Language vs Dialect: What You Need to Know
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- Опубліковано 5 лип 2024
- What's the real difference between a language and a dialect? Where does one language end and another begin? There are aa lot of misconceptions out their, resulting in people thinking the way some people speak is 'just' a dialect. Let's look at how to put things right - seeing all language varieties as equally magnificent!
00:00 Introduction
00:41 Language varieties
01:18 Social and Political definition
01:29 West Germanic Dialect Continuum
03:04 Degrees of mutual intelligibility
03:15 Other continua
04:03 Effect of mountains and rivers
04:22 Standard Languages
05:01 National Languages
05:16 Example of dialects straddling national borders
06:50 Language policies stamping out diversity
07:34 Linguisitc snobbery
07:57 Problematic definition using intelligibility
08:36 A dialect with an army and navy - Розваги
I found this really interesting. As a yorkshireman by birth who moved from west yorkshir to herefordshire at the age of 12, I found the transition fairly difficult - it really felt like a whole new language! I grew up with my grandparents (grandad particuarly) speaking with sentences littered with local "dialect" - alleyway was ginnel, baht for without etc.
Now much later in life ive lived in herefordshire, northamptonshire, newcastle and jarrow, the west midlands and nottinghamshire i find it fascinating how many regional variations there are in a sinlge language!
Fascinating indeed!
Aw once ax'd fowk online whether they'd like to larn traditional dialect an heve it towt i t'schooils. Sich a shame to hear em reply "we've auready a Yorkshire accent to distinguish uz ther's noa nead to bring back traditional dialect, besides nobbdy'd understan uz." Somedy else eyven said as it'd be impossible cos dialect lacks PC language, which is o coorse nonsense but for somedy to ha actilly said yond is quite frankly unbelievable. Ther's nivver bin nowt wrang wi speykin traditional dialect an to see it dee aat is tragic, we mun frame ussens to save it whol ther's still time left.
@@Fenditokesdialect Reading that was fun for a seventy-something American who read a bit of James Herriot and watched most of Last of the Summer Wine. It now seems to have all been educationally worthwhile as well as entertaining.
Excellent explanation! Yes, when I was a teenager, we'd cross in to norther Germany and the older folks spoke a dialect very similar ours. I now know learned here that this goes back much further than the Hansa league.
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
I'm a German learner and I have a friend who speaks Badisch. He tells me that it's a dying dialect and that people don't take him seriously when he speaks. I wasn't even exposed to dialects when I was learning German in university - it's a real shame, because when I first met him I could barely understand him, but with enough exposure it became very easy.
Fellow saxon speaker?
I would love to hear about the Dalek dialects over the years.
That would be fun.
There's actually a book called _Easy_ _Dalekese_ where someone has created a language for them based on the scraps of information we have from TV, books, comics, etc. I've not read it, but my 21-year-old son says it's fun. Zyquivilly!
Didn't the Kroutons have a Brummie accent, or is that just my imagination? ua-cam.com/video/5RPhNFS4ai4/v-deo.html
Maybe Dalek is a dialectical dialect of Olmec?
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages _There are aa lot of misconceptions out their_ about daleks. 😉
(Check video description.)
You have to be the most fascinating person I've accidentally found on youtube. Language is the true superpower and you can just explain why language is that way and how it happened. It's pretty awesome to hear your understanding and explanation of language.
Wow, thank you!
Thanks for the fantastic video! If people in general were aware of these facts there would be far less prejudiced attitudes towards one another. Music, linguistics, and of course the arts in general can be conducive to open and accepting relationships between societies.
Absolutely!
Agree.
Fascinating stuff again Dave, the point you made about the development of nation states and the enforcement of language is right up my street! AND you had Daleks in this one... we are spoilt rotten.
Glad you like it. Tell me more about your interest in nation states.
A most excellent description of how dialects and languages diverge and develop.
Thank you!
I was not expecting the Dalek invasion at the beginning, but it was worth it. Thanks also for the dialect versus language discussion. -- I wonder if mass communication and travel will reunite British and American English, or at least spelling. I seems clear that if we hadn't had fast transit and media, that the two would hae diverged with a few more centuries.
My feeling is that conformity and individualism, or at least local identity, are always pulling against each other. There are indeed some features of North American speech that are spreading in the UK but at the same time some aspects of London English are spreading, especially among working class men.
