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Re: Newest natlang?

From:Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 12:28
Given the smiley at the end of his message, I am inclined to say that he was
trying to quibble with the semantics -- once a dialect has an army and a
navy you can't call it a dialect anymore. (:
Eugene

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 3:59 PM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 01:09, caeruleancentaur > <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote: > >> Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote: > >> > >> If having its own army and navy turns a dialect into a language... > > > > How can a dialect have its own army and navy? :-) > > Honest question? > > Perhaps you're not aware of the saying "A language is a dialect with > an army and a navy" (or "a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un > flot"), attributed to Max Weinreich. > > So Eldin was saying that if a group of speakers have an army and a > navy of their own (i.e., roughly, if they form a sovereign nation with > its own defence), then what they speak would no longer be considered a > dialect but a separate language. (As, for example, Bosnian might be > considered a separate language from Serbo-Croatian or BCS > [Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian] only once Bosnia and Herzegovina became a > country of its own, but a dialect of BCS while part of Yugoslavia.) > > So it's not literally the _dialect_ that has the army and navy, but > its speakers. > > Cheers, > -- > Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> >

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caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>