Standard Finnish for Tornedalen? (was: Norway's Tibet-Credibilty)
Johan Olofsson
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) writes:
> >> > Is Finland-Swedish really considered a separate language, or
> >> > a dialect of Swedish?
> >
> >> It is considered to be a dialect in Sweden.
> >
> >At least at the greater distance of Lund University (Dept. of
> >Linguistics and Phonetics) Finland-Swedish is _not_ considered a
> >dialect of Swedish, but a variety.
I should now be prepared to make the public apology:
> Which difference do you make between 'dialect' and 'variety'?
Dialects is one "kind" of varieties. The variety-concept is wider,
broader, including concepts as "Standard Speech" and stylistic levels
in general, (how to say "kanslisvenska" or "kurialstil" in English?),
they are all different varieties of language.
I regret to have used the word "variety" as if it in itself was one
among many varieties. That was stupid and forgetful done.
I have not yet found any definition of "language" which I am prepared
to accept, except maybe the semi-serious "a dialect with an army".
Nevertheless, I realize that "language" can be defined as that kind of
speech which gives a large group of people the feeling of nationhood.
A dialect, however, I am prepared to define as a geographically
identifiable variety. I do, for the English word "dialect" not
presuppose the existence of written language, or a literature. In
English I think people do not distinguish between the French "dialect"
/ "patois".
What constitutes a dialect? For me, it's a social phenomena.
A "dialect" is any variety which has the power to make people feel they
are from the same geographical locality, in the same way as a
"sociolect" for me is any variety with the power to make people feel
they are belonging to the same social stratum.
But I _am_ aware that distance play an important role. Far away from
where a sociolect or dialect is spoken one is prepared to define
the neighbor-town's dialect as same-ness signaling, which one
certainly hadn't done at home.
It is usual to mark that "dialects" are less prestigious than
"standard languages" - but I'm not really fond of this either. Though
it must be accepted that some people, probably the most, understand
the word "dialect" as a word for something with inferior status to
standard languages.
I try to avoid to define concepts as "dialects" or "languages" with
respect to mutual intelligibility. (Here I for instance disagree with
the s.c.lang faq.) The reason is that intelligibility is not inherent
in the relation between different varieties of speech, but instead a
function of the involved persons' 1/ experience and 2/ motivation.
I have, until now, been very unwilling to define languages comprising
other languages, or dialects comprising other dialects. Hence I
prefer to speak about the Scanian dialects instead of the Scanian
dialect.
When speaking about such varieties of language, as
- Tornedalen-Finnish
- Finland-Swedish
- Flemish
- the French spoken in Canada
- Australian, Indian, American or British English
- the German spoken in different German countries
I do not agree with these varieties being "dialects" - they comprise
each a lot of dialects and they are each normated in separate
governmental and cultural centra. Well, Tornedalen-Finnish is actually
the exception here, included since many people in Tornedalen want it
to become standardized governmental language.
If there exists no concept in-between "language" and "dialect" then
one has to speak about these prestigious forms of Finnish, Swedish,
Low-German, French, English and German as _different varieties_ of
the languages.
But there is a main problem here, and that is the connection between
the concept of language and the concept of nation; and on the other
hand the connection between "nation" and "state".
People who for one or another reason wish to state that two areas or
two people ought to stay together do often stress they speak the same
language. And for people who for some reason wish to state that two
areas should minimize their contact, they do often stress the
linguistic differences.
Compare present day Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.
> Usually, 'dialects' are considered to be intelligible with one another,
> and there is no doubt a Swede understands Finland-Swedish, as a
> Stockholmer understands Scanian.
It's not at all clear that Swedes understand Finland-Swedish dialects,
as well as it's easy to demonstrate that there exist Swedish dialects
which wouldn't be understood by the majority of the Swedish speakers.
> However, I have once met someone from the border between Sweden and
> Finland, and this person's Swedish was hardly understanble to me. Looked
> like there were many Finnish words in it, and I would consider this
> another language. But it was definitely not Finland-Swedish.
If you travel to Helsinki you will discover that some Finland-Swedish
is _very_ mixed up with Finnish words.
> >Finland-Swedish consists of _several_ dialects, and has
> >language-formating institutions, as a national scene, national radio
> >and television, norms of its own for language in laws and governmental
> >administration, a national Language Commission of its own.
> You can say the same thing about Scanian, but I would not consider it a
> different language.
And why not? Since Scania has been a Swedish territory for 300 years,
maybe? Was Scanian a different language 300 years ago? Was it a Danish
dialect, or do you count the 17th century Scanian together with the
speech spoken in Småland?
You see: The idea of "language" is hard to disconnect from the State.
And for me the existence of a governmental center, and a cultural
center, where norms develop for high-status forms of the speech, and
of the written language, make a great difference when you compare
Finland-Swedish with Gutnish. Orally the difference between
prestigious speech in Visby, Stockholm and Helsinki is comparable, but
the Gutnish lack the independent governmental center. Prestigious
texts written in Visby (and in Lund/Malmö in Scania) are all written
in the same way as texts written in Stockholm.
The same is not entirely true for Helsinki.
The core point of this debate is about the right of the Swedish
speakers in Finland to establish a normated Swedish different from the
norms decided in Stockholm, and of the Finnish speakers in Tornedalen
to establish a normated Finnish different from the norm decided in
Helsinki.
And if so, what do we call it?
best regards!
Johan Olofsson
--
e-mail: j...@lysator.liu.se
s-mail: Majeldsvägen 8a, 587 31 LINKÖPING, Sweden
www: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jmo/
Bertil Wennergren
Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se> skribis:
>People who for one or another reason wish to state that two areas or
>two people ought to stay together do often stress they speak the same
>language. And for people who for some reason wish to state that two
>areas should minimize their contact, they do often stress the
>linguistic differences.
>Compare present day Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.
To my knowledge Slovenian has never been considered to be anything
other than a language separate from Serbo-Croatian.
But the other three are a very strong illustration that the distintion
between language and dialect always is a political matter - not a
linguistic one. Why is Swedish, Norwegian and Danish three different
languages? For political reasons. Why are all the different forms of
Chinese counted as one language? For political reasons.
>> Usually, 'dialects' are considered to be intelligible with one another,
>> and there is no doubt a Swede understands Finland-Swedish, as a
>> Stockholmer understands Scanian.
This has nothing to do with it. Many Swedish dialects are mutually
unintelligible, but are seen as forms of the same language - for
political reasons.
======================================================================
Bertil Wennergren
<http://www.algonet.se/~bertilow/>
<bert...@hem1.passagen.se>
======================================================================
Stephane Di Cesare
On 23 Jan 1998 15:08:36 +0100, Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se>
wrote:
>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) writes:
>> Which difference do you make between 'dialect' and 'variety'?
>
>Dialects is one "kind" of varieties. The variety-concept is wider,
>broader, including concepts as "Standard Speech" and stylistic levels
>in general, (how to say "kanslisvenska" or "kurialstil" in English?),
>they are all different varieties of language.
Don't you mean "sociolects"?
>I have not yet found any definition of "language" which I am prepared
>to accept, except maybe the semi-serious "a dialect with an army".
>
>Nevertheless, I realize that "language" can be defined as that kind of
>speech which gives a large group of people the feeling of nationhood.
>
>A dialect, however, I am prepared to define as a geographically
>identifiable variety. I do, for the English word "dialect" not
>presuppose the existence of written language, or a literature. In
>English I think people do not distinguish between the French "dialect"
>/ "patois".
"patois" should be suppressed from linguistic books IMO. It is a
pejorative term which points to dialects of French (champennois, picard
or whatever - I'm speaking of the current dialects, not of the languages
with the same name which did exist), but as well to other languages
spoken in France, such as occitan, basque or breton, which are clearly
not related to French.
Don't ever try to use the word "patois" on soc.culture.occitan, for
example :)
>What constitutes a dialect? For me, it's a social phenomena.
>A "dialect" is any variety which has the power to make people feel they
>are from the same geographical locality, in the same way as a
>"sociolect" for me is any variety with the power to make people feel
>they are belonging to the same social stratum.
More than that, it can have been influenced by another language. As
occitan influenced the accent and the vocabulary of Southern French.
>It is usual to mark that "dialects" are less prestigious than
>"standard languages" - but I'm not really fond of this either. Though
>it must be accepted that some people, probably the most, understand
>the word "dialect" as a word for something with inferior status to
>standard languages.
I would not use "dialect" in a pejorative way. Parisian French is as
much a dialect as Canadian French is, even if the French spoken in Paris
is much closer from "standard" French.
>I try to avoid to define concepts as "dialects" or "languages" with
>respect to mutual intelligibility. (Here I for instance disagree with
>the s.c.lang faq.) The reason is that intelligibility is not inherent
>in the relation between different varieties of speech, but instead a
>function of the involved persons' 1/ experience and 2/ motivation.
I would say that the important is the possibility of understanding.
Taking another French example, let's say someone from Paris goes to
Quebec; he may not understand in the beginning, but he won't need
courses to do that. If he tries to speak occitan, he will need to
understand how the occitan grammar works, else he won't have the
slightest chance to understand something.
>I have, until now, been very unwilling to define languages comprising
>other languages, or dialects comprising other dialects. Hence I
>prefer to speak about the Scanian dialects instead of the Scanian
>dialect.
You can most of the time divide a dialect into several dialects. There
are different Scanian dialects, but most speakers in Scania have common
pronounciation features which distinguish them from standard Swedish
(using diphtongues is the most obvious one).
>When speaking about such varieties of language, as
>
>- Tornedalen-Finnish
>- Finland-Swedish
>- Flemish
>- the French spoken in Canada
>- Australian, Indian, American or British English
>- the German spoken in different German countries
>
>I do not agree with these varieties being "dialects" - they comprise
>each a lot of dialects and they are each normated in separate
>governmental and cultural centra. Well, Tornedalen-Finnish is actually
>the exception here, included since many people in Tornedalen want it
>to become standardized governmental language.
Is Tornedalen-Finnish this language which is a mix of Swedish and
Finnish? If so, it is a different language, at least from Swedish. Maybe
it is a dialect of Finnish, but as I don't know Finnish I can't tell.
But I would say the others are dialects, except for German varieties
which can be open to discussion.
>If there exists no concept in-between "language" and "dialect" then
>one has to speak about these prestigious forms of Finnish, Swedish,
>Low-German, French, English and German as _different varieties_ of
>the languages.
>
>But there is a main problem here, and that is the connection between
>the concept of language and the concept of nation; and on the other
>hand the connection between "nation" and "state".
>
>People who for one or another reason wish to state that two areas or
>two people ought to stay together do often stress they speak the same
>language. And for people who for some reason wish to state that two
>areas should minimize their contact, they do often stress the
>linguistic differences.
Not all the time. People speaking breton or occitan do not want to get
independent at the moment.
>Compare present day Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.
>
>> Usually, 'dialects' are considered to be intelligible with one another,
>> and there is no doubt a Swede understands Finland-Swedish, as a
>> Stockholmer understands Scanian.
>
>It's not at all clear that Swedes understand Finland-Swedish dialects,
>as well as it's easy to demonstrate that there exist Swedish dialects
>which wouldn't be understood by the majority of the Swedish speakers.
As I do understand Finland-Swedish despite knowing Swedish for only 2
years, I thought it would be the same for Swedes.
The important is the capacity to learn the language. A Swede travelling
in Finland should learn Finland-Swedish quite fast, because it is the
same language, and he won't need courses. He won't be able to learn
Finnish that way, that's makes the difference between language and
dialect.
>> However, I have once met someone from the border between Sweden and
>> Finland, and this person's Swedish was hardly understanble to me. Looked
>> like there were many Finnish words in it, and I would consider this
>> another language. But it was definitely not Finland-Swedish.
>
>If you travel to Helsinki you will discover that some Finland-Swedish
>is _very_ mixed up with Finnish words.
Well, at least the Swedish spoken by exchange students from Finland is
easy to understand for me, which was not the case for the person I was
speaking about. It could well have been Tornedalen-Finnish, in fact.
>> >Finland-Swedish consists of _several_ dialects, and has
>> >language-formating institutions, as a national scene, national radio
>> >and television, norms of its own for language in laws and governmental
>> >administration, a national Language Commission of its own.
>
>> You can say the same thing about Scanian, but I would not consider it a
>> different language.
>
>And why not? Since Scania has been a Swedish territory for 300 years,
>maybe? Was Scanian a different language 300 years ago? Was it a Danish
>dialect, or do you count the 17th century Scanian together with the
>speech spoken in Småland?
First, I do not know about Scanian 300 years ago. I was speaking about
Scanian nowadays.
The pronlem is, is Danish really a language different from Swedish? They
could well be considered dialects of one another, since most Swedish
understand written Danish, and some written Danish.
The exact border between dialect and language is very difficult to
define. For example, many would agree Provencal and Gascon are two
dialects of Occitan. But Gascons understand Catalan, whereas Provencals
do not. Catalan is still considered a different language from Occitan,
because Catalan is unintelligible to *most* speakers of Occitan.
Using this definition, one could even say that Scanian is both a dialect
of Danish and Swedish, as most Scanians understand Danish.
>You see: The idea of "language" is hard to disconnect from the State.
I don't agree: see the examples about Occitan and Catalan. There are
Catalan speakers in France as well.
>And for me the existence of a governmental center, and a cultural
>center, where norms develop for high-status forms of the speech, and
>of the written language, make a great difference when you compare
>Finland-Swedish with Gutnish. Orally the difference between
>prestigious speech in Visby, Stockholm and Helsinki is comparable, but
>the Gutnish lack the independent governmental center. Prestigious
>texts written in Visby (and in Lund/Malmö in Scania) are all written
>in the same way as texts written in Stockholm.
I don't know about Gutnish, but I have seen texts written with a
different script system in Scania.
If you look at Occitan: there are two spelling systems (standard and
provencal), and even in the standard one spelling reflects dialectal
varieties (the same word may be written differently depending on the
dialectal pronounciation, and all spellings are considered correct). I
don't think there is one central institution which controls the
language. The majority of the speakers still agree they do speak the
same language.
>The same is not entirely true for Helsinki.
Has Finland-Swedish a different spelling?
>The core point of this debate is about the right of the Swedish
>speakers in Finland to establish a normated Swedish different from the
>norms decided in Stockholm, and of the Finnish speakers in Tornedalen
>to establish a normated Finnish different from the norm decided in
>Helsinki.
>
>And if so, what do we call it?
That's exactly what happened for Occitan: there are two spelling norms,
it is still the same language. However, if the grammar is changed
drastically (influenced by Finnish for example), it would become a
pidgin, that is a separate language.
Stephane Di Cesare
Lund University - Computational Linguistics Student
Sweden
Christian R. Conrad
> Has Finland-Swedish a different spelling?
In some very small ways, yes. Or rather, they use forms of words which
are so archaic in Swedish Swedish :-) as to be extinct, and therefore
might be considered "not correct" in current Swedish in Sweden. The only
examples that come to mind right now are "flere" in stead of "flera",
and "besluter" in stead of "beslutar", but there must be many more.
But the *big* difference is that they often use quite *another* word.
Certainly looks like just another dialect of Finnish, to me.
Johan, what do you mean by *right* "to establish a normated Finnish"?
Sure, anyone might claim it is a part of his Human Rights to call his
dialect a "language", but it's certainly no right of his to demand that
I *believe* him... And if he wants to establish a normative body, paid
for with *my* tax money, then it is even worse.
But that normative body doesn't make a language a *separate* language:
The Bureau for the Swedish Language in Helsinki is *itself* among the
very loudest in its claim that Finland-Swedish *is* Swedish. Its little
pamphlet, _Språkbruk_ (Or is it _Språkvård_? I get 'em mixed up all the
time... The one that is *not* published by the Swedish Academy! :-) is
available in the reading-rooms of good public libraries in Sweden, too.
> That's exactly what happened for Occitan: there are two spelling norms,
> it is still the same language. However, if the grammar is changed
> drastically (influenced by Finnish for example), it would become a
> pidgin, that is a separate language.
YM "influenced by *Swedish* for example"? A language that essentially
*is* Finnish can hardly be "influenced" by it... Or aren't you talking
about Tornedalen-Finnish any more ?!? No, the Finland-Swedish grammar
isn't influenced by that of Finnish, AFAIK. When a single speaker's
usage is heavily influenced by Finnish, it's still considered an error.
It's just that a lot of people habitually make such errors... :-)
--
Christian R. Conrad
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Proud and sole owner of all opinions (except quotes) expressed above!
Peter T. Daniels
Stephane Di Cesare wrote:
>
> >A dialect, however, I am prepared to define as a geographically
> >identifiable variety. I do, for the English word "dialect" not
> >presuppose the existence of written language, or a literature. In
> >English I think people do not distinguish between the French "dialect"
> >/ "patois".
>
> "patois" should be suppressed from linguistic books IMO. It is a
> pejorative term which points to dialects of French (champennois, picard
> or whatever -
People from Dominica--a former British colony which is, however,
primarily francophone--refer to their form of speech as Patois. The
term is not always derogatory.
I'm speaking of the current dialects, not of the languages
> with the same name which did exist), but as well to other languages
> spoken in France, such as occitan, basque or breton, which are clearly
> not related to French.
Occitan is about as closely related to French as a language can be.
"Occitan" is a quite recent (in English, anyway) name for "Langue
d'oc," which used to be opposed to "Langue d'oeil," or "French";
Occitan includes what in English used to be known as Provençal. (Robert
A. Hall Jr. would call the modern form by the French pronunciation of
Provençal, and the literary language of the Troubadours "Pro'vensil" in
a sort of English style, just so as to be able to distinguish them
conveniently in lectures/conversation.)
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34c8ad39...@news.student.lu.se>,
Stephane Di Cesare <cie9...@student2.lth.se> wrote:
>On 23 Jan 1998 15:08:36 +0100, Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se>
>wrote:
[snip]
>>What constitutes a dialect? For me, it's a social phenomena.
>>A "dialect" is any variety which has the power to make people feel they
>>are from the same geographical locality, in the same way as a
>>"sociolect" for me is any variety with the power to make people feel
>>they are belonging to the same social stratum.
>
>More than that, it can have been influenced by another language. As
>occitan influenced the accent and the vocabulary of Southern French.
But it needn't be. Dialects develop quite naturally in languages, whether
there is influence from other languages or not.
>>It is usual to mark that "dialects" are less prestigious than
>>"standard languages" - but I'm not really fond of this either. Though
>>it must be accepted that some people, probably the most, understand
>>the word "dialect" as a word for something with inferior status to
>>standard languages.
>
>I would not use "dialect" in a pejorative way. Parisian French is as
>much a dialect as Canadian French is, even if the French spoken in Paris
>is much closer from "standard" French.
Here is a case where, like the previous poster, I would prefer to speak of
"Canadian French dialects" rather than "the Canadian French dialect." I
don't think that the Acadian French spoken by the family of one of my
friends would necessarily be understood in Montreal, for instance.
>>I try to avoid to define concepts as "dialects" or "languages" with
>>respect to mutual intelligibility. (Here I for instance disagree with
>>the s.c.lang faq.) The reason is that intelligibility is not inherent
>>in the relation between different varieties of speech, but instead a
>>function of the involved persons' 1/ experience and 2/ motivation.
>
>I would say that the important is the possibility of understanding.
>Taking another French example, let's say someone from Paris goes to
>Quebec; he may not understand in the beginning, but he won't need
>courses to do that. If he tries to speak occitan, he will need to
>understand how the occitan grammar works, else he won't have the
>slightest chance to understand something.
I still see this as an arbitrary distinction. In both cases, courses
would help, but aren't strictly necessary. After all, if my *Castilian-
speaking* friends can puzzle out French with difficulty, I can't imagine
its that much harder for French-speakers to figure out Occitan. It's
easy to get fixated on the differences between the two varieties, but they
really have far more in common than not. Contrasting them to, say,
Swedish will reveal this, much less comparing them to completely unrelated
languages like Wolof and Vietnamese.
>>I have, until now, been very unwilling to define languages comprising
>>other languages, or dialects comprising other dialects. Hence I
>>prefer to speak about the Scanian dialects instead of the Scanian
>>dialect.
>
>You can most of the time divide a dialect into several dialects. There
>are different Scanian dialects, but most speakers in Scania have common
>pronounciation features which distinguish them from standard Swedish
>(using diphtongues is the most obvious one).
Sometimes it's more relevant than others. I'd like to hear what you think
are the common features that tie Quebecois to Acadian and divide them both
from Parisian.
>>When speaking about such varieties of language, as
>>
>>- Tornedalen-Finnish
>>- Finland-Swedish
>>- Flemish
>>- the French spoken in Canada
>>- Australian, Indian, American or British English
>>- the German spoken in different German countries
>>
>>I do not agree with these varieties being "dialects" - they comprise
>>each a lot of dialects and they are each normated in separate
>>governmental and cultural centra. Well, Tornedalen-Finnish is actually
>>the exception here, included since many people in Tornedalen want it
>>to become standardized governmental language.
>
>Is Tornedalen-Finnish this language which is a mix of Swedish and
>Finnish? If so, it is a different language, at least from Swedish. Maybe
>it is a dialect of Finnish, but as I don't know Finnish I can't tell.
>But I would say the others are dialects, except for German varieties
>which can be open to discussion.
Huh? What possible criteria would separate American English and British
English into two dialects and not do the same for Bundesrepublik German
and Austrian German?
[snip]
>>But there is a main problem here, and that is the connection between
>>the concept of language and the concept of nation; and on the other
>>hand the connection between "nation" and "state".
>>
>>People who for one or another reason wish to state that two areas or
>>two people ought to stay together do often stress they speak the same
>>language. And for people who for some reason wish to state that two
>>areas should minimize their contact, they do often stress the
>>linguistic differences.
>
>Not all the time. People speaking breton or occitan do not want to get
>independent at the moment.
He didn't say that all people who emphasise the distinctiveness of their
speech varieties wish for independence, just that advocates of separatism
more often emphasise the distinctiveness of their speech varieties than
advocates of centrism.
[snip]
>>And why not? Since Scania has been a Swedish territory for 300 years,
>>maybe? Was Scanian a different language 300 years ago? Was it a Danish
>>dialect, or do you count the 17th century Scanian together with the
>>speech spoken in Småland?
>
>First, I do not know about Scanian 300 years ago. I was speaking about
>Scanian nowadays.
>
>The pronlem is, is Danish really a language different from Swedish? They
>could well be considered dialects of one another, since most Swedish
>understand written Danish, and some written Danish.
>The exact border between dialect and language is very difficult to
>define. For example, many would agree Provencal and Gascon are two
>dialects of Occitan. But Gascons understand Catalan, whereas Provencals
>do not. Catalan is still considered a different language from Occitan,
>because Catalan is unintelligible to *most* speakers of Occitan.
>
>Using this definition, one could even say that Scanian is both a dialect
>of Danish and Swedish, as most Scanians understand Danish.
>
>>You see: The idea of "language" is hard to disconnect from the State.
>
>I don't agree: see the examples about Occitan and Catalan. There are
>Catalan speakers in France as well.
I don't understand what you're saying here. Occitan and Catalan are
considered separate languages in part because they're in two separate
states. If, say, the Kingdom of Aragon had survived and expanded rather
than losing its possessions in what is now France and being absorbed by
Castile, Lenguadocian, Provenc,al, and Catalan might well all be con-
sidered dialects of "Llemos/i" (or whatever the standard language would be
called). The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the Scandinavian situa-
tion.
>>And for me the existence of a governmental center, and a cultural
>>center, where norms develop for high-status forms of the speech, and
>>of the written language, make a great difference when you compare
>>Finland-Swedish with Gutnish. Orally the difference between
>>prestigious speech in Visby, Stockholm and Helsinki is comparable, but
>>the Gutnish lack the independent governmental center. Prestigious
>>texts written in Visby (and in Lund/Malmö in Scania) are all written
>>in the same way as texts written in Stockholm.
>
>I don't know about Gutnish, but I have seen texts written with a
>different script system in Scania.
>
>If you look at Occitan: there are two spelling systems (standard and
>provencal), and even in the standard one spelling reflects dialectal
>varieties (the same word may be written differently depending on the
>dialectal pronounciation, and all spellings are considered correct). I
>don't think there is one central institution which controls the
>language. The majority of the speakers still agree they do speak the
>same language.
So if there's no central insitution, where did that "standard" spelling
come from? Someone (in this case, the IEO in Tolosa/Toulouse) had to
decide what the "standard" was and what variant spellings are considered
"correct"--contrary to what you say, not all are. For instance, would
everyone on s.c.occitan accept it if I started writing "Tolosa" as
"Toloha"? "Tolloozza"? "Angolema"?
Since the definition of what consistutes a "language" is fundamentally a
political one, having political entities (or, if you will, "cultural in-
stitutions") responsible for its maintenance (no matter how binding their
decisions may or may not be) bolsters its claims to higher status.
That is what this is all about, after all. We as linguists and language
students might all agree that we don't mean anything pejorative by "dia-
lect", but most of the world doesn't agree with us. A "proper language",
to them, is something standardised, something rulebooks can be published
about, something used in schools and in official media.
>>The same is not entirely true for Helsinki.
>
>Has Finland-Swedish a different spelling?
>
>>The core point of this debate is about the right of the Swedish
>>speakers in Finland to establish a normated Swedish different from the
>>norms decided in Stockholm, and of the Finnish speakers in Tornedalen
>>to establish a normated Finnish different from the norm decided in
>>Helsinki.
>>
>>And if so, what do we call it?
>
>That's exactly what happened for Occitan: there are two spelling norms,
>it is still the same language.
There's not unanimity on that point. Do all Provenc,al speakers agree
that their variety is a "dialect" of Occitan? And what about the status
of Aran\es? To linguists, it's a dialect of Gascon. To the Catalan
government, it's an independent language with a grammatical and ortho-
graphical norm independent of the IEO standard.
>However, if the grammar is changed drastically (influenced by Finnish for
>example), it would become a pidgin, that is a separate language.
That's not how pidgins form. A pidgin is a simplified form of a language
used for trade. It's possible for a speech variety to be drastically in-
fluenced by its neighbour(s) in grammar without it ever passing through a
stage of pidginisation.
--
Daniel "Da" von Brighoff /\ Dilettanten
(de...@midway.uchicago.edu) /__\ erhebt Euch
/____\ gegen die Kunst!
Mark Odegard
[Posted, e-mailed] **Note Spam Trap below** On Fri, 23 Jan 1998
15:08:53 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil Wennergren) in
<34c8b143...@news.algonet.se> wrote
|But the other three are a very strong illustration that the distintion
|between language and dialect always is a political matter - not a
|linguistic one. Why is Swedish, Norwegian and Danish three different
|languages? For political reasons. Why are all the different forms of
|Chinese counted as one language? For political reasons.
Has anyone devised an English nomenclature for describing
variations between closely related linguistic groups that avoids
"political" questions?
I've been tempted to use the taxonomical language of biology,
e.g., Family IndoEuropean, Subfamily Germanic, Genus West
Germanic, species Modern Continental, subspecies Swabian.
Am I being foolish?
--
Mark Odegard.
My real address doesn't include a Christian name.
Emailed copies of responses are very much appreciated.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34c94207...@news2.means.net>,
Mark Odegard <NOTE THE ANTI-SPAM TRAP> wrote:
>[Posted, e-mailed] **Note Spam Trap below** On Fri, 23 Jan 1998
>15:08:53 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil Wennergren) in
><34c8b143...@news.algonet.se> wrote
>
>|But the other three are a very strong illustration that the distintion
>|between language and dialect always is a political matter - not a
>|linguistic one. Why is Swedish, Norwegian and Danish three different
>|languages? For political reasons. Why are all the different forms of
>|Chinese counted as one language? For political reasons.
>
>Has anyone devised an English nomenclature for describing
>variations between closely related linguistic groups that avoids
>"political" questions?
>
>I've been tempted to use the taxonomical language of biology,
>e.g., Family IndoEuropean, Subfamily Germanic, Genus West
>Germanic, species Modern Continental, subspecies Swabian.
>
>Am I being foolish?
Misleading, perhaps: Despite our love for biological analogies, lan-
guage does not evolve like organisms.
I find "[speech] variety" a suitably politically-neutral term. It can be
easily qualified (e.g. "geographical variety" = "dialect") and subdivided
(into "subvarieties").
Mark Odegard
[Posted, e-mailed] **Note Spam Trap below** On Sat, 24 Jan 1998
03:08:27 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v.
Brighoff) in <En9q2...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote
I wrote:
|>Has anyone devised an English nomenclature for describing
|>variations between closely related linguistic groups that avoids
|>"political" questions?
|>
|>I've been tempted to use the taxonomical language of biology,
|>e.g., Family IndoEuropean, Subfamily Germanic, Genus West
|>Germanic, species Modern Continental, subspecies Swabian.
|>
|>Am I being foolish?
|
|Misleading, perhaps: Despite our love for biological analogies, lan-
|guage does not evolve like organisms.
|
|I find "[speech] variety" a suitably politically-neutral term. It can be
|easily qualified (e.g. "geographical variety" = "dialect") and subdivided
|(into "subvarieties").
But doesn't "variety" get into botanical taxonomy?
I agree language does not evolve like organisms, but when
describing it, when comparing it, you need some sort of
classificational structure. One thing I really miss is a
generally understood system that expresses mutual
intelligibility between "varieties" and "subvarieties" of
language -- a system that does not run up against the barricades
of political correctness. I also miss not having an easy,
commonly understood way to describe the distance through time
for intelligibility of a different stage of a language (e.g.,
how far are Middle and Modern English apart from each other in
comparison to the distance between Attic Greek and Modern
Greek?). The words "language" and "dialect" are now nearly
useless for such discussions.
C Malte Lewan
Christian R. Conrad <christia...@hedengren.fi> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 17:07:00 GMT,
> cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) said:
>
> are so archaic in Swedish Swedish :-) as to be extinct, and therefore
> might be considered "not correct" in current Swedish in Sweden. The only
> examples that come to mind right now are "flere" in stead of "flera",
> and "besluter" in stead of "beslutar", but there must be many more.
There is a similar situation in Scania (region in Sweden for the s.l
readers), maybe to a lesser extent. I don't know since I don't normally
read Finland-Swedish texts. Scanian newspapers for example instruct
their journalists to use the expression "i fjor" instead of "i fjol"
like in the rest of Sweden (true at least for Sydsvenska Dagbladet and
eg. Helsingborgs Dagblad and NVT seem to follow the same principle).
(Note that "i fjor" also is accepted by the Swedish normative wordlist
SAOL although very seldom used outside the south of Sweden.) I also
think that adjective inflections of the type "den gamla mannen" (instead
of "den gamle mannen") are more unimaginable in Scanian written texts.
> But the *big* difference is that they often use quite *another* word.
Yes, when somebody who has quite a heavy accent/dialect writes texts, he
tends to use the word that is closer to his spoken language when there's
a choice between two acceptable forms. I look at two articles written by
Håkan Malmström in Sydsvenska Dagbladet the 12-13 Jan. He uses
expressions like "lyssna till radio" (lyssna på radio), "rentav" (till
och med), "ett kärt ämne" (ett populärt ämne) and "andlig spis" (don't
know) as part of his normal non-dialectal flow of words. I don't know if
some are acceptable in formal written Swedish but here the choice is
always towards the Scanian forms. It must be noted though that the
articles are written in a semi-familiar tone and that I think that some
of these expressions probably would disappear when writing more dry
article texts.
The brand new _Skånes litteraturhistoria II_ writes (1997, p 29): "Skåne
har i jämförelse med andra landsändar varit förhållandevis väl försett
med kulturella institutioner och har därmed i viss utsträckning kunnat
motverka den stockholmska dominansen." (But they add: "Det utesluter
inte att man samtidigt har godtagit storstadsidealen.") These Scanian
cultural institutions probably have helped the above-mentioned modest
deviations of written language and the less modest deviations in
(acceptable) spoken regional standard language.
/Malte Lewan
Juhani
In article <34c8e43e...@news.eunet.fi>, christia...@hedengren.fi
says...
>
>Johan, what do you mean by *right* "to establish a normated Finnish"?
>Sure, anyone might claim it is a part of his Human Rights to call his
>dialect a "language", but it's certainly no right of his to demand that
>I *believe* him... And if he wants to establish a normative body, paid
>for with *my* tax money, then it is even worse.
Last thursday there was a segment about tornedalians and the
language issue in the main news breadcast of Finnish TV. According
to that, they were very disappointed with the decision to raise
the status of standard Finnish and not the Tornedalian version.
The author Bengt Pohjanen who was interviewed, was especially
incensed at considering Meän kieli a dialect, "Think, if you
in Finland were told that Finnish is just a dialect of Estonian".
The whole thing was considered an imposition by the Finnish immigrants
in southern cities, and Pohjanen prophesied that the issue is likely
to cause bad feelings in relations over the border. The news segment
effectively demonstrated how passionately political the question is.
There was no talk of any "normative body" funded by anyones tax
money. Bengt Pohjanen is one of the authors of a grammar for
Meän kieli (I don't know if that project received any state
funding), so in a sense they have already formed norms for it.
I don't know how widely accepted they are.
Anyway, the real issue is more whether a speaker of Meän kieli
can request public services in his/her language/dialect/variant.
The operative definition of language here seems to be
"Something you can require officials to speak, understand
and write".
(IMHO Pohjanen's comparison with Estonian was bad rhetorics,
because Finnish and Estonian really are mutually incomprehensible,
unlike Finnish and Meän kieli.)
>But that normative body doesn't make a language a *separate* language:
>The Bureau for the Swedish Language in Helsinki is *itself* among the
>very loudest in its claim that Finland-Swedish *is* Swedish. Its little
>pamphlet, _Språkbruk_ (Or is it _Språkvård_? I get 'em mixed up all the
>time... The one that is *not* published by the Swedish Academy! :-) is
>available in the reading-rooms of good public libraries in Sweden, too.
See also the WWW site of the "The Research Institute for the Languages
of Finland" at http://www.domlang.fi/
I think you might find it interesting. There are sub-pages in
Finnish, Swedish and English. As far as I can tell, the pages
just talk about Swedish, Svenska, without worrying at all
whether they are talking about a "language" or a "dialect".
I found some notes in the FAQ of the Swedish section about the
usage differences between Sweden and Finland, but not many.
--
juhani | Helsinki, Finland
@ |
ibm.net | (The From-line may contain some anti-spam shielding)
Stephane Di Cesare
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 15:08:53 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil
Wennergren) wrote:
>Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se> skribis:
>But the other three are a very strong illustration that the distintion
>between language and dialect always is a political matter - not a
>linguistic one. Why is Swedish, Norwegian and Danish three different
>languages? For political reasons. Why are all the different forms of
>Chinese counted as one language? For political reasons.
Yes, but that's only true for Nordic languages. In Africa for example,
most languages have little relation to political boundaries, and
sometimes to ethnies. Hausa (spoken in parts of Nigeria, South of Niger,
and some other countries as a lingua franca) is a good example.
Bertil Wennergren
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) skribis:
>On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 15:08:53 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil
>Wennergren) wrote:
>>Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se> skribis:
>>But the other three are a very strong illustration that the distintion
>>between language and dialect always is a political matter - not a
>>linguistic one. Why is Swedish, Norwegian and Danish three different
>>languages? For political reasons. Why are all the different forms of
>>Chinese counted as one language? For political reasons.
>Yes, but that's only true for Nordic languages.
Well, much more than just the _Nordic_ languages. Chinese has already
been mentioned. Other examples are Arabic,
Spanish-Galician-Portuguese, Dutch-Afrikaans, etc.
Peter T. Daniels
Mark Odegard wrote:
>
> I've been tempted to use the taxonomical language of biology,
> e.g., Family IndoEuropean, Subfamily Germanic, Genus West
> Germanic, species Modern Continental, subspecies Swabian.
>
> Am I being foolish?
Well, we already talk about the components of IE being families--the
Gmc family, the Romance family, etc. Would that make IE an order? Or
maybe IE could be a class, and then intermediate subgroupings
(Balto-Slavic, which is real, or Italo-Celtic, which apparently isn't)
could be orders? What about Indo-Iranian, which is usually considered
to be at the same rank as the other families, rather than at the order
rank? (Sanskrit and Avestan/Old Persian sometimes seem
indistinguishable on more than a very superficial level.)
A problem--perhaps not insurmountable--with the Linnaean analogy is
that there's no limit to how often a language grouping can subdivide
(try applying it to Oceanic languages!).
Stephane Di Cesare
>On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 17:07:00 GMT,
>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) said:
>> That's exactly what happened for Occitan: there are two spelling norms,
>> it is still the same language. However, if the grammar is changed
>> drastically (influenced by Finnish for example), it would become a
>> pidgin, that is a separate language.
>
>YM "influenced by *Swedish* for example"? A language that essentially
>*is* Finnish can hardly be "influenced" by it... Or aren't you talking
>about Tornedalen-Finnish any more ?!? No, the Finland-Swedish grammar
>isn't influenced by that of Finnish, AFAIK. When a single speaker's
>usage is heavily influenced by Finnish, it's still considered an error.
>It's just that a lot of people habitually make such errors... :-)
My mistake: I meant "if the grammar would be changed drastically", it
was not an affirmation, I wanted to say that in case Finland-Swedish
would have had a different grammar, it would have been a different
language. But it hasn't, obviously.
Stephane Di Cesare
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 19:16:02 -0500, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@worldnet.att.com> wrote:
>Stephane Di Cesare wrote:
>Occitan is about as closely related to French as a language can be.
>"Occitan" is a quite recent (in English, anyway) name for "Langue
>d'oc," which used to be opposed to "Langue d'oeil," or "French";
"langue d'oil", which is Old French.
Occitan is close to French, but is definitely intelligible to French
speakers, thus another language. Conjugations are not the same at all,
there are fewer tenses, subject pronouns are not compulsory, there is a
very rich suffixing system to change the meaning of nouns, verbs can be
substantived (sp?) much more often than in French, and large parts of
the vocabulary are different.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34c985f7...@news2.means.net>,
Mark Odegard <NOTE THE ANTI-SPAM TRAP> wrote:
>03:08:27 GMT, de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v.
>Brighoff) in <En9q2...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote
>
>I wrote:
>
>|>Has anyone devised an English nomenclature for describing
>|>variations between closely related linguistic groups that avoids
>|>"political" questions?
>|>
>|>e.g., Family IndoEuropean, Subfamily Germanic, Genus West
>|>Germanic, species Modern Continental, subspecies Swabian.
>|>
>|>Am I being foolish?
>|
>|guage does not evolve like organisms.
>|
>|I find "[speech] variety" a suitably politically-neutral term. It can be
>|easily qualified (e.g. "geographical variety" = "dialect") and subdivided
>|(into "subvarieties").
>
>But doesn't "variety" get into botanical taxonomy?
It's used in botany, but that's not the first thing most people associate
with it--unlike your terms above, which are pretty well specfic to
Zoology.
>I agree language does not evolve like organisms, but when
>describing it, when comparing it, you need some sort of
>classificational structure. One thing I really miss is a
>generally understood system that expresses mutual
>intelligibility between "varieties" and "subvarieties" of
>language -- a system that does not run up against the barricades
>of political correctness.
But--as has been discussed almost to death here--"mutual intelligibility"
is such a slippery concept. "ability to interbreed" is to, but at the end
of the day, when you inseminate an animal, it will either reproduce or it
won't. If my (monolingual) mother understands two words of Chinese
(either because they're borrowed from English or borrowed into English
from Chinese) and it's enough to give her a vague idea what's being dis-
cussed, then how do you describe the level of mutual intelligibility? Not
"zero percent", despite the fact that no genetic connexion between the
languages has ever been demonstrated.
>I also miss not having an easy,
>commonly understood way to describe the distance through time
>for intelligibility of a different stage of a language (e.g.,
>how far are Middle and Modern English apart from each other in
>comparison to the distance between Attic Greek and Modern
>Greek?). The words "language" and "dialect" are now nearly
>useless for such discussions.
It might also be useful to have terms describing similarity of culture.
That is, what is the "mutual intelligibility" of Upper Class Hong Kong and
Lower Class Rural Alabama? If you were teleported back to Chaucerian
England, how much of what the people did would seem familiar and how much
would range from puzzling to completely foreign? How "intelligible" is
Mahayana Buddhism to a Theravadist?
But it's impossible to reasonably quantify these differences. For similar
reasons, I think the same is true wrt speech varieties.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34c8d4fd...@news.student.lu.se>,
>Wennergren) wrote:
>
>>Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se> skribis:
>>But the other three are a very strong illustration that the distintion
>>between language and dialect always is a political matter - not a
>>linguistic one. Why is Swedish, Norwegian and Danish three different
>>languages? For political reasons. Why are all the different forms of
>>Chinese counted as one language? For political reasons.
>
>most languages have little relation to political boundaries, and
>sometimes to ethnies. Hausa (spoken in parts of Nigeria, South of Niger,
>and some other countries as a lingua franca) is a good example.
Just because a "language" is not closely associated with a single modern
political entity does not mean that there are no political considerations to
calling it a "language". The area where Hausa is spoken natively *was* at
one time a political entity, the states of Kanem and Bornu. And how many
dialects of Hausa are there? Why is, for example, Angas not considered
one of them? Could it have anything to do with the fact that it is spoken
south of the region of traditional Hausa dominance?
Or take the Mande languages. Why are most of the varieties spoken within
Mali considered dialects of Bambara while those spoken mainly in neigh-
bouring countries (Soninke, Dyula, etc.) aren't? Why are the mutually-
intelligible Bantu varieties Kiyarwanda and Kirundi considered separate
"languages"? Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that there are
two independent political entities called "Rwanda" and "Burundi", could
it?
Of course, "languages" aren't distinguished by politics alone; there are
also social, cultural, and historical factors. (Note that "scientific"
considerations don't make the list.)
Anthony West
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff (de...@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote:
: In article <34c985f7...@news2.means.net>,
: Mark Odegard <NOTE THE ANTI-SPAM TRAP> wrote:
: >I agree language does not evolve like organisms, but when
: >describing it, when comparing it, you need some sort of
: >classificational structure. One thing I really miss is a
: >generally understood system that expresses mutual
: >intelligibility between "varieties" and "subvarieties" of
: >language -- a system that does not run up against the barricades
: >of political correctness.
: But--as has been discussed almost to death here--"mutual intelligibility"
: is such a slippery concept. "ability to interbreed" is to, but at the end
: of the day, when you inseminate an animal, it will either reproduce or it
: won't. If my (monolingual) mother understands two words of Chinese
: (either because they're borrowed from English or borrowed into English
: from Chinese) and it's enough to give her a vague idea what's being dis-
: cussed, then how do you describe the level of mutual intelligibility? Not
: "zero percent", despite the fact that no genetic connexion between the
: languages has ever been demonstrated.
: But it's impossible to reasonably quantify these differences. For similar
: reasons, I think the same is true wrt speech varieties.
:
It's not impossible to imagine quantifiable field tests of
intelligibility. One could quantify the percent of the signal
that gets thru, as well as the speed at which the listener
interprets the speaker.
If I can pick up <1% of the signal of my Mongolian tenant; ~10%
of the signal of my German ex-girlfriend, with lots of time to
think; ~95% of the dialog in an Australian movie, with less time
to think; 99>% of my coworker who speaks a working-class dialect
of the same city as the one I live in (I occasionally miss an
utterance of hers the first time around) -- all by listening and
thinking in my own idiolect of English -- then I am dealing with
intrinsically quantifiable phenomena of comprehension.