Thanks Dave. I was just asking myself literally two days ago why France doesn't seem to have regional languages (beside Breton which is obviously very different) like Italy, Spain, and Portugal do. So it seems these languages were suppressed earlier and more earnestly than in those other countries.
Have you ever tried conversing with people from the Languedoc? There are place-names near Bergerac which cannot be pronounced in Loire-Valley French. Prigonrieux, for one.
That is the case, though of course some regional varieties have managed to survive.
Particularly France is very rich in local languages that are not necessarily Romance rooted. Breton is only one of them. Let's add the Germanic ones that are Flemish, Franconian and Alsacian. Then there is Basque. And among the Romance ones you will find Occitan, Catalan, Corse, Provençal, Arpitan, Ch'ti and others.
During my first assignment in Thailand in 1971 I was assigned to work in Chiang Mai, in Northern Thailand. Though the majority of my effort was directed towards learning to hear, speak, and read the Central Thai ‘official’ version of the language, I did pickup a few useful phrases of the local Lanna ( ล้านนา - aka Kam Meuang กำเมือง ). Many years later, when I accompanied my Ayutthaya born wife to meet with a group of her poet pen pals in Chiang Mai in 2010, those little scraps of local speech were deployed to good effect.
In its heyday Lanna / Kam Meuang would have met the Army, Fleet and Flag criteria for a language, though any Lanna Fleet would have been a riverine flotilla.
The insidious part of the demise of the language continuum (in France anyway) is you try to learn what's left of your own regional language and having never been exposed to it growing up you find yourself hardly able to understand any of it. It feels really wrong somehow
It is very wrong. So much heritage lost forever.
Same here in Slovenia. We all speak pretty much standard Slovene and still get mocked for the minor differences that still exist. And most people tend to say "correct/proper Slovene" when they really mean "standard Slovene".
@@galoomba5559 So sorry to hear that.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages In France this happened because of the republican government back during the 1789 revolution. Nationalism was erected as something sacred, and anything that was different was killed (often litterally), theses efforts re-started with the 3rd republics and the ones that followed it
Only recently are we seeing actions taken to re-vitalise regional languages (as we call them here), but some might say it's too late.
edit: I posted this message before watching your video, I'm pleasantly surprised that you covered it.
France is a multinational multilingual country and always have been, never let the republican scums tell you otherwise
shs.hal.science/halshs-00826047/file/Lyster_Costa_-_Unknown_-_Revitalization_of_Regional_Languages_in_France_Through_Immersion.pdf
SUPERB Dalek graphics, especially the 'extermination' hit. Someone's been doing their homework!
Wow. Thanks so much for appreciating that.
Many thanks for another awesome video aimed at popularizing such a debatable, complicated, and underrated topic as the thin line between languages and dialects
Fantastic video as always, Dave!
Thank you!
Dave. You are my hero. Thank you so much for being sensitive to language prejudice. I have been learning Irish for several years for that reason.
😂😂😂😂😂 loved that intro and love your passion for languages, I always have fun learning here
Good to hear. Many thanks!
Obviously obviously fantastic content & very illuminating explanations of concepts (as per usual!), but also the whole dalek bit put a grin on my face! There's something v wholesome about the humour!
also it's accessible enough that I can pass the video on to pals who I'm trying to get on the linguistics hype, which is nice :)
Great to hear. Good luck on spreading the word!
The string of dialects is analogous to evolution (e.g. ring species etc) in which adjacent populations can interbreed but as they get further away in distance they are less able to.
That’s fascinating. I didn’t know that.
I was under the impression that its not a gradation but a fixed barrier of species.
I was scolded by a snobbish French professor quite obviously from the North for using "un régionalisme"--of Occitan origin, no doubt (my relatives' region). I just love your videos. They are my bedtime story after the day's work.
How dreadful. I had a terribly snobbish tutor when I was studying in Strasbourg. I said I wanted to research code switching between Alsatian and French. She claimed that no one spoke that. I said I heard people code switching all the time on the bus and in the supermarket. Her response: “Ah, yes but you live in a working class area.” Her field was supposedly sociolinguistics.
😯@@DaveHuxtableLanguages
Not only was this educational but also very touching. Great vid, thanks.
