Re: The deliberate redundancy; was: Idioms

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)