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

"Jörg Rhiemeier" wrote:

> They are not, or only marginally so.  My mother language is High
> (Standard) German (though the language of my forebears was Low German),
> and I still find it quite difficult to understand spoken Low German even
> though I have familiarized myself with it a bit.
That's about right:  "quite difficult to understand".  Which is not the
same as understanding nothing, which is the situation with English and
any other language (except Scots, depending on whether you reckon Scots
a separate language or not --- in Ill Bethisad, though, it definitely is).

> Reminds me somewhat of some Ashkenaz Jew referring to German as "a
> parody on Yiddish", but that's always a matter of viewpoint.
Hey, great line!   But in fact Yiddish is a Slavic language most of whose
words just happen to be German.  See http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html .

--
There is / one art                   || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
no more / no less                    || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things                   || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness                 \\ -- Piet Hein