Wow. Thank you.
I grew up with a father who spoke Lancashire and a mother from Durham, so was always fascinated by accents and dialects. I've noticed that Lancastrian is becoming driven out by Mancunian to some extent, so this is not just a national phenomenon.
I think it's the case across the country, where the accents of big cities seem cool and tough and are taken on by teenaged boys initially.
HI. What fun. I has just watched Doctor Who with my family, live in Jutland and liked your very informative video very much. Your videos are a truly entertaining and informative as well 😀
Amazing coincidence. So glad you liked it!
Perfect presentation. Love your channel!
As a South African, I immediately thought of the Bantu language continuum when you mentioned language continua. I was pleasantly surprised when you mentioned it. An interesting phenomenon in South Africa is how the Nguni languages (isiXhosa, isiZulu, isiNdebele and SiSwati) are mutually understandable. I am not a linguist, but my theory is that there had been a dialect continuum across a large area, but that when missionaries started writing down the local dialects, they categorised the then into seperate languages based on tribes, which became the "standard" forms of what were now known as different languages.
Arguably, I think that it is easier for a Xhosa-speaking person to understand Zulu than it is for a person living in the South of England to understand a thick Northern accent.
Very insightful. Thanks.
Love the Dalek jokes mate. I grew up watching it here in the states. I'm no proper linguist. I've just been studying languages and dialects for the past 20 years. I always thought the boundary was at the point of unknown foreign words. English has many French, and German loan words, but perhaps it's whether they've been made common to a certain percentage of English speakers. There are people right here in the United States I can't understand because all the inflection of English common words bend and drawl in unfamiliar ways. I may yet study linguistics at uni.
Glad you appreciated that. English is weird. It used to be part of the west Germanic dialect continuum but then it got mixed in with Norse and French. It would be great if you could study linguistics.
Such a fantastic and interesting video, thank you!
So glad you thought so.
Wow, I thought that the annihilation of patois was specific to us poor walloon people of Belgium. We had our own full-fledged language which is of course somewhere in the middle between french and germanic languages.
Tragic! I must find out more about that.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages it's been decided in the early XXth century, and done 'like the French'. Mostly a forced gentrification, as a means to get us out of the farming life, metal industry and coal mines.
Excellent!
Very informative as ever. 👏🏼👏🏼
Glad you think so.
Wonderful video - must share this with a German friend.
Only found your channel recently, and noted your interviews with Sylvain Agbolo. I came across the Ewe language a few years ago though my interest in African choral music, alerted by the letter x in in their orthography. Which means that they would have little trouble with Irish place names, such as *Ahoghill* , IPA /əˈhɒxɪl/.
Thanks for the share. Yes, it would seem Ewe does indeed feature a velar fricative.
Hi Dave! Love the vid! Would love to hear your insight into the different Chinese languages/dialects if you have any. I'm half Singaporean and my family speak Teochew, which is near impossible to find lessons for in the UK. Would I be able to get by if I learn a bit of Mandarin or any other Chinese language?
It depends what you mean by get by. Younger people in Singapore will have learned Mandarin at school. Older folk may still understand it, but it’s very very different from Teochew.
A good example of the dialect drift is that of Scots Gaelic, which was originally brought to the Western Isles and adjacent mainland by Irish Gaelic speakers who arrived in the more southern areas first and drifted north, as did their dialects. While Gaelic speakers from Stornoway are not unintelligible to speakers from Kintyre there are differences, which is why Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the national centre for Gaelic language and culture, teaches Skye Gaelic as Skye is in the middle of the two extremes so is less different from the Gaelic to the north and south than they are to each other. (edit: grammar)
That’s a fascinating example. Many thanks for sharing.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages You're welcome. I'm sure if you contact Sabhal Mòr Ostaig directly they can give you loads more information on how the language drifted into different island dialects and how they differ.
How does Gaelic deal with translating Microwave Oven instructions? @@rabha1754
3:57 ❤ definitely my new fav channel!
Fascinating yet again. Amazing how what people judge in terms of superior/inferior attitudes towards others, affects language development, as well as one's own life. Bigotry rules 😮!
(Igrew up in the 1960's, army kid, different countries. Back then, you could tell a man's rank as soon as he opened his mouth 🧐. I know that's accent, and not dialect, mind. Potential perception influence on a much smaller scale. Even now, I notice an 'officer English twang', not as snooty as before, but still there 3 generations on from my childhood perception.)
I find that whole idea of the hierarchy of accents in the army fascinating. Many thanks for bringing that up. It is almost a microcosm of what happens when you ship a group of people off to an island somewhere. A very strong sense of identity, isolated from the general population, moving about a lot often overseas. The 'men' are mostly working class, from all over the place with strong regional accents who definitely don't want to sound posh. Senior officers still mostly from public schools and old army families. In contrast with other ex-public schoolboys these days, they have less pressure to tone down the accent and it probably actually gets 'snootier' due to the isolation. People working their way up, I imagine, will tone down their snootiness as junior officers to be one of the lads (like Capt. Harry Wales) and then rank it up as they get more senior.
It's a great example of the constructivist approach to international relations:
Countries don't really exist (e.g. for a long time language differences meant a great deal of heterogeneity), but as governments, citizens, and non-citizens standardise their language to suit the country they are part of, the idea of the nation state is legitimised and naturalised.
Nothing is more exciting to me to see musical and instrumental traditions, existing in neighboring countries that have utterly different religious and ethnic customs..showing how old they can be.
An interesting point. It makes me think of how often US politicians you the word 'Americans' when they mean 'people'.
History of languages is so fascinating, one of my favourite classes in university+you remind me of my excellent professor! For a future video idea, could you please explore the Balkan languages & how they work? I sincerely love visiting that entire corner of the world with all its complexity, would love to know more if possible :3
I'd love to be able to look into that. My hope is that one day I'll be able to generate enough revenue from this channel to be able to fund research trips.
Hello Dave,
I always appreciate your well-made, informative and entertaining videos.
A quick question: Would you say the words "accent" and "dialect" are synonyms and can be used interchangeably, or is there a difference between their meanings?
Thanks for all your hard work!
For me, dialect is the whole thing: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation etc. Accent is just the pronunciation.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for answering and for all of your hard work!
Loved it. I have an eternal fight with my Chinese friends that say their Hokkien, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakka, are only dialects, as opposed to Mandarin!
Those are all separate languages. They can all be traced back to Old Chinese, and thus have some similarities, but they are (for the most part) mutually unintelligible. Dialects have in pronunciation and vocabulary, while these languages have in pronunciation and vocabulary. It is perhaps comparable to Romance languages, but probably with less similarities, since they diverged longer ago. (That would be my guess, although I only speak Mandarin, and not any other Chinese languages.)
What fun!
I have (to my knowledge) a Sarf London accent with dialect that goes with it, some Scots English from my mother, some US English words and pronunciation from living and working in CA, and bits of French that have crept in from living and working there,
Perhaps I have my own language.
You do: it's known as an idiolect🙂
@@collieclone I've just learnt a new word. Ta muchly.
There you go!
This video has really been inspiring for someone born in rural China!! However, unlike many people who think of their dialects as inferior and backward, I'm proud of my dialect for its richness in vocabulary and tones. I'm deeply disappointed about how dialects are gradually regressing because of an authoritarian imposition to speak the standard 'language'.
Thanks for the reminder of the facts of dialect continua. (Is that actually a word? Yes, now I think on it. I was mixing up "a" from millennia with "a" from ballista.
The thing about daleks is that I always look for the "r".
I remember once at the gas station I had this truck driver from Georgia (US) who kept chewing his words, and a few hours later the tourists from España were easier to understand. I am from the Rockies in the US.
😎
Thanks!
Oh wow. Thank you!
Very interested
So glad you liked it.
Very interesting! Another aspect of local dialect continua is the possibility of locating resident areas of people by their speech (or phone-texting). As a native speaker of upper-austrian german I am able to often very accuratly (~20km) identify home-regions of other (upper-)austrian speakers.
That's very interesting. That's still possible in some parts of England, but these days just based on pronunciation.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesOf course! I do it mostly based on pronunciation as well but there are some regional varieties in vocabulary, especially in western austria and switzerland or vienna.
A map of dialect progression over 2000 years with modern country borders? I suppose I understand why but it's not what I would have done.
It isn't meant to be an accurate picture of the details of the migrations, just an illustration of the fact that "this area filled up with West Germanic speakers."
To be fair, there is value in standardisation (both in speech and writing), as this makes intercommunication easier. And it happens naturally, even if everyone considers their own speech varieties superior: the other's speech can still sometimes rub off on you.
Neither of the logical extremes are desirable. If everyone were to speak as differently to one another as is possible, noone would understand anyone. If we were all made to speak identically and every transgression was severely punished, this would massively increase human suffering while providing little benefits and actually cause communication to worsen and stagnate.
Absolutely. UA-cam wouldn’t be very successful if no one beyond 100 miles of where I grew up could understand me! The ideal solution is where everyone can speak one or more standard languages in addition to their own variety.
I have always felt language exists and changes so that we don't understand each other. ( we are Hutus and you are Bantus!)
A Dalek is just a TARDIS with an army and a navy.
😎
It would be interesting to hear about the dialect situation in the UK, or throw in the US along with the UK, just for good measure. For example, is the UK sort of intermediate between the German model and the French model? I have no idea. I am just speculating and asking for info. Thanks.
Hi. There has never been, to my knowledge, any policy to eradicate regional language varieties in the UK à la française. Languages such as Scots, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish were ruthlessly suppressed in schools, and prescriptive attitudes meant that anything other than standard English was considered ‘wrong’. Dialect variation has become increasingly rare over the last sixty years, more as a result of mass media than anything else. Regional accents are alive and well though many middle class people share the same accent regardless of geography.
Are you familiar with the gaspy inhaled "ya"? I first encountered this in Newfoundland and it is jarring - sounds like an alarm call. Then I heard it said by Norwegians specifically Torstein on the show Norsemen. It's the only inhaled word I've ever run into, and it seems to be from the North sea.
Finns do it a lot and Irish people do it quite a bit too.
3:30 This is the first time I've heard the Mandarin dialects described as a dialect continuum. I had assumed they were mostly mutually intelligible. Could you possibly do a video about this? As far as the other Chinese languages besides Mandarin, they are often called dialects, even though they are no more mutually intelligible than Spanish and French, as far as I understand.
Mutual intelligibility isn’t necessarily a very useful indicator. I do know, having lived in Kunming for 2 1/2 years that Southwestern Mandarin and North Eastern are not readily intelligible in the north-to-south direction, but southerners understand more of the northern varieties due to their familiarity with putonghua. I’d love to research this further. I’ll see what I can do.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages Please do! I'd love to learn about it!
it's funny that, as a German, I was able to understand the quote in Yiddish (which is a language...)
That particular sentence seems to be comprehensible across the full range of Germanic languages, with the exception of Icelandic (Tungumál er mállýska með her og sjóher) but Norwegian works (Et språk er en dialekt med en hær og marine)
I have noticed an odd phenomenon in my academic colleagues' speech. Several have taken to saying "phenomenon" and "phenomena" when referring to the singular noun, seemingly at random. I'm sure they know the difference but somehow don't consider it important. This started to happen only in the last year or so.
It's also because of know-it-alls who make a point of reminding you that they are using the correct classical grammar for plural nouns..When in fact many 'plural' nouns are used as singular. As in "the data is clear evidence" rather than "the data are clear evidence." What about "the police force is adapting"? How would your colleagues say that?
@@andyharpist2938 'Data' is a great example. I would say most people (and most of my colleagues) use 'data' as singular nowadays. It's quite rare to hear 'the data are'. However, I don't remember hearing one person using _both_ singular and plural, so in that respect it's different from 'phenomenon/phenomena'. I guess I am asking how usual it is for words to go through such a transition, where grammatically different forms are used interchangeably by the same person.
Btw, I don't correct colleagues' speech because I feel that would be rude, but I do correct written text (papers, grant applications, etc.) if asked to do so.
I doubt if your colleagues are inadvertantly at the cutting edge of language transition using the two words interchangeably. More they just use one or the other form depending on how they wish to emphasise their speaking. Like using until or till, on or upon.
They are perhaps even inviting correction by you, as quirky clever types often do. So a comment by you might give them satisfaction, confirming their self esteem. So correct away!
I'm always interested in why people deliberately pronounce words incorrectly. Churchill did it on purpose with calling Hitler a 'Nazzi'. GWBush called it 'Eyerack and Eyeran' . An idiot British Minister went to the Gulf States and welcomed them "..from both Dubai and Abu Dubai" and nearly caused a war.
