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semiretired@my-deja.com
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Jarmo Puolakanaho
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:39 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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In alt.usage.english semiretired@my-deja.com <semiretired@my-deja.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Branch of English or a Separate Language?
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A dialect. As far as I know, everyone who speaks Scots understands most
forms of English. I'm not sure if it works the other way around, though.
Scots could be categorized as a separate language if Scotland was an
independent state and had an army. I don't know who originally stated
this idea of languages having armies, but it works here.
--
Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else. |
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Jarmo Puolakanaho
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:39 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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In alt.usage.english Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
| Quote: | It's a pleasantry; if the Scottish people think of themselves as a
nation, they're certainly entitled to call their speech a language, and
no one can tell them any different.
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The same thing can be seen here in Finland, too. Or not exactly _in_
Finland but quite close: Finnish has been spoken both sides of the
Tornio River Valley for centuries; both in Finland and in Sweden.
However, those who speak Finnish in the Swedish side of the valley have
decided to call their dialect 'Meän kieli' ('Our language'), perhaps to
emphasize the fact that they do not feel Finnish but not very Swedish
either.
The differences between Meän kieli and Northern Finnish dialects are not
very big. The biggest difference is on the vocabulary level: Meän kieli
has been heavily influenced by Swedish. However, this does not mean Meän
kieli is uncomprehensible to us Finns. There are some dialects in
Finnish that are much more difficult for most Finns to understand.
I think the same thing applies to Scots, too, even though the historical
background is different. I have taken some courses in the history of
English and as far as I recall from the lectures, Scots was recognized
as a separate language some centuries ago. That was before the Acts of
Union in the early 18th century (?).
Anyway, this page looks very interesting to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_Language
--
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this stupid T-shirt.
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Marc Adler
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:51 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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semiretired@my-deja.com wrote:
Or a low blow?
--
Maar God weet, dat, ten dage |
als gij daarvan eet, zo zullen | Marc Adler |------
uw ogen geopend worden, en gij | /
zult als God wezen, kennende het | ------| marc.adler@gmail.com
goed en het kwaad. - Genesis 3:5 | |
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Harlan Messinger
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Spehro Pefhany
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:23 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:05:46 +0000 (UTC), the renowned Jarmo
Puolakanaho <jape@despammed.com> wrote:
| Quote: | In alt.usage.english semiretired@my-deja.com <semiretired@my-deja.com> wrote:
Branch of English or a Separate Language?
A dialect. As far as I know, everyone who speaks Scots understands most
forms of English. I'm not sure if it works the other way around, though.
Scots could be categorized as a separate language if Scotland was an
independent state and had an army. I don't know who originally stated
this idea of languages having armies, but it works here.
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The traditional Chinese character for "nation" ("guo") contains a
pictograph of a lance (for an army), a mouth (for a language), and
what was originally earth, surrounded by borders.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com |
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anonymous
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:48 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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Jarmo Puolakanaho <jape@despammed.com> in
<news:chru9q$i8d$1@ousrvr3.oulu.fi>:
| Quote: | Scots could be categorized as a separate language if Scotland was an
independent state and had an army. I don't know who originally stated
this idea of languages having armies, but it works here.
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Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
--
Polar |
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Peter T. Daniels
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:17 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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Spehro Pefhany wrote:
| Quote: |
On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:05:46 +0000 (UTC), the renowned Jarmo
Puolakanaho <jape@despammed.com> wrote:
In alt.usage.english semiretired@my-deja.com <semiretired@my-deja.com> wrote:
Branch of English or a Separate Language?
A dialect. As far as I know, everyone who speaks Scots understands most
forms of English. I'm not sure if it works the other way around, though.
Scots could be categorized as a separate language if Scotland was an
independent state and had an army. I don't know who originally stated
this idea of languages having armies, but it works here.
|
Max Weinreich wrote, in Yiddish, "A language is a dialect with an army
and a navy."
It's a pleasantry; if the Scottish people think of themselves as a
nation, they're certainly entitled to call their speech a language, and
no one can tell them any different.
| Quote: | The traditional Chinese character for "nation" ("guo") contains a
pictograph of a lance (for an army), a mouth (for a language), and
what was originally earth, surrounded by borders.
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Good grief. Did you fall for one of those books that makes pictures out
of characters?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net |
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Spehro Pefhany
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:43 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 12:17:00 GMT, the renowned "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Spehro Pefhany wrote:
The traditional Chinese character for "nation" ("guo") contains a
pictograph of a lance (for an army), a mouth (for a language), and
what was originally earth, surrounded by borders.
Good grief. Did you fall for one of those books that makes pictures out
of characters?
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Analyzing them by breaking them down helps the "more mature" (older)
brain remember the characters, if nothing else. Guo has 11 strokes in
the traditional form.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com |
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Rex F. May
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:54 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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in article 41419B3B.2388@worldnet.att.net, Peter T. Daniels at
grammatim@worldnet.att.net wrote on 9/10/04 6:17 AM:
| Quote: | Good grief. Did you fall for one of those books that makes pictures out
of characters?
