Re: Diglossia (was Re: Nur-ellen in the world of Brithenig)

Me govanen!
"Thomas R. Wier" tetent:

[mutual intelligiblity of German dialects]

> That's not the point, though.  John's point, if I read him aright, was
> that the question of whether a form of speech is a language or a dialect
> is not at all a simple matter. He was bringing up the matter of High German
> and Low German because the traditional dialects (*not* the Standard
> Hochdeutsch you are taught in school) of German form a continuum from
> Austria to the Netherlands, and no two contiguous dialects along that
> continuum are mutually unintelligible, while the dialects at either end are
> so. That is, at least, what linguists say; I cannot say for sure not having
> lived there.  In other words, the situation is quite complex, and any simplistic
> attempt to call this or that set of dialects a language will be arbitrary to
> that extent.
Yes, it is as they say, though there are a few areas where the "slope"
is quite steep because the isoglosses are quite densely packed.  In such
areas, the "intelligibility radius" (i.e. the maximum distance of local
dialects which are still mutually intelligible) may become as small as
50 kilometers or less, if such a number can be fixed at all.  The
best-known (and thickest) such isogloss bundle is the northern boundary
of the High German sound shift which cuts across the country roughly
along the Duesseldorf-Kassel-Dessau-Frankfurt(Oder) line and fans out
over a wide area in the Rhineland.

Syld,
Jörg.