My artist friend calls the savory spread 'Mar-meet,' and my friend calls Clapham "Clarm."
@@andyharpist2938 Yeah, (seemingly) wilful mispronunciation is an interesting one. I'm never sure if it's done for effect, whatever that might be, or because of a real deaf-spot. Donald Dewar was quite bad for that, if I remember right.
Re phenomenon vs phenomena. I'm inclined to think one isn't chosen over the other for emphasis or subtle distinction. It's more random than that. Either form fits the meaning slot, and everyone understands what is being said... even if some listeners find the singular/plural mismatch a bit jarring!
You don't say where your colleagues are. I hear this a lot from Americans, but I don't know if it's a recent phenom. I was surprised the other day when I heard an American linguist say processēs as if it was the plural of a Latin word *procex à la index, indices etc.
I agree, but fir most purposes it is extremely useful to have a distinction between language and dialect, even if the idea of the differences doesn't akways apply. Calling English and french different languageseven though they have a lot of cognates is useful because for the most part, English and French soeakers cannot understand each other. British and American English in the other hand, have some differences but are mostly mutually intelligable so it's useful to have a word, dieldct, that describes this. Having different word for the relationship between british and american engkish and the one between english and French is very useful, even if there are countless examples that show there is no actual scientific or universal or specific way we can actually define when different dialects are different languages
I think that's useful when the languages are only distantly related or not at all. So English and French are clearly different languages and Basque and French are 100% definitely different languages. But are French and Occitan different languages? Are Occitan and Catalan different languages? Are Tuscan and Venetian different languages? It gets less useful the closer they are to each other. It's completely useless to say Croatian and Serbian are different languages, no matter how many people think they are, whereas no one would deny Croatian is a different language to Greek. And as the video points out, it makes no sense to say Low German and Dutch are different languages while also claiming Low German and Swiss German are the same language, so it really just depends.
He passes the Dutchie on the left hand side
A language basically forms when a dialect of an older language becomes mutually unintelligible with the language it derived from. Like Tuscan Italian to Latin.
Not sure I agree.
not necessarily with the language it derived from, but more like with other sibling variants it commonly split off from. they are like 2 cells that divided. in many cases, there are cells where one of them is still deemed the carrier of the identity of where it split off from
Not really. Tuscan Italian could have continued calling itself Latin to the present day if it wanted to. We could then have the Tuscan variety of Latin, the Venetian variety, perhaps Parisian Latin, Castilian Latin, etc. To which Latin variety would we compare Tuscan to determine if it was a different language? Latin didn't have a fixed form, there was Latin before the classical period and varieties long after that period that its speakers still called Latin.
Great video, very comprehensive and nuanced! Only the statement that the Netherlands and Germany were relatively enlightened really sounds too optimistic to my ears (I speak Gronings, which is spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and is indeed still very mutually intelligible with East Frisian Platt, which is spoken right across the border in the Northwest of Germany. I did learn some basic High German in school, so that does help). Our Germanic varieties are in fact not doing well, and especially in the last century, have been heavily stigmatized just like the languages in France, and only now at the point where almost nobody of the youngest generation still speaks Low Saxon, this stigma is fading slowly. There is also no schooling and no kindergarten or anything in Low Saxon. I suppose the Netherlands and Germany just started later than France with stamping out diversity with language policies.. is that really all that "relatively enlightened"? It sure doesn't feel like that to me.. (I edited my comment to be less harsh and give more context)
Hi. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I should have qualified by statement with an ‘as far as I know’. So sorry to hear about stigmatisation and regional varieties being lost.
I think by the time you have to teach the dialect in schools to keep it alive, it's probably too late. You shouldn't have to formalise learning the dialect for it to survive. As you say, it's about stigma. Even if you teach a standard variety (as it would probably be impractical to do otherwise), if the local dialect has no stigma, then parents will naturally pass it on to their children. I think that kind of diglossia is the best of both worlds, where everyone knows a standard variety for formal situations (especially writing) and communication with people from other places, but they still keep their local variety alive in most everyday interactions.
In my part of France which is really close to Germany, people used to speak Plate. The language completely disappeared, it was killed by Institutions so much so I don't know ANY word of Plate. Not even "yes" or "no" or "hello". I honestly want to cry.
