Re: SF with a multiplicity of human languages

On Apr 13, 2:28 pm, Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 13 Apr 2007 12:28:54 -0700, "Ben Goodman" <good...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



On Apr 9, 10:52 pm, Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 09 Apr 2007 21:11:21 GMT, "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

James Nicoll wrote:

Note that some of the Scots would have spoken Scots. So the percentage
of English-speakers would depend on whether you consider Scots a
language separate from English.

Scots Gaelic or Scots English?

Scots Gaelic is (obviously) a separate language; Scots English is
merely a dialect, though I admit it's one I can't always understand,
even though it was my grandfather's milk tongue.

Scots, which is also known as Lallans (Lowlands--to distinguish it
from the Gelic spoken in the Highlands), refers to an English-like
languague or dialect depending on who you ask.

My grandfather, who grew up speaking Lallans, considered it a dialect,
so I'd always considered that definitive -- I wasn't one to question
beloved elders. Interesting to learn otherwise. Thanks!

It's probably a generation thing. When Scotland was a separate country
it was a language. When it was incorporated into Great Britain, it
wasn't. Now with devolution and minority rights it is again.


I snipped your experience about American and Scottish English being
mutually unintelligible (and needing an Englishman to "translate"),
but evidently something similar is pretty common in Scandinavia where
Norwegians can understand both Danes and Swedes, but Danes and Swedes
have a hard time understanding each other's spoken language.

That happens with Chinese languages, too -- Mandarin and Wu are said
to be mutually unintelligible (though in fact I've met Wu speakers who
can understand Mandarin, probably just from hearing it on TV so much),
but Mei speakers can communicate with both.

The North
Germanic languages page has this aphorism: "A language is a dialect
with an army and a navy."

For example, whether Alsatian is a language or dialect depends on who
currently controls Strasbourg; since it's in France at the moment,
Alsatian is a language, but when it was in Germany (1871-1919 and
1940-1945), Alsatian was a dialect.

Other examples of this is that what was
once called Serbo-Croatian under Yugoslavia is now promoted as three
languages by Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina...

Bosnian, too?

I'd heard that there were just two real differences between Serbian
and Croatian -- that they use different genitive endings, and use
different alphabets. (Serbian = Cyrillic, Croatian = Latin) I hadn't
known Bosnian was claiming to be a distinct language -- what alphabet
do they use?

It looks like Latin mostly although Cyrillic and Arabic have been used
in the past. To me it doesn't look like there's much difference
between the three. Not any more difference than between American and
British English other than using Cyrillic for Serbian anyway.


In a similar vein, what are often considered dialects in Germany and
Italy (which are younger as nations than the US) would be considered
separate languages if they were in separate countries. For example,
Low German is closer to Dutch than Standard German (derived from High
German).

Yeah, when we took a cruise up the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel, we
officially encountered four languages -- Dutch, German, Alsatian, and
French -- but in practice it was at least six; I know a fair bit of
German, but I couldn't understand much of anything being said several
places in Germany. Swiss German (nominally a dialect of German) was
totally incomprehensible, while Alsatian (nominally a separate
language) was pretty easy once I adjusted a couple of vowels.


That's interesting. According to Wikipedia, Alsatian and Swiss German
are related. It must be gramatically more similar to Swiss German and
phonetically more similar to Standard German, if I were to guess.

Venetian is evidently closer to French and Spanish than
Standard Italian (derived from the Tuscan dialect):

I noticed in Venice that a lot of common words on signs were spelled
differently than elsewhere in Italy, and sometimes entirely different
words were used. I can't remember the exact words, but one example
was that the word for "tunnel" was different.

It didn't look any closer to French or Spanish, though -- it looked
like there was an admixture of something else entirely.


Wikipedia says that there are 3 dialects in Venice. Venetian, Venetian
Italian, and Standard Italian. I imagine what you saw was Standard
Italian with some Venetian loanwords which is essentially Venetian
Italian (minus pronounciation). The same thing existed in Cornwall
before Cornish became extinct. Conish influenced the English spoken
there and added some vocabulary.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: Six out of 10 young Americans cannot find Iraq on a map
    ... Language became a political and an emotional issue as early as the ... proposed English Language Amendment, ... Despite the myth that German had once come close to replacing English ... The story of the German Vote is occasionally trotted out by ...
    (alt.guitar.amps)
  • Re: Learning a language
    ... >> Vineyard can be used as a model to the fact that a separate pidgin English ... The speakers of a language, any language, ... > The Second Sound Shift today plays an important role in distinguishing one ... > local variety of German from another, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Review of Art of Assembly Language
    ... But English is the stated and agreed "Lingua Franca" on the ... there the policy is that posts should be German language and even if ... to characterise nationalities in such a monochrome fashion...as was my ...
    (alt.lang.asm)
  • Re: Is there an optimal sequence for language acquisition?
    ... She could only speak Italian. ... > speak to her in English, ... I learnt that this girl was going to learn German ... Most people would understand both and speak a mixed language. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Learning a language
    ... > Vineyard can be used as a model to the fact that a separate pidgin English ... The speakers of a language, any language, ... Different vernacular norms ... local variety of German from another, ...
    (sci.lang)