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Re: The deliberate redundancy; was: Idioms

From:Irina Rempt-Drijfhout <ira@...>
Date:Thursday, June 10, 1999, 20:40
On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Chris Peters wrote:

> How many of you have created dialects like these in your conlangs? > Especially, dialects as different as the Japanese "Hyojungo" or "Kansaiben" > (Tokyo or Osaka Japanese)?
Well, not "like these", and I haven't actually created the dialects either, but Valdyan does have dialects and they're important. We run role-playing games in Valdyas as well and we've had some fun with dialects, like when a woman's in-laws didn't take her seriously until they discovered that she could (a) drive a haycart, and (b) "talk broad" though it was a completely different "broad" from what they talked themselves. What every child learns in school is "the Queen's Valdyan", basically a cultured version of the dialect of the capital, though other subjects (like history or arithmetic) may be taught in the local dialect. When travelling, people start out by speaking their own dialect to establish that they can, then speak the standard language to understand one another. If your dialect happens to *be* the standard language, i.e. if you happen to be from Valdis, you've got a problem; and indeed people from Valdis have a harder time to be taken seriously by people they meet when they travel. Irina Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastinay. irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself) http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English) http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)