > traditional dialect and someone from those areas > speaking standard Nynorsk?
With northern it's very easy, but with the western ones you may have to listen a while to decide. I realise that dialects in Norway are stronger than in most western countries. Even in the southeast they are so strong that it's possible to fight against standardisation. It's not going well, but at least I'm doing my bit. Even here, the viable dialects are influenced by the standard language, and traditional forms are being dropped by the dozens. Still I think the concept of the difference between a dialect and the standard language spoken with a regional accent is a little confusing. If a dialect loses all its distinct morphology, but keeps its phonology, will linguists stop calling it a dialect and begin to refer to it as a regional accent only? How much of the morphology needs to remain for the dialect to remain a dialect? And to what extent can you really separate morphology from phonology for this classification? LEF

Replies

Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
R A Brown <ray@...>