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Sounds like many of us have been misled, Peter. Set us straigh! |
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Peter T. Daniels
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 7:50 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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Rex F. May wrote:
I don't know what pictograms underlie the character he was talking
about, but they weren't what he said they were.
Many books on "learning" a handful of characters try to make pictures
out of their present forms that relate to their present meaning, and
these pictures -- since they usually don't even respect the phonetic vs.
radical components -- have nothing to do with their origin.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net |
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Spehro Pefhany
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:20 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 00:05:15 -0700, the renowned Jacques Guy
<jguy@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
| Quote: | Spehro Pefhany wrote:
The traditional Chinese character for "nation" ("guo") contains a
pictograph of a lance (for an army), a mouth (for a language), and
what was originally earth, surrounded by borders.
This pictograph for a lance and a mouth is a separate
character, which mean "or, probable, maybe" and
is pronounced huo4. Its function in the character for "nation"
is that of a phonogram, i.e. a phonetic complement.
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William McNaughton/Li Ying disagree completely with your statement,
indicating that the orginal meaning of huo4 (all the elements of guo
excepting the borders) was also "nation", and that it was later
reclarified with the surround radical. The "one" was originally
"earth", according to them.
<snip>
| Quote: | There is, however a character for "nation" which is
probably pictographic: wang2 "king" in a square, but
nowadays you'll see it with an added dot, which turns
"king" into "jade" (it didn't do to spell "republic" with
a "king" in it!). All three are interchangeable. They
different "spellings" of the same word.
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Yes, that's the "modern" form of guo. I didn't know that it existed
before with the wang2 rather than yu inside the surround radical. I
guess that explains where they got it from. Presumably, dethroning the
king was a political statement of the communists.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com |
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Jim Tyson
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:43 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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Jarmo Puolakanaho <jape@despammed.com> wrote in message news:<chru9q$i8d$1@ousrvr3.oulu.fi>...
| Quote: | In alt.usage.english semiretired@my-deja.com <semiretired@my-deja.com> wrote:
Branch of English or a Separate Language?
A dialect. As far as I know, everyone who speaks Scots understands most
forms of English. I'm not sure if it works the other way around, though.
|
It's a language because people who decide these things (the people who
speak it) say it's a language. Who understands what is just not
relevant. Cases have been brought up before in this forum to
demonstrate why intelligibility between speakers is not a useful
criterion. To rehearse: Swedish and Norwegian (at least Bokmaal) are
very readily mutually intelligible but they aren't usefully conceived
of as one language: the speakers consider them to be two languages,
they rely on different standards (ie are autonomous), they have
separate literary traditions and so on. Danish and Norwegian (Bokmaal
or Rijksmaal) are readily mutually intelligible. If Norwegian and
Danish are one language on this ground and Norwegian and Swedish are
one language then are Danish and Swedish (which are far from readily
mutually intelligible) one language?
Some Maghreb dialects - especially Moroccan - of Arabic are not at all
readily intelligible to speakers of Levantine, Egyptian, Peninsular or
other varieties of Arabic whether standard or dialectal. But the
people who speak Morocdan dialects consider that these are not
separate languages but varieties of Arabic. They rely on Standard
Arabic for their written language and these varieties have no separate
literary tradition.
Most Scots speakers are bilingual in Scots and English (two as it
happens very closely related languages) but very few English people
can make much of spoken Scots and the speakers of that language will
tend - if they are accomodating - to modify towards English to
facilitate comprehension. But it makes little difference: the only
way to differentiate a language from a dialect is socio-historically.
| Quote: |
Scots could be categorized as a separate language if Scotland was an
independent state and had an army. I don't know who originally stated
this idea of languages having armies, but it works here.
|
It doesn't work here and while the original characterisation of a
language as a dialect with an army and a navy has powerful resonance,
it wasn't I believe intended as you deploy it. Lots of language
varieties have no army or navy or idependant state associated with
them but they are not usefully considered dialects of any other
language. Consider Occitan - of what on earth could it be a dialect?
It's just another Romance language. And what of the Lichtensteiners:
they have an independant state but no language that is uniquely
theirs: they speak high German and high German dialects.
All natural languages are dialects - there is no special linguistic
distinction between dialect and language except the sociolinguistic
ones. All dialects are languages. The assertion that the variety you
speak is a dialect of another language or is a separate language is an
act of identity not of language analysis.
Jim |
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Spehro Pefhany
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:53 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 00:49:29 -0700, the renowned Jacques Guy
<jguy@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
| Quote: | Spehro Pefhany wrote:
William McNaughton/Li Ying disagree completely with your statement,
indicating that the orginal meaning of huo4 (all the elements of guo
excepting the borders) was also "nation", and that it was later
reclarified with the surround radical. The "one" was originally
"earth", according to them.
Well, I am skeptical. How does it manage to mean "or,
maybe, possible"? And "puzzled"?
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By sound-loan, according to them.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com |
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semiretired@my-deja.com
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| Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:39 pm
Post subject: Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language? |
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Harlan Messinger wrote
Apologies. The text on the page is interesting to read aloud |
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