So sad when that happens.
A language is a politically established dialect. Likewise, a religion is a politically established sect.
Good analogy.
what about borders between language families, would they be as seamless?
Not in the same way. Lots of times there’s a physical barrier between them, like a mountain range of something. When there isn’t, you tend to get a lot of bilingualism - Basque speakers who also know French and/or Spanish, Slavic-language speakers in Eastern Europe who also speak German.
There are some nine or so adjacent dialects of Sami, from mid Norway round to Siberia. Each can more or less understand each other on either side, but not also their neighbors.
"We don't need singing Daleks."
Oh I think you'll find that we _do_ very much need singing Daleks.*
*though not in an actual Doctor Who episode please Russell.
There's apparently an all-singing episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds that I haven't brought myself to watch yet.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I've seen that episode, if you just accept that it is what it is then honestly it's not that bad; if you're grumpy throughout the episode because it's ruining Star Trek then you'll hate it.
I think it was the weakest episode in the season but it's been such a cracker of a season that's far from damning.
:D Dahlek kawnteenyuwah!
I remember seeing something a few years ago on the topic , which is gentler than a deliberate program to wipe out Breton, at least. I think they call it Plattdutsch, and not Plattdeutsch - the border dialect on the German side. It creeps right up to the edges of Dusseldorf, I seem to recall. (I can speak a few words of a micro-micro-dialect, in which the ü in Düsseldorf is left off, so as to make the word mean something like, "Idiot Village". In this dialect, the Corrected Z is used, and not the incorrect, "tset" that seems to have contaminated less serfustikaytud German dialects. It's clearly written with the letter used for zizzing, with no t in it, and no s, so for instance Zeitung should be corrected to Zzzzeitung - with a proper zizzing z, like people who know the alphabet use. None of this "Tseitung" nonsense, please. We don't tolerate slang around here.)
Fun! I used to go on school exchange trips to a small town in Schleswig-Holstein, where everyone schnackt Platt.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I think there are lots of languages in Germany. :D Good to see how far the domain of Platt spreads. (Maybe there are a few kinds of Platt, too?)
I guess the French experience explains why the word "provincial" gets used as an insult.
Living in France in the 1980s I used to be bored enough on some Sundays to watch a kids' talent show on TV called L'École des Fans. The host would mercilessly mock any kid who wasn't from Paris with questions about life in the provinces and would do insulting immitations of kids with southern accents.
Since they weren't mentioned, does this mean that the native languages of eg. the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Asia are not languages?
Er no… I wasn’t setting out to mention every language of earth. You are right to call out Eurocentrism though, since many videos on linguistic topics ignore most of the world. The examples I listed were of language continua. A big one I missed goes from the Arabian peninsular all across North Africa. (You missed North Africa off your list too). I don’t know of dialect continua in a North America, though they probably existed before the genocide. Nahuatl would be an example across Mexico and into Central America. Quechua is a big example in South America. Most Australian languages belong to one language family but I don’t know to what degree there is mutual intelligibility stretching across the continent. I don’t know much about Māori dialects but I imagine there must have been dialect continua in New Zealand at some point. The continuum spanning northern India is noteworthy, as it that ranging from Iran though Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Perhaps we can just use the word dialect as an adjective that modifies a noun, to indicate it is close to another language. Like colour. Cream is a dialect Beige , or orange is dialect fawn. Or as in music, D is dialect C sharp.
An interesting analogy since colours and musical pitches all merge into each other and the lines between them are arbitrary and cultural.
I'm sort of flattered you left Friesland gray, but we're still a West Germanic tribe/language. I get it though, Frisian isn't as German as Dutch is/was.
Kompliment! Du verstehst Deutsch und seine Entwicklung besser als die meisten Deutschen! 😃
Ich fühle mich geehrt, dass du so denkst!
Noch amol mit de mamaloshn! A groysen dank!
Nishto far vos!
Currently Ger sounds very manic again.
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Linguistic snobbery against the Scots language is common in the UK
Sadly true. I did a video about Scots a while back and it got a lot of comments claiming Scots wasn’t a language, mostly with no argument to support their view.
But they can get cross when I say 'I, from Nottingham, am also a Celt' ( like my friend in Austria) @@DaveHuxtableLanguages
There is, or perhaps was, a language called 'Scots' but the key thing is no-one speaks it. Scots speak English with varying degrees of Scotticisms. 'Scots' today is more like a network of sociolects. @@DaveHuxtableLanguages
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ENUNCIATE! ENUNCIATE!
Are you saying I don't?
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages lol no. It is what I imagine a linguistics Dalek would say.
@@simhthmss Indeed!
daleks personal improvement plan is basically exterminating the universe.
why cant they be both? a language can be a dialect too, a dialect of its parent language of course that may or may not exist anymore. a dialect is basically the child of older forms of a language and a language might as well be like an adult where if it has children of its own, that is clearly defined dialects under it, then its clearly a language already. saying that a language is a dialect with an army is a bit simplistic and pushes it too much in the realm of politics where one lets governments decide the sociological field of linguistics. languages exist regardless of an army nor organized state. it's just a more culturally powerful language when a society wields it employing a powerful state with armed forces. the reason why u might find another mutually intelligible language across the border is because languages never existed dependent on state borders. many languages exist across multiple countries and intelligibility mainly is affected by each language's ancestry. if he's your cousin or direct sibling, of course, you'd look alike. where's the distinction between yourself and a very distant cousin? when are you strangers to each other then? that is also the case with languages. when many people on average are grouped together as different linguistic groups, many individuals can identify that another language has way too many different linguistic features to be the same language. that's where languages split off. they could still be dialects of their former parent language tho if that parent language still distinctly existed. if not, people wouldn't get the connection that much anymore, which is the blurry part.
The problem is the concept of 'parent language'. Standard German isn't the parent of any of the West Germanic varieties - it's one of the range of varieties that spread across the country. It was plucked from among them, because it was mid-way between north and south and was then standardised and codified. You might say that proto-West Germanic was the parent, but that's not really the case either. Each one along the chain is the parent of the next one. And varieties can have lots of parents.
Let's take French as an example. We always talk as if its parent is Classical Latin. But ordinary people never spoke Classical Latin, which was a highly elaborated literary language mastered only by the highly educated elite. The masses spoke Vulgar Latin. Further out in the empire, people probably spoke a range of pidgins and creoles with elements of Vulgar Latin, their own language and those of the soldiers and officials. So French starts off as a mixture of various Latin, Celtic, Germanic and unknown elements. This turns into local varieties that go in their own directions and are influenced by Frankish and Norse to greater of lesser degrees until the variety spoken in Ile de France happens to become a literary standard and starts lording it over all the others.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesIt looks more like the problem is when one attributes parent languages to more popular prestige varieties of the same language or perceived same language even tho it's not accurate, sometimes also due to confusion due to similar names or just cuz people were taught that a certain language or dialect of it is the prestige form they should always default to or that some people have a mindset that only official languages supported by countries are supposedly the only languages. in all these cases, it seems to have been the work of politics that caused it the way it is, even tho it doesn't have to be. if those were not in the equation, there could be a cleaner way to look at linguistic family trees. Also, I always heard from others that French and the other Romance languages came more from Vulgar forms of Latin that commoners colloquially used more, but I suppose there's conceptions where people think it's descended from Latin in general and since the Latin that people are most familiar with is the Classical Latin used in science and by clergy that one might confuse French of being from Classical Latin specifically
Diz t'think ooer mak o' crack in Cummerland wad be yan ur t'other? 🤔😉
It's cawed a dialect generallywat.
I've tried to do a bit of research into Cumberland speech. So far, I've found lots of cool dialect features but nothing unique as far as pronunciation. What am I missing?
I love you
That’s most kind!
Barn in the USA.
So there's a barn party in the U.S.
Then, Lady Gaga gave a bit more help
As she proclaims, "BABY, BARN, this way.
I would love to know more about the stigma on dialect and why regions have been mocked because of their strong accents.
Sadly, people put each other down for all kinds of reasons. Language is so important to our psychological identity, which is why it gets attacked like it does.
A language is a dialect with an army
Indeed.
Hard to believe the French could be so ultranationalistic and dictatorial in everything from regional dialects to the naming. of children. That might help to explain how they started two world wars and blamed their neighbors for what they themselves did. Quel ironique.
I don't think the French invaded Poland.
Never trust a Darlek!