Re: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton"

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 20:36:00 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:

>Hi!
>
>"Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> writes:
>> quick interruption here . . .
>>
>> You German folks seem to be using "dialect" to mean something specific;
>> normally it just refers to any variety of speech, regardless of whether
>> or not said variety is recognized as some standard.  What do you mean
>> by it?
>
>I'd say there are two meanings:
>   a) a variant of High German
>
>      This then means a minor difference to the standard pronunciation
>      of that language ('standard pronunciation' obviously being a
>      concept not applicable to English).
>
>      This is a minor usage of 'dialect' however.
>
>   b) a different German language/dialect (sorry for repeating the
>      same word in the definition)
>
>      This then refers to usually mutually intelligible variants of
>      German that have undergone different sound changes and and often
>      use different vocab.  It could often be said that those are
>      different languages, but that's not usually done, because they
>      are so intelligible and there is not political motivation to
>      distinguish them as a language.  However, Bavarian or Plattdeutsch
>      (both of which again occur in many variants) and some others
>      seem to be accepted as different languages.  Plattdeutsch is
>      closer to Dutch than NHG, for example.
>
>      This is the major usage of 'dialect'.
Excellent description! I'd add that in many places of southern and middle
Germany and in Austria, there's a complex continuum between the (a) and (b)
'dialects' (depending on situation), whereas in northern Germany, there's a
sharp distinction between them (they're too different), as well as in
Switzerland (where standard German isn't used but for writing, with very few
exceptions, as a matter of national identity). The Swiss varieties of the
standard are quite peculiar (there's the eternal jokes that Swiss standard
German is taken for Swiss local dialect by Germans), whereas the northern
German varieties of standard German are said to be the closest to the
standard pronunciation of the prescriptive tradition.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust