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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ธ.ค. 2013
- When do two people speak different versions of the same language, and when do they speak totally different languages? Come help me draw the line between languages and dialects.
We'll take a look across time (history) and space (geography) to poke at the kinds of characteristics that could help us tell dialects and languages apart. Ideally, it would be nice and tidy if we could distinguish them just by looking at the "language stuff" - words, pronunciation, etc. Okay, that works for English and Chinese.
But many real-world examples will make it hard on us. Old English and Modern English? Scottish English and British English? Norwegian and Swedish? Chinese dialects? When all else fails, we'll remember a witty quip passed along by Max Weinreich, and factor in things like politics and social conventions.
Please subscribe or browse the other videos on my channel to learn more about language and thought!
Music by nativlang
This is a common topic in Italy. We have thousands of local dialects/languages but we never know how to qualify them.
Same goes for switzerland and swiss german
Sardinian is officially recognises by the govt as a language tho.
Recognised*
@@Rolando_Cueva Sardinian is the odd one out, it's isolated from the rest of Italy and radically less mutually-intelligible than mainland Italian languages.
And then you go on a skiing trip to practice your Italian but they all speak German
I think it could be said of Southwestern Turkic languages generally. They're inter-intelligible, but socio-political considerations label them different languages. The map of world languages would look very different if mutual intelligibility were the only variable taken into account!
Well, then what about the cases where A is mutually intelligible with B, which in turn is mutually intelligible with C, but A and C are not mutually intelligible?
This situation is normal in a "dialect continuum", which brings back to the whole political/cultural clout thing. It's one factor in heated debates over application of the terms "language" and "dialect" in Europe.
Exactly. Sometimes, this makes the political position of speakers complicated. As a speaker of Lower-Saxon in the Netherlands, we have a hard fight ahead of us, speaking a language that differs much in grammar and vocabulary, and is also recognized by the state as such, but not to the extent where it is possible to obtain e.g. legal documents and education in our own language, which is making the language disappear. Whereas Frisian differs equally from Dutch, and is now considered an official language.
Amazing. You're living the exact situation a linguistics professor of mine once used to illustrate dialect continua.
+Alexander Schoemaker I am living in the Dutch Provincie Limburg. As you may know speaking dialect is still much alive here. It is not limited to a small percentage of the population but spoken by a majority of people in many different social context.
I think what you are writing can be said about the provinces in the east of the country.
People often don't realize how precious and important dialect is.
Scots is its own language. split from english. then Scottish English is a merge of the two.
or not
Definitely not it's own language. Auld and lang is still the same thing as "old" and "long" just with a funny spelling. Every single variety of English would look just as distinctive if you spelled it uniquely and included local jargon.
@@kekeke8988 Don't comment unless you know what you're talking about. Scottish English is the Scottish dialect of English. Scots is a Germanic language that split from English during the Middle English period. Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language completely distinct from the Germanic languages, but still in the Indo-European language family. Scottish English, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic are all different things and they're not interchangeable. Even a simple Google search could have taught you this...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_English
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic
@@Megneous
Middle English is still English. Scots is an English dialect, and it's 90+% intelligible with English. Moreover, Scottish English and Scots blend into each other in a sort of dialect continuum. Check the Scots parliament page and tell me that's a foreign language or a local variant of a familiar international language.
www.parliament.scot/images/Parliament%20Publications/YSP_Scots_final.pdf
If Scots is a different language, than American Southern English is a different language too. Go read Huckleberry Finn to see it spelled funny. Moreover, if Scots is a different language, then almost every single language on Earth should actually be split into dozens of languages.
@@kekeke8988 American Southern English is much more English than pure spoken Scots though and it's pronunciation is still distinctively English with a drawl. Braid Scots almost seems like a mix of Scandinavian tongues and English.
As a native English speaker and an enthusiast of the Scandinavian languages, I'd say that Norwegian and Swedish are phonologically closer than Birmingham, England and Birmingham, Alabama. Even Danish, the Scandinavian language said to be spoken with a potato in the mouth, is probably phonologically closer to Norwegian than the English spoken in the American deep south is to the English spoken in Glasgow, Scotland.
As a Danish speaker, I have to agree.
On a related note, it often seems that Danish speakers understand Norwegian & Swedish much better than the other way around. I'm not sure I understand the root of this asymmetry.
element4element4, as far as I know, the root is some neutralizations in Danish that don't happen in Norwegian and Swedish
No for Danish, and for Sweden and Norway only phonologically. But note every single of those Scandinavian languages have local dialects that are further from the standard version than any two English dialects are (including Scots).
I was asking my friend about it a day ago and he didn't know, and then TH-cam recommends it to me.
Thanks MI6 guy in my phone.
thats fucking hillarious that theres a british equivalent of the "my fbi agent" joke (assuming you're british and other people also say that)
@@user-ze7sj4qy6q I am British, but I was using the 'mi6' as a novelty, we still shout 'FBI OPEN UP' here
@@itsguardiantime4928 interesting but dissapointing lol
I think Frisian and Dutch is a good example of this. Frisian used to be considered a dialect, but now is its own independent language.
Internet English is a dialect (done)
lol go in some stranger corners of the internet and you'll find text SUPPOSED to be in english, but with only vague similarities
Not really since a dialect is created by geographical isolation from other parts of the same language, sort of.
There are several other "'lects" or lingustical variations out there such as "Idiolect" - individual variation, "Chronolect" - variation based on age and generational (insert whatever english word I could use here), "sexolect" - variation in language between the sexes, a very real thing. And ofc "Sociolect" lingustical variations risen from social isolation within the same region, like how the 1800s english upper classes (as in England) spoke a different socialect from the lower classes, even though they could be from the same geographical area. And internet english fits best, if you ask me, as a socialect if anything.
@@Grunk111 nice
This is a very good question! Reminds me of the time when the Okinawan languages were considered dialects of Japanese, and now they're a language family. Also, Aragonés and Castillian Spanish.
They are not referred to as the Okinawan languages. They are the Ryukyuan languages, which make up a language family including Okinawan. The Ryuukyuuan languages are a branch of the Japonic language family, which also includes the many regional dialects of Standard Japanese. Interestingly, many regional dialects of Standard Japanese are unintelligible to other regions, but as they form a dialect continuum, where each region can understand its neighbors, even if people on the two ends of Japan can't understand each other directly, they're all grouped together as a single language despite their extreme diversity.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyuan_languages
I liked how the Norwegian words and the Scottish words had more similarities then English and Scottish (or at least Bairn - barn, braw - bra, een - øyne (more similarities in spoken) and fae -fra) ... Is this because scottish has kept more of the older germanic language than English?
@Kerilona It probably is because of just that. Also; *THAN*
Probably due to the greater settlement of Scotland vs England of the Vikings, and later Norwegians. Norway owned a large chunk of the Highlands for quite a while after the rest of the Scandinavians were kicked off the British Isles, so influence from there would likely be far more prevalent.
@aditya viswanathan That actually makes more sense. Also, I guess I should have thought about/asked, whether Kerilona means ”Gáidhlig” or ”Scots” with ”Scottish”, because the former is a Celtic language, not Germanic.
I just want to say, Scots hasn't kept more of the older English, it just kept different parts that we notice because we aren't used to them. Lots of Scots has been innovated, it isn't a fossil.
Sorry to revive an old comment but i just want to nitpick something which might be critical!
Scottish or Scottish English is used for the *dialect* for English in Scotland
Scots is for the *language* that is related but clearly distinct from English
There's also Scottish Accent, which is neither a dialect nor a language. It is seen when you make a Scottish person try to converse with someone from down south.
As a bengali, I know about this issue.. so many different dialects not always mutually intelligible.
I have a degree in linguistics and am almost done with my master's in sociolinguistics, and still never get or can give a straight answer about this question! We sociolings like the term "language variety" for that reason :) (and always bring up the army and navy quote too)
Great channel!
Thanks for sharing a bit of your experience and expertise! Ah, language varieties - I've seen that term in your guys' literature. Had it come to mind while writing the script, it would've made a good addition to this video.
Just to say that in French, there are two words for "language". One for the ability to communicate "langage" and one for the language that a group of people speaks "langue"(tongue). Languages, dialects, and on top of that regional languages/dialects, sociolects, idiolects, jargons, slangs: how fascinating!
The swedish-norweigan comparison becomes even more of a tricky question when you take into account the fact that some Swedish dialects are so diverse that some of them are a lot less intelligible to Swedes in other parts of the country than Norwegian is, even though it's a whole different language.
As a native Swede I am not sure I agree about this ☺
@@axelr7787 kolla upp älvdalska
I love your channel. Just wanted to say thanks for all you do.
man the content has improved so much.
english and scots are two different languages
xiaomu very true.
@IamMe It does matter, because the point the video was trying to make was "Look, here are two dialects of the same language and they look completely different, but here are two different languages that look almost the same." That point doesn't really make sense when it's corrected to "Look, here are two different langauges that look completely different, but here are two different langauges that look almost the same."
@@beeble2003 No, the point of the video is that whether you call two similar ways of speaking "different languages" or "different dialects" is arbitrary. I'd be willing to bet that most of the people who watched this video when it came out in 2013 would have thought of Scots as a variety of English, if they knew about it at all, whilst at the same time thinking of Norwegian and Swedish as distinct languages. The point was to draw the attention of such people to the shakiness of their preconceptions.
To call Scots a distinct language seems to be popular, now, but it's still arbitrary. Those people who insist that Scots is somehow _objectively_ a distinct language have missed that point.
I'm sure you know English and Scots are two languages. The modern confusion is that Scots speak English but inject Scottish words. You may also be interested in that there are at least 5 distinct Scottish accents. Scots also change words and accents for friends, family and business like the other parts of the UK.
Language is not only "communication by speech".
Sign language are as much of a language as any language uses speech.
An interesting point raised. But then we use 'language' in a broader sense than its specific Latin meaning lingua 'tongue', as an expression of the use of this body part. Sign Language does not involve the tongue or phonology (I think) and should, therefore be called "Dactylology", or my own invention before I knew this 'Octology', as it is communication by sight.
Most people think of the word Language as synonymous with 'Communicate' thus Sign Language reduces confusion with nomenclature; though it is illogical when you consider the less general way people apply the meaning of the word 'Sign' nowadays and is no less confusing for non-English speakers.
I referred to the statement made at 0:10
Samuel Liebermann I guessed as much. I just felt like writing something interesting for fun.
You know what's more interesting? Speaking a language and signing a 'language' activates the same parts of the brain (discounting the parts that control muscle movement, obviously). One theory goes that a spoken language was created in order to replace communication by gestures so we could communicate with each other out of eyesight of one another, e.g., when we are hunting, gathering food, killing our enemies, or sitting around in the dark without a fire.
There's also new sound language for blind to "see." www.timesofisrael.com/blind-can-see-using-sound-hebrew-u-team-shows/
I love things that make people stretch out what they think is normal.
In Iran the most challenging discussion is about Luri language , It has different verb cases , different vocabulary , It's not very intelligible for persian speakers but not very odd because bouth are in a same branch, through time Luri has grown to a language , and share a lot of vocabulary with modern persian because the speakers of it are bilingual
Thank you very much for comparing Swedish and Norwegian! I speak Swedish. ☺
According to the origins of the words "language", the root of the word goes back to Latin, and according to Latin, this word simply means (tongue), which in turn refers to many other meanings, as it refers to a people or a nation..etc. In short, this term meant the words of some human group. ..
I think that here we will simply understand that the problem with the distinction between "language", dialect, and accent is related to our contemporary culture, which requires placing each word in its own definition, even though the origin of the story was not like that.
In shorter words .. the ancient people did not define the definition of language as a unit in itself and has its specific measurements .. but later linguists did this and put those terms that have become a burden on people in our modern time.
By the way, I watched some videos on this subject, and they all refer to Max Weinreich as the author of this definition (language is a dialect with an army and a navy ...) and he in turn ascribes it to another person who had heard it from him .. But there are different opinions about who met this linguistic definition.
The same question is between island and continent or planet and asteroid. Is Australia a big island or an small continent or is Pluto a planet or an small asteroid?
So it's kind of like the lumpers vs. splitters thing or the Sorites paradox rearing its head again... interesting take. Thanks for sharing!
Australia is a big island, Australasia is the continent, Continents come from continental plaques, australia, new zealand, etc all belong to the same plaque
nope, wrong because there are many continental plates that are in the middle of the ocean and contain no land, very small, or consisting of land that normally would not be considered a continent.
Paramone, there is no solid internationally accepted model of what a continent is, and even then, the same continent can have different names in the same language. Like you said Australasia. Others would argue the continent is called Australia. Again others would argue it is called Oceania.
Australia is a big island and Australia is a continent
Do you think there's a stage where a way of speaking is more separate than a dialect but less separate than a language?
I've been asking this question for years! No one I've spoken with has been able to provide a good answer.
Recently became fascinated with the Baltic Languages. Read about Lithuanian and Samgotian.
Originally, I thought that Samgotian was a dialect of Lithuanian. Found out that Samgotian is a separate language from Lithuanian. It has at least four dialects
Samogitian is a dialect group, then. Just like American English. And I've tried to translate same sentences to both Lithuanian and Samogitian; idk, for me it totally feels like the same language. Just replace some vowels, throw in a bit of Russian and call it a day
Simply wow 👏
What I find neat is that some dialects might just be borrowing words from another language, like our modern English did with Latin and French, with pepperings of Gaelic, Spanish, and various Native American languages. Kinda like it seemed there were some cognates between the Scots English and the Norse languages. Evidence of viking raids, methinks.
And on the other hand, you can see modern English changing right in front of us. We shorten words, create new portmanteaus, appropriate malapropisms and eggcorns as the norm rather than a fluke. (Language nerd right here XD)
I already have a more...old-fashioned way of speaking. At least compared to people I live and work around. It might just be that when I'm 80 and in an old folks home, the nurses aren't going to be able to understand me, nor I them, though granted that might just be due to hearing loss XD
"A language is a dialect with an army", couldn't have stated it better. A lot of Moroccans think of our mother language Darija (aka Moroccan Arabic) as a "mere dialect", and regard it with scorn. This is simply because many of them identify as Arabs (even though ethnically we are mostly Amazigh/Berber), and want to remain part of the so-called "Arab world", in addition to their ideological and sentimental attachment to Islam and its holy language Standard Arabic. Darija and Masri (Egyptian Arabic), just to take two examples of Arabic "dialects", are not mutually intelligible, despite having some similarities considering their common origin.
Here in Brazil there are a lot of dialects, but most of them sound pretty much the same.
Except the one from RS, which is still pretty similar. Then in a town in that state, there's Porto Alegre. The diect they have is basically our doric.
I'm not a Porto Alegre local, yet I got to understand people from down there. The only guy I had trouble understanding was a receptionist in the hotel I was staying who had an European accent, but, then, I think he was Portuguese after all.
On the other hand, some people in Florianópolis (still in Southern Brazil, but in Santa Catarina state, for those who don't know) have an accent that resembles the European accent rather than any other Brazilian accent. That is because of the influence of immigrants from Azores. I knew a Florianópolis local whom I had some trouble understanding, but he eventually caught the Paulista (from São Paulo state) way of speaking.
Isn't that Scots on the right, though? That's not English, that's a different language.
It should be "øyne" not "øyna" but great video nonetheless :3
Thank you! And thanks for pointing out my mistakes... :|
That almost sound like Trondheim dialect for eyes, "øya" :)
I believe he meant øyna as a dialectal form for øynene,wicy means "the eyes"
Funnily enough, "øyna" is a legit way to write "the eyes" in various dialects :P
Where were those two words for Book(s) from ? I mean what language was that?
I speak Arabic and I know the word for book is Ketab and the plural is kutub. So the similarity strikes me !
لهجتين مختلفة من الآرامية.
Omar A.J. Does that mean Aramaic?
Arabic Language belongs to ''Semitic Languages'' Group. This group includes Arabic Hebrew Aramaic Syriac Amharic etc. and they have alot in common starting from vocabulary to sentence structure etc. The two words for books are two different dialects of Aramaic :)
My suspicion is that ktava may be New East Aramaic or East Syriac, whereas ktovo may be New West Aramaic or West Syriac.
well I recognized it as Semetic
After watching his newer videos, this one feels kinda…asmrish.
As a speaker of the brazilian dialect of portuguese, more specificaly the northeastern variation, i can understand way better galician, wich is a separated language, than the european dialect of my own language.
Language is not fixed. It changes so slowly that on a big scale, we are unaware of it. However, it is noticeable that it is changing if you look back on your own life ( those of you over 30, that is).
Notice how older people talk? It's pretty distinctive to the younger crowd.
My grandmother use to say "north-er-n" or, "south-er-n"....3 syllables which use to drive me crazy. That's about a 50 year gap in basically the same town.
She'd say "parlor" for the living room, "foyer" for the hallway.
Today, I use the word "couch" which I am being corrected to use "sofa" by my own kids.
Did your grandmother also pronounced _pattern_ as PAT-ter-rin? I had friend who always pronounced it that way. And _western_ would be pronounced WEST-trin. It's something with that _ern_ sound.
You should do a video on Calabrian Dialects!
Didn't seem to really answer the question. Did you talk about it further in a future video?
Is the "ktava" and "ktobo" example from the dialects of Syriac? :D
What about Turkish and Azeri Turkish? Are they two different languages or dialects? Can we say that they are like Swedish and Norwegian too?
Idiomatic speech is quite different and the pronunciation differs. Nevertheless is Azeri Turkish a colorful and expressive language in comparison to Turkish spoken in Turkey. The differences are relatively easy to learn and adaptation to each others speech patterns shouldn't be a big hurdle for those who want to learn the other one respectively. I'd say they are dialects actually. But can be treated as different languages as well.
Scottish, or scots, and English are actually considered two different languages
while scots and the scottish dialect of english are different languages as well. I think he was referring to the latter.
Looks like new videos haven't been made in a while, I hope there will be more
I believe you are referring to Hebrew and Arabic in 1:22 for a book, ktava is Hebrew while the same word in Arabic is ktaba not ktobo which is actually the word for books in Arabic. Both languages are related but totally different languages.
In Switzerland we speak Swiss German (and French and Italian and Romansch) but the thing is, there is not "the Swiss German". Swiss German is a dialect of German but Swiss German itself has many dialects.
The British language was of the ancestor of Welsh, Cornish and Cumbrian. One side of the chart showed standard British English and the other Scots words derived from Anglian.
Warum schreibt man aufwendig bevorzugt mit einem "e"?
Stammt es nicht vom "Aufwand"?
The problem with the "army and navy" standard is languages whose language families don't have a military or independent, sovereign power.
Adri Eranya like Basque
Or the hundreds of languages of Asian countries like India, Indonesia, Philippines etc.
And, to flip the script, Americans, Canadians, Jamaicans, Bahamians, Australians, New Zealanders and Britishers all speak English (well, variants thereof, but largely completely mutually intelligible official forms of English). Similarly, Germans, Swiss and Austrians all use standard Hochdeutsch in official settings, though there's a bewildering array of local dialects especially in rural areas, but in Switzerland even in the cities, as well as (to varying extents) in Germany and Austria. The "Shproch iz a mundort mit a Heer un' a Flotte un' a Tsivildinst" saw might make better sense against that backdrop. (Or, how is it again that Letzebuergesch is a language but Hunsrücker Mundart is a dialect?)
You compared Scots to English. And those are two different Languages. Even though most people say "it's a dialect". It's not, Scots is now concidered an independent but closely related language to English.
Also if you speak two different languages, but can still understand one another you're speaking through mutual intelligibility. definert as. Distinct languages that has over time influenced one another or has had contact with the neighbouring language. or has developed distinctions over time, by nationalism, by geography or by politics.
Examples include:
Luxembourgish and German
Dutch and Afrikaans
portuguese and Galician
Norwegian and Swedish
Icelandic and Faroese
Belarusian and Ukrainian
Serbian and Montenegrin
Croatian and Bosnian
Italian and Venetian
Spanish and Catalan
And also, English and Scots.
"Defined" Stupid Phone!
That is exactly why this video is made
Leon Naves I'm a native Spanish speaker and I understand Catalan better than Portuguese.
Well, you have the Scottish dialects of English, and Scots Gaelic which is considered a different language. It doesn't help that the Scottish dialects of English often contain many Gaelic loanwords.
You've got:
1) Scottish Gaelic (a Celtic language)
2) Scots (an Anglo-Saxon language)
3) Scottish English
Scottish English is what most well-educated Scottish people speak, not because it's better than Scots, but because that's what we're taught in schools and what most books are written in.
Scots and English are distinct languages because they evolved in parallel in different independent countries over the course of over half a millennium, developing their own vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and orthographic conventions. This is the same situation as Spain, where Catalonia, Aragon, Castille, Andalucia etc were historically distinct kingdoms.
The boundaries between language varieties never exactly match regional or national boundaries, and there are always continua between major varieties with multiple minority varieties. The language of the north of Sardinia is more closely related to Corsican than to Sardinian. The speech of the very east of Provence (France) is like Piedmontese (Piedmont is in Italy). Catalan is spoken in parts of both France and Spain. The traditional languages of most of the south of France (Occitan/Langues d'Oc) are between Catalan and French, but more closely resemble Catalan... and there's an Occitan variety that's spoken in Spain -- in fact, in a small corner of Catalonia.
Toll!
Can you make a video of Taino Arawak please?
Finnish, Kven, Meänkieli, Ingrian and Karelian walk into a bar. Then the barman says:
- Why so alone today?
Sorry
That's a fascinating way of seeing it. Though now I fear where Swedish will be in a few years.
um i think i accept that audience quote about the difference.
it comes down to how widespread the dialect is.
well known or spoken by a big crowd, language.
rarely known or spoken by a smaller group of people, dialect.
to me thats most simplistic easiest definition. u are all welcum!
so the summary of this video is??? actually I still dont understand why we call it dialect but in Yule George's book "dialect" means to describe the grammar, vocabulary and also the pronunciation of a speaker. so, what is the difference between language and dialect?
sorry mate i ask something i should already understand from this video but i still dont get it.
There are even more subtle differences... the same way that people debate wheter those examples are differente languages or just different dialects, I never seen someone call brazilian portuguese and portuguese portuguese different dialects, even though their difference is big enough to be called so, or even more
[Offset: +0000000]
[00:00.05]
[00:00.10] ˈwɔt s ˈlæŋɡwidʒ？
[00:01.00] ˈɑːnsəriŋ ˈkwestʃənz wið liŋˈɡwistiks ənd ˈlɔdʒik
[00:02.00] What is Language？
[00:03.00] Answering Questions with Linguistics & Logic
[00:04.00]
[00:05.00] θriː weəz ðə lain biˈtwiːn ə ˈdaiəlekt ənd ə ˈlæŋɡwidʒ？
[00:06.00] - - - - - -
[00:07.00] 03 Where's the line between a dialect and a language？
[00:08.00] - - - - - -
[00:09.00]
[00:07.00] You already know that the word "language" refers to our ability to communicate with speech.
[00:13.67] But we saw that what exactly that ability is, turned out to be quite a quagmire.
[00:19.32] So now let's turn to the other thing we mean by "language"
[00:22.31] - you know, the specific languages we speak with
[00:25.14] their own words,
[00:26.58] their own grammar and
[00:27.90] their own pronunciation.
[00:29.58] I mean, English is a language, right?
[00:32.20] And this is English!
[00:35.49] But so is this.
[00:37.61] And back in time, this was English.
[00:42.11] Even further back, but we call this English, too.
[00:46.39] Wait, I get it.
[00:47.39] This is Old English, and this one is Middle English, and this is Modern English.
[00:54.48] So are these three languages or three different stages of the same language?
[01:02.80] But I know, history's always messier than we want it to be.
[01:06.39] So let's just stick to the present.
[01:09.22] Here are some basic words in English.
[01:11.79] And these are the same words in a totally different dialect of English.
[01:16.98] They're two dialects because,
[01:18.97] if the same language gets spoken in different ways by different groups of people,
[01:22.82] we call those different dialects.
[01:25.50]
[01:26.00] Moving on, let's translate those words into Norwegian (the Norwegian language).
[01:31.70] And here's how we would write those same words in Swedish (the Swedish language).
[01:37.29] So, Swedish and Norwegian are different languages,
[01:41.17] but British and Scottish are different dialects of the same language?
[01:46.52] Where's the line between a dialect and a language anyway?
[01:49.60] Is it just arbitrary or conventional?
[01:53.61] Maybe in the end it really is buttoned up by a phrase Max Weinreich passed along.
[01:58.90] During a lecture series he gave in the 1940s,
[02:02.06] a member of his audience made the witty remark,
[02:04.50] "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
[02:08.69] If that's so, it's about politics and power just as much as it's about grammar.
[02:15.08] Language vs. languages,
[02:17.01] languages vs. dialects . . .
[02:19.66] oh, what a mess I've dragged you into!
[02:22.50]
[02:23.00] And with that, I welcome you to my TH-cam channel.
[02:26.60] Subscribe if you want to learn more,
[02:28.50] because from the looks of it we've seriously got some stuff to sort out together.
[02:38.00]
You're awesome :)
In a thousand years we will all be speaking a polyglot pidgin of multiple sources. Convergence into a new version of PIE.
Meanwhile in the Balkans...
Different languages are just two points on a dialectal line
T Chop when speaking about dialect continua - that may be true, but then again - where exactly is the border between those two languages? no one can tell for sure. its like trying to find the certain shade that differs red from pink.
Hong kong has no its own army. So my mother language Cantonese was classified as "dialects". Damn it.
Cantonese has many difference compared to mandarin.
係啊⋯⋯擺明係兩個語言
in norwegian e, æ, jeg and eg mean the same thing in differ parts of the country(different dialects)
You forgot about i, eig and æj
I think its just the sociopolitical aspect which makes these two terms confusing. It is since some dialects and dialectal contiunuum enrich their own distinction, and being called a dialect (a variety) is kind of offensive to hear.
1:20
We call it a *_Kitab_*
The Chinese government considers Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese all dialects of Chinese, but their speakers won't understand each other. The same seems to go for Standard Arabic and each regional variety in the Arab world or Standard German and Swiss German in Switzerland. On the other hand, the Moldovan government (but not the Moldovan people) thinks that Moldovan and Romanian are different languages, even if they are exactly the same. So, at the end of the day, it's all about politics.
I'll take ktaba, thank you! (Eastern Syriac) The Jacobites can have their ktovo. ;) (Western Syriac)
I'll have ktabe sagi'e with syame on top. Or can you write them in square script? I don't know all the vowels used with estrangela.
I looked at Daniel a week ago and noticed that "sagi'a" is spelled with sin. In the Peshitta it's spelled with samekh.
In western it's "ktobo". In eastern it's "ktaba" and in Classic Syriac it's "ktava" because the beth in classic Syriac can be prenounce as "b" and "v".
I have and continue to think that it's as much about if people think of themselves as the same community or not. I wouldn't call it about politics or power, but deffinitly about community and culture. Swedes and Norwegians don't think of themselves as being in the same language community. And I'm rather surprised that anyone thinks of Scots and English speakers as being in the same language community, I've only heard of it as being a different language.
But that's just me.
Frank Harr same. its more about perception rather than differences themselves. some dialects of bulgarian are COMPLETELY unintelligible with each other yet they are still considered dialects of the same language and on the other hand there are dialects of bulgarian that are almost 100% identical to serbian yet they are also considered as varieties of bulgarian
Yeah, who you think your people are is important.
1:40 Did you seriously just refer to the 'British' and 'Scottish' dialects? You do realise that 'British' refers to the *entire* UK, not just England, right? And that thus there is not only no 'British dialect', but if there was, 'Scottish' would come under that dialect?
Perhaps a notation would be advisable, explaining that better terms would be 'Standard Southern English English' and 'Scottish English' - assuming, of course, you're not there referring to Scots, which is a separate language.
even though Scotland has its own language: Scots Gaelic (Scottish gaelic). and Scottish dialect of the Scots language changes in areas like "Aye" means Yes for the whole country but Spanner,tool or Spindle only means idiot in some places
and not many people in the south will say "is toil leam fàileadh cnothan" ( love yourself and others)
0:17 giggity
I have an understanding that languages have a written form while dialects don't, I could be wrong though, but it could be interesting to see what other people think.
Nope. British English and American English are different dialects but both have clear written forms.
Most of the world's six or seven thousand languages aren't written at all.
1:13
The dialect used is a hybrid dialect of two distinct languages: Scots and English [the Wikipedia page on Scots is incorrect as it is actually discussing Scots English], making it a bad example.
Scots uses words such as:
Big: graet/græt
Good: guid
Man: mauin
Child: wain/wean [Glaswegian]
Eyes: een
I am: Ah'um
After: efter
From: fae/fæ
It uses a unique grammar rule for writing and pronunciation with an apostrophe. If a word contains it, such as all: aa', then it must follow certain rules. An apostrophe connects words together, so "an' aa' o' nem" would become an'aa'o'nem. Two apostrophes would merge into 1: an' 'a would become an'a. Certain letters are removed too when after an apostrophe: an' tae would become an'ae. Certain prepositions and verbs that exist in English aren't used, for example: where abouts are you going?; wharawa yi'gæn? Nouns are also polysynthetic, in the sense that a noun is also a verb. The idea that Inuit has several ways to say snow can be applied to Scots:
Snaw: snow being in a pile
Pyle: snow which is falling (can also mean snowflake but not snowing)
Snawin: snow which is raining i.e. snowing
Glaister: snow which has formed a thin layer
Bree: snow which is melting
Onfaa: snow storm which is going to snow
Yowdendrift: snow which picking up into a flurry/wind
Etc
Not to mention there are words that mean the same thing in English, but are used differently in Scots:
You: ye, yi', youse, ya'
No: no, naw, nut, næ
Please don't confuse "Scottish" as being solely a dialect, as it's a mixture between two very distinct languages.
Stop yer haverin, man -- haf o whit ye hae said is wrang, an ye dinnae seem tae even unnerstaun whit "polysynthetic" means.
(translation: nobody listen to this guy, knows not what he's talking about, does he.)
Niall Tracey What you spoke there is Scots English with misspellings and even slang. Whilst, you clearly don't know what polysynthetic means, because you can either be like Greenlandic or Hawaiian, or you can be like German or Scots; which are the two forms of polysynthetic compounds.
Naebdae hark'ae nis Niall lad, hie kens nout o'whit hie'z oan aboot. (actual translation to the English form you said).
You've broken your own rules, though, because all language runs words together and you haven't included them where words would be actually run together in speech (the orthographic space was a fairly recent invention that doesn't typically match anything in the spoken language).
German is a highly synthetic language, but Scots is in no way comparable to German, having become far more analytic than old Anglo-Saxon.
As to the reason why I say you don't understand the meaning of the word polysynthetic, it's because you gave a list of distinct, single-morpheme words and suggested that they were analogous to Inuktitut, but in Inuktitut, all the "words" for snow are heavily inflected form built on something like 3 (I forget the exact number) core morphemes meaning snow.
Niall Tracey I included two forms of polysynthetic grammar for compounds:
wharawa
An'aa'o'nem
Whar - aw - a
An' - aa' - 'o' - nem
Formed under different contexts and for different reasons, which match the spoken variation, which you seem to fail to understand given you don't even know the difference between Scots English and Scots, nor know what Scots is like.
Not to mention Scots is considered a North Germanic language, because although its origins coincide with Anglo-Saxon, it was more heavily influenced and is partially intelligible with Danish and Norwegian (and to a lesser extent, Swedish). As well as French and Frissian.
And yes, I understand that on the last section, but my point was, because of the fact that the nouns are polysynthetic themselves (a polysynthetic word is a compound of smaller words; a PS noun is a noun which exists as its own clause as both the subject and object). As explained, due to this, you have several words for "snow". The reason for this, is because of the whole "inuktitut has 30 words for snow", just to prove a point.
Side Note: to explain the situation with wharawa is difficult, as unless you already understand the preexisting grammar and the context differentiation which doesn't exist in English except for a few rare occasions which most modern day English speakers don't know the difference with nor probably use (for example: I were/I was, difference). This example is identical to inuktitut because the individual words on their own are different from the separate words:
where abouts are
Whar aboot'r
Whar aw a
This is because both mean the same thing in English, but in Scots there is a difference in its use based on a context which is the same in English. I kinda explained this earlier with the "ye, yi', youse, ya'" situations, where they're use differently in different contexts; where in English "ye/yi'/ya'" can all be used interchangeably (youse being the plural of you); however, are used in completely different contexts in Scots.
For example, in English, it would be wrong to say "He eat the apple", as you would say "He eats the apple", you can think of the contexts like this, where the context is the subject, the grammar that is used being the verb change and the whole meaning remaining the same.
It would be wrong to say:
"Ye wain" or "yi'wain"
but it would be right to say:
"ya wain"
Which in English, you could use either of the 3. Do you follow?
No, I completely don't follow. The choice of vowel letter is irrelevant because the phoneme is in a weak position and therefore schwa. Please point to any reliable source that makes the distinction between pronouns you just did.
You are also choosing to write in a way that no-one else has ever written in. Look as far back as written records go, and you will not find a single text written in your orthography, which makes it a bit rich that you can claim others are using "misspellings".
Funny thing they said in Yiddish, which has neither a flag nor an army, but it isn't German, and certainly isn't Hebrew. The definition of language offered in a language that, under that definition, wouldn't qualify as such.
I was expecting a broader explanation. Turns out the answer in this video could be easily compressed to 10 seconds or so.
So the Middle English of _though_ is *_tho?_*
Italians had a hard time understanding this and many still do. Besides using the term dialect as derogatory.
So if a language is a dialect with an army and navy why are American, British, and Australian all considered English and not different languages?
monkeywithplutonium because they are so close in vocabulary
They're called varieties, the accent being the main part of it.
As a native Norwegian speaker, I noticed you translated the English "eyes" to "øyna", which is incorrect. The correct way to write it in Norwegian, is "øyne" (or if you are talking about someone specifics eyes, the correct way is "øynene").
In persian we call it ketab(book)
You used Scots words in your example of scottish english
Ktava? that sounds like it has semitic roots. What language is it?
The problem runs deeper than mere languages. The debate nativLang opens really is about identity, and that is a concept that philosophers have had problems with for a long time. How can we say the chair in your room is really itself, and not something else entirely? How can we say that french is really french and not just a dialect of spanish? It seems like goofy questions, so let me illustrate this by two thought experiments.
NativLang is a person and he exists, we can all agree. Now imagine I took a sword and cut off his arm. Would he still be NativLang? Some people would argue yes, he can still talk about languages and do most of the stuff he used to. Other people would argue no, that guy is not NativLang, we just talked to NativLang the other week and he clearly had two arms. This new guy looks like NativLang but he only got one arm so he cannot be NativeLang. Most people would probably be NativLang-believers, say "he is still him" and consider the doubters quite silly, but lets take this thought experimentfurther.
Now imagine some genious scientist came along and transplanted another persons arm onto NativeLangs stump. Would he still be NativeLang? Most of him looks the same, but the arm obviously belonged to a black sailor with a love of tattoos of naked women. Most people would probably still think this new/same person was NativLang, but a changed NativLang. But lets take this further.
The scientist turns out to be evil, cuts of NativLangs head and replace it with the head of a small japanese woman. He also transplants NativLangs head on the womans body. Both people survive the operation, but which is which? They are obviously not the same person anymore, but in some weird way most people would probably still call NativLang NativLang.
But wait... I forgot to mention the evil scientist is an utter genious and he transplanted 70% of NativLangs brain into the japanese womans skull and vice versa. That was truly a marvel of science, but now who is who and does NativLang still exist?
As you can see it is easy to question identity. It gets worse, though, because I am about to prove that NativLang does not exist!!
Assume that NativLangs given name is Noam Chomskip. We also have pictures of his babtism when he was four months old. Uh oh, there's a problem. The real Noam Chomskip, the baby on the photo, is small, looks about 5-6 kg, while NativLang is a grown man and weighs 75 kg.. The real Noam Chomskip is around 50 cm long, while NativLang is a stapping lad of 190 cm. I asked the aunt of Noam Chomskip if he could talk at the babtism, and she said no, he just screamed a lot. NativLang can speak!! They are obviously not the same person!! NativLang is an identity thief, somebody call the police!!
I picked those two examples to be humerous, but I hope the point got through. If I exchange one arm on a person is it still the same person? If I exchange one word in a language, is it still the same language? Or the second example: If a person changes dramatically over time is it still the same person? If a language change over time is it still the same language? Mostly this is not difficult in real life where we easily can distingush between french and english, like we can easily distinguish between a car and a swallow. Identity is a tough question to analyse, though, and frequently our analysis of it only ends up making us no smarter than we were before.
Google 'the ship of theseus' if you want to know more about this two thousand year old debate about identity.
01:25 Semetic languages! "ktav" means writing in Hebrew, but we call a book "sefer".
I argue this often. Where we are from, we do not speak italian, in fact it would be its own language, but we are told "no it is a dialect".... It is a language. If Swedish and Norwegian are languages, we are definitely different languages.
No they cannot understand us, we can understand them as we have been taught standard Italian, but they cannot understand us. It is so different that they use subtitles in Italian whenever our language is spoken on videos and teliviosn shows.
Where are you from? I can understand Standard Italian and used to work with a family from Bari. They could speak in Barese with complete confidence that I would not understand much of what they were saying. They would speak to me in Italian and I would answer in Italian but of the few things I remember "iamunin" is "andiamo", "cu" is "chi" and instead of "il" they would say "u." "U pesh'" for "Il pesce" for example.
They called it a "dialetto" but it's as different from Italian as Spanish is.
Edwin Luciano
Calabria and Sicilia. Yeah most southern languages would not be understood by people who only speak Standard Italian. It is completley different. I have argued this many times with others who say "It is just a dialect of Italian" but if that is so, then why is Spanish not "just a dialect of Italian" for example?
And yes we use them too haha we say jamunindi for andiamo or "jamu" for short haha
homg85 When you argue with them about this, tell them an Italian professor says the dialects came before Italian. (That's what mine told me). In fact, the Barese word for tomorrow is "cras" (or "crai" ?) which is what the Latin word was. So Barese gets its word for tomorrow directly from Latin therefore, in that sense, it's a daughter of Latin just like Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese is.
In Italy, I think this idea that Calabrese is a dialect has to do Italy's political history. I speak Spanish (people call this a language) but I can listen to music in Portuguese (people call this a language) and I understand a lot of what is going on. On the other hand, I listen to Pino Daniele (who sings in the Napolitano "dialect") and I cannot understand much of anything even though I can understand Umberto Tozzi and Eros Ramazotti with no problem.
In Poland we have discussions 'bout silesian... Some say that it's dialect of polish, some say that's language... :v
Pretty sure dialects are the way the are spoken "like phrases" and accent's are just they way they are pronounced. Correct me if I'm wrong.
dialect is a variety of a language which has different pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary than the standard language of the culture.
Some language has the same word because of influnce of the other culture! As long as Historicaly they use by specific group of people you can call it Language ! If the languange has its own History it is a language not a "Dialect" unless they are just the same as other language! For example here in the philippines There are diff kind of Tagalog (National language) speaker on diff region you can call that a dialect! But We also have Regional Language like KAPAMPANGAN (Province of Pampanga Language) because Historicaly Pre-Colonial Philippines is a Multi Kingdom Nation theres no Unified Philippines at that time so they have there own respective languages! They are part of the CULTURE of those specific group of people calling them a dialect is an absolutely Insult !
Or as it was said in yiddish:
אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט
And that sentence in itself ("a shprakh is a dee-alekt mit an armee un flot", obligatory curses towards English orthography) is perfectly understandable to a German. (Which was exactly the point.)
Not sure how that works, but I understand it aswell. I did have 3 years of german education and I understand most of it through Dutch, but I don't speak it. Btw, it would be this in Dutch: Een taal (spraak is an old word you could use) is een dialect met een leger en een flot.
In Swedish: "Ett språk är en dialekt med en armé och en flotta"
And in Norwegian: "Et språk er en dialekt med en hær og en flåte"
or Danish "Et sprog er en dialekt med en hær og en flåde."
(Norwegian is jokingly said to be Danish pronounced in Swedish)
The scandinavian "languages" really are three dialects with an army and a navy.
vloot, not flot
2 English dialects 🤔🤔🤔 no name of each?
I still think it's partly social.
Aren't Scottish English also British?
My meaning: a dialect is something a person from another dialect in the same language can understand at least in the slightest.
ok so what it language vs languages vs Dialects anyway
Turkish:Azeri:Kazak:Kirgiz:Özbek
Kitap: Kitab: кітап: китеп:kitob
[book] (kitap):(kitep)
Kız : qız : кыз: қыз : qiz
[girl] (kız) (kız)
Dünya:dünya:әлем: дүйнө : dunyo
/alem (alem) (düynö)
[world]
Adam : adam :адам: адам: odam
[man] (adam) (adam)
Hanım:xanım: ханым:айым:xohim
[lady] (hanım) (ayım)
And at least %50-70 of the words in that language are like this :)
As the cliche was told to me by a lingustics professor, " the difference between a language and a dialect is the possession of a border and a standing army."
Not the literal truth, of course, but interesting.
"British" and "Scottish" are not two dialects. English, Scots and also Gaelic are three different languages. The dialects in Scotland or in England collectively can be known as British dialects, or each country can have its respective multitudes of dialects. But they are far ranging, so referring to them as British dialects only works in a global and specific context.
I mean Gaelic is it's own completely seperate thing while Scottish and English are still related. Their seperation is usually considered seperate languages but as well, sometimes dialects. But Gaelic for that matter is totally unrelated.
But there are no two dialects, not one per country. Gaelic influences dialects as does Scots.
Can we replace dialect by accent ?
No, dialect is so much more than accent.
Accent is the different ways people pronounce the same words. Different dialects use different words to say the same things
@@ronaldonmg And different grammar, too.
I think Swiss German is a language on its own.
Question
You
I am norwaigen. what you used in the example does not realy show how differen the dialcets in norwaigen and sweedish can be. in "bokmæl" you write it as "Jeg er", but in my dialect ( one of the northernmost of them) we say "Æ e". so does not that mean that dialects may be more different from theire neighbour country, because you have a set way of writing the language? Ok, i admit this comment makes no sense.
If a language is a dialect with an army and a navy then what the heck is creole?