Given enough data to work with (preferably funded by generous
UNESCO grants directly to me), one could say that, for instance,
Dutch variety X and High German variety Y are Z% inter-
comprehensible. Whether or not Z% constituted divergence at the
language or dialectal level would also be determined by teams of
UN experts, thereby averting wars.
-Tony West aaw...@critpath.org
Philadelphia
Hiski Haapoja
Juhani (ju-h...@ibm.net) wrote:
: The author Bengt Pohjanen who was interviewed, was especially
: incensed at considering Meän kieli a dialect, "Think, if you
: in Finland were told that Finnish is just a dialect of Estonian".
: The whole thing was considered an imposition by the Finnish immigrants
: in southern cities, and Pohjanen prophesied that the issue is likely
: to cause bad feelings in relations over the border.
This is how Pohjanen and other lunatics work: first they invent a
problem, then they start to escalate it. What really causes ill feelings
across the border is the habit of Finnish customs to confiscate cars for
tax reasons.
Hiski
# Olisinpa pieni hoikka brunetti. #
Jarmo Ryyti
In soc.culture.nordic Stephane Di Cesare <cie9...@student2.lth.se> wrote:
: On 23 Jan 1998 15:08:36 +0100, Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se>
: wrote:
Tornedalian Finnish could be described as "Ebonics" of Finnish
speaking Swedes of Northern-Sweden.
Perhaps the North-Americans get a clue what it is all about from
this comparison.
It was used only in oral form. There was no schools and no official
use. Its status was low, sometimes even forbidden. Sweden wanted
to root it out often very brutally. And exactly as in Northern-
America this "Ebonics" spoken in Sweden was considered causing
social problems, isolate people and being a hinder for the
development.
Therefore the Swedes are so angry when reminding of this,
because they believed to be benefactors when implementing
projects which lead to a cultural genocide of Finnish
speaking Swedes.
What makes the issue interesting - international community
accepted Sweden's policy by being silent and not protesting.
The other Finnish form of Sweden's "Ebonics" is extinct since
1960's. It was spoken in Central - Sweden.The Swedes managed
there better, if you like.
Both these forms of Finnish languages are considered in Finnish
linguistics being Finnish dialects.
Sweden's policy has been by far not to give any official
status for the standardized Finnish , because it has
caused a status quo situation between standard Swedish
and standard Finnish in Sweden.
Now Council of Europe expects Sweden to change her policy
and legislation. There are about 60 laws which must
be changed.
regards,
jami
: >speech spoken in Smĺland?
: First, I do not know about Scanian 300 years ago. I was speaking about
: Scanian nowadays.
: Stephane Di Cesare
--
#In 1958,The Swedish School Administration repealed directives banning#
# the speaking of Finnish language in Sweden's schools.However,some #
# municipalities maintained restrictions until 1968 #
Peter T. Daniels
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> It might also be useful to have terms describing similarity of culture.
> That is, what is the "mutual intelligibility" of Upper Class Hong Kong and
> Lower Class Rural Alabama? If you were teleported back to Chaucerian
> England, how much of what the people did would seem familiar and how much
> would range from puzzling to completely foreign? How "intelligible" is
> Mahayana Buddhism to a Theravadist?
>
> reasons, I think the same is true wrt speech varieties.
My one week in 1992 England and Ireland was sufficiently alien that I'm
happy my language of specialization is safely dead and Classical
(Syriac), and that my field of Writing Systems also doesn't entail
doing the fieldwork thing. (I mean, their toilets are shaped
differently! Not to mention that drive-on-the-left thing!)
Peter T. Daniels
Anthony West wrote:
>
> D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff (de...@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote:
>
> : But it's impossible to reasonably quantify these differences. For similar
> : reasons, I think the same is true wrt speech varieties.
> It's not impossible to imagine quantifiable field tests of
> intelligibility. One could quantify the percent of the signal
> that gets thru, as well as the speed at which the listener
> interprets the speaker.
In principle, sure, but in practice ???
>
> If I can pick up <1% of the signal of my Mongolian tenant; ~10%
> of the signal of my German ex-girlfriend, with lots of time to
> think; ~95% of the dialog in an Australian movie, with less time
> to think; 99>% of my coworker who speaks a working-class dialect
> of the same city as the one I live in (I occasionally miss an
> utterance of hers the first time around) -- all by listening and
> thinking in my own idiolect of English -- then I am dealing with
> intrinsically quantifiable phenomena of comprehension.
>
> Given enough data to work with (preferably funded by generous
> UNESCO grants directly to me), one could say that, for instance,
> Dutch variety X and High German variety Y are Z% inter-
> comprehensible. Whether or not Z% constituted divergence at the
> language or dialectal level would also be determined by teams of
> UN experts, thereby averting wars.
>
How could you possibly assign values to Z%, or content to the Mongolian
"1%"?
Brian M. Scott
On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 00:46:43 -0500, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@worldnet.att.com> wrote:
[snip]
>My one week in 1992 England and Ireland was sufficiently alien that I'm
>happy my language of specialization is safely dead and Classical
>(Syriac), and that my field of Writing Systems also doesn't entail
>doing the fieldwork thing. (I mean, their toilets are shaped
>differently! Not to mention that drive-on-the-left thing!)
It could be worse. I remember when my sister discovered some years
ago that Bulgarian toilet paper made wonderful writing paper.
Brian M. Scott
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <6ad9la$7nj$1...@tensegrity.CritPath.Org>,
Anthony West <aaw...@netnews.CritPath.Org> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff (de...@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote:
>
>: is such a slippery concept. "ability to interbreed" is to, but at the end
>: of the day, when you inseminate an animal, it will either reproduce or it
>: won't. If my (monolingual) mother understands two words of Chinese
>: (either because they're borrowed from English or borrowed into English
>: from Chinese) and it's enough to give her a vague idea what's being dis-
>: cussed, then how do you describe the level of mutual intelligibility? Not
>: "zero percent", despite the fact that no genetic connexion between the
>: languages has ever been demonstrated.
>
>: reasons, I think the same is true wrt speech varieties.
>:
>It's not impossible to imagine quantifiable field tests of
>intelligibility. One could quantify the percent of the signal
>that gets thru, as well as the speed at which the listener
>interprets the speaker.
>
>of the signal of my German ex-girlfriend, with lots of time to
>think; ~95% of the dialog in an Australian movie, with less time
>to think; 99>% of my coworker who speaks a working-class dialect
>of the