Re: Zelandish (was: 2nd pers. pron. for God)

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> Hehe, it's the kind of things I don't know how to consider :)) . Is it a
> language? A dialect? (of what? :)) ) A kind of creole? (though without having
> ever had a pidgin form)
Historically it's a dialect of German.  Sociolinguistically it functions as
a separate language: it has its own domain of application, for example.

> of Standard German, but as far from it as Dutch.
You can't make reliable inferences about distance from the Ethnologue.
In general, genetic distance and grouping are two different things.  To
take an example from primate biology, genetic distance would divide the
Hominidae into three groups: Sumatra orangutans, Borneo orangutans, and
the human-chimp-gorilla clade.

--
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        jcowan@reutershealth.com
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There are
no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that
they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. --The Hobbit