At what point does a separate dialect breakaway from a main language?
ie. At what point does it stop being just people speaking a language incorrectly, and get reclassified as a distinct dialect in it's own right?
For example the linguistic consensus is that African American Vernacular English, is not just "people speaking English incorrectly". But it's own dialect of English. What triggered this decision?
Other urls found in this thread:
simple.wikipedia.org
sco.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Usually the breakoff point is mutual intelligibility. The problem with that, though, is that most languages/dialects exist on a continuum.
For example, people from SW Russia can often understand Ukrainian and Belorussian without much difficulty, but other Russians can't understand them. So there's always a bit of arbitrariness in the process.
>Usually the breakoff point is mutual intelligibility.
So that hasn't happened for AAVE yet. Since someone who understands standard English can understand AAVE, it seems like "incorrect English" to them.
Another example is "Scots" which Scottish people declare is not just a dialect but an entire Language in it's own right.
How is this not just bad English?
>anycunt
political reason or when the vernacular becomes written with a completely different standard. Dutch or Low German vs. German dialects for example, even those considered central German that share some vocabulary and phonetics with their northern cousins.
Your AAVE example is complex because it reflects changes in conceptions of language over time. Previously the common idea was that the written standard was the standard and had more in common with the primordial language, sort of in a Platonic way. Now it's shifted to giving any deviation, accent, or dialect dignity. Which itself is reflective of larger cultural shifts
Here's the thing I don't get. I'm learning Mandarin Chinese at the moment and I am being instructed that it has very very clearly defined rules. And that when I do something incorrectly I am told "That is wrong".
And then I hear linguists like those on /r/badlinguistics saying shit like "you can't speak a language incorrectly, there is no "wrong" in language". When referring to stuff like Ebonics or African Pidgin English.
Well how come "wrong Chinese" exists but "wrong English" doesn't?
It seems that linguistics is dominated by left wing thinkers.
it's how our culture has changed over time. Maybe it is a weakness and is the example of a society on the decline like /pol/ wants to believe
Funnily enough though this isn't actually the standard to which we are tested or taught. Some lefty English teacher may give lip service to black English be a dialect in its own right but she's still not going to grade to it; she'll still grade based upon standard English
>At what point does a separate dialect breakaway from a main language?
Linguists have been debating this for decades, no real consensus reached.
IRL, it usually depends on a state recognizing it as such, which is invariably a political more than linguistic statement.
>Here's the thing I don't get.
There's a difference between the living language and the codified language. Living language changes and varies with the people speaking and listening, codified language is standardized with rules and forms and shit.
You can argue that there's no wrong way to speak the living language, because every utterance made contributes to evolving it and changing its rules. On the other hand the codified language has official grammar, ortography and shit regulated by some academic body who is the only judge of correctness and whose judgement can't be defied.
A learning class is gonna rely on the solidity of the codified language to teach you the basics, and then use the living language to make you fluent with locutions, commonly disregarded rules, etc.
There is no scientific basic for it, it is all convention or politics. For example, Serbian and Croatian is basically the same language, they can understand each other almost perfectly. Meanwhile someone from Beijing has a hard time understanding the Cantonese dialect but they are both considered just dialect of Chinese, but only because they live in the same country.
It is all bullshit.
A dialect becoming a language means much intermarrying and relating to other languages.
Bastardization is not an aspect of that,we do not talk about Creole.
>Dutch:
A German dialect.
>Ukranian:
A Russian dialect.
>Modern Norwegian(Both variants):
A dialect of Danish
>Scots:
A dialect of English
etc.
The most legit mother of English is British English and it's dialects.
Eh Cantonese and Mandarin are pretty much universally considered separate languages.
They're under the branch of "Chinese" for obvious political reasons by the Chinese government.
>On the other hand the codified language has official grammar, ortography and shit regulated by some academic body who is the only judge of correctness and whose judgement can't be defied.
I've seen a lot of linguists argue that this is incorrect.
Seems like linguistics is a "weird" science. You don't see Scientists saying there is no proper Science.
That dude didn't even read your question and assumed you were asking about dialects and languages
Literally what he said
>I've seen a lot of linguists argue that this is incorrect.
It's a pretty damn unassailable concept tho. You quite literally can't have a standardized anything without a standard and consequently someone who sets it.
What argume nts did you actualy hear?
Serbs are actually speaking croatian. The original serbian dialect is quite distinct from croatian and these two would not understand each other very well. Modern standard serbian is the Vojvodina-serbian, which in itself is actually just croatian. The original serbian dialect is actually much closer to what you would call macedonian today, than it is to croatian.
t. linguist.
It's a political distinction, nothing more.
That isn't Scots. That's just English written phonetically in a Scottish accent. I'm assuming you know that and you just want to rag on Scots or something.
Having studied Scots academically for about five years now I'd say it's a dialect of English that used to be a language in its own right.
Here's some Scots from about 1640, from some court session minutes which I'll be digitising over the course of the semester
>Myn branxit guidwyfe richtly gird aw myn kistis. Nae nammer o conzyies, Laird wuland graun, wid bi eunuch tae gae me caws tae staun wae thi stripach forsameikle as I staunch lifand.
That's hardly just "bad English".
There's an entire subreddit called /r/scottishpeopletwitter full of shit like that and tons of people arguing it's a dialect.
Oh, forgot to say. I'll admit that modern Scots is a very mutually intelligible dialect of English, but a lot of people confuse Scots proper with English spoken with a Scottish accent, even Scots themselves.
>it's a dialect of English that used to be a language in its own right
How sadly familiar.
>Here's some Scots from about 1640
A modern English speaker can't understand 1640's English so I don't know what you're trying to say here. It's not surprising that we are unable to understand 1640s Scots.
But a modern English speaker can understand Modern Scots. It's just English with words like "cannae" and phonetic spelling.
It's not just bad English, it's English originally spoken by illiterate idiots.
Compare Scots wiki to Simple wiki
simple.wikipedia.org
sco.wikipedia.org
>A potato is a small plant with large leaves. The part of the potato that people eat is a tuber that grows under the ground.
>A tattie is a wee plant wi lairge leafs. The pairt o the tattie that fowk eats growes unner the grund.
>reddit
What the fuck did you expect user.
Yes that's stupid. It's not a dialect. Modern "dense" Scots can be hard for English speakers to grasp but it would look like:
>A skidir tae rock grun, fae gransiris sire fae hedder an the fun.
and not
>Haha pure mad cunt I jist got on the bus what am ah like.
>A modern English speaker can't understand 1640's English
That's not true at all, you have no idea what you're talking about.
>But a modern English speaker can understand Modern Scots. It's just English with words like "cannae" and phonetic spelling.
Here's some modern Scots
>Werand ah tae scrieve as is, nae fowk wil ken fit ah spak. Fowk wha haenna spakit tae a Scot afore hae nae reckinand o oor leid, heiratour, thei dinna ken fit ah scrieve fae thei dinna ken the Scots leid.
Yes it's readily understandable to an English speaker but it's not just phonetically spelled.
I'm also told that I shouldn't be racist and that Pidgin English is a language in it's own right, not just a dialect, a language. But it's literally just bad fucking English for retards.
They're not just using different words, they're dumbing down the text too.
>Stampede wey happen for one footbridge for Mumbai railway station for India don kill 22 people, come still wound 30 join.
>Officials say e happen for morning time for Elphinstone station as plenty people just dey rush to try take cover from very heavy rain wey dey fall.
>Dem don carry di people wey wound go hospital and senior railway officials don already dey di area.
By comparing the nature of the divergence with that of more continuous dialects. When something basic is completely absent in one group and completely present in another, then they're de facto incomprehensible if not unintelligible.
People viewing one type as incorrect, and those speakers defending it despite that notion, or secluding themselves from those who don't use it, is often part of the process of this division.
AAVE is from common speech and is incorrect for standard publications whatever it's considered as. Except it developed its own literature gradually through portrayals of black characters in novels, then becoming a form of songwriting and general verbal entertainment.
The Scots Wikipedia isn't written in Scots. It's a couple of guys having a laugh and seeing what they can get away with. It's funny since nobody who speaks Scots really reads in it, but when people use it to show Scots being comically similar to English I get a bit annoyed, it's not real Scots.
>A tattie is a wee plant wi lairge leafs. The pairt o the tattie that fowk eats growes unner the grund.
In proper Scots this would be
>A tattie bi a wee clow wae blawdis kennit as chunnis. The crony fit fowk eat growis unnergrund.
Yes it's very similar to English, I get that, but it's still different.
it's a pidgeon language you dope. it's literally for people who don't know much english
Why don't they just learn proper English? If anything I think people promoting this """"language"""" are more racist than I am for thinking it's stupid.
They are saying Africans aren't intelligent enough for standard English.
>China don tell North Korea say make dem pack dia companies wey dey do business for di country comot by January.
>Dis one follow di sanctions wey United Nations nack North Korea after dem do nuclear test wey dem no suppose do.
>wey dem no suppose do
Reminder this is a "language" and not just shit english for morons
Fuck off, you worthless redditors.
Because the pidgin works for them
>But it's literally just bad fucking English for retards.
>They're not just using different words, they're dumbing down the text too.
That's wrong though.
Because it's their language and it works for them (they also know other languages too just to mention vs most of the Anglo world that knows only one). Also many people do speak formal English but use Pidgin in non formal settings with friends and family. Ever heard of code switching.
It's really just people projecting their biases against blacks when they throw butch fits over Pidgin.
Bbc is doing Pidgin English news because they have a big consumer base in West Africa
Ok explain to me how.
>China don tell North Korea say make dem pack dia companies wey dey do business for di country comot by January.
>Dis one follow di sanctions wey United Nations nack North Korea after dem do nuclear test wey dem no suppose do.
is not a dumberd down version of the standard English article:
>China has told North Korean companies operating in its territory to close down as it implements United Nations sanctions against the reclusive state.
>The companies will be shut by early January. Joint Chinese and North Korean ventures will also be forced to close.
>The move is part of an international response to North Korea's sixth and most powerful nuclear test.
>The UN Security Council, of which China is a member, voted unanimously for fresh sanctions on 11 September.
The Standard English version contains much more information and uses much more complicated vocab.
>I don't understand how pidgins work.
Whenever people from one linguistic impose a language on other people and they adopt that language it ALWAYS becomes simplified. See Mandarin vs Cantonese tonal system, and Javanese vs other indonesian dialects. English vs Singaporean English. These new languages/dialects are always just a simplified version of old dialects
if Southern accents are their own dialects, then I dont see why black english cant be either. It is an offshoot of southern dialects anyway
Because that triggers people.
See the "ebonics" controversy which people somehow misunderstood completely.
Lots of languages commonly used are "simpler" versions of other languages. That's what happens in a Fuckton of them.
>if Southern accents are their own dialects
Who the fuck says they are?
Nobody. I have never seen anyone argue for such a thing.
I'm not sure you understand what a dialect is. If the accent actually changes the practical letters of words, it is a dialect. There are several Southern dialects. It's just not as thorough as between AE and BE.
Languages exist as a system between individuals. The language itself is free to move around away from its parent language through the zeitgiest of the people that speak it but any one individual can still speak it incorrectly.
Basically people speak it a little bit incorrectly until that becomes the new correct.
illiterate fuck
I have never seen anyone ever claim that they speak a different dialect in the southern states. American English and British English aren't even separate dialects.
An example of separate dialects would be Mandarin, Wu, Shanghaiese, Fujin, Hokkien etc. They are mutually unintelligible
language threads are the worst, everytime I see one a bigger part of me thinks this board is irredeemable
It's is a dialect thought
Those may be referred to as Chinese languages or varieties or dialects. Further segments would only be called dialects. An individual's speech is an idiolect and there's no intermediate word that I know of. I'm pretty sure AE and BE are frequently referred to as separate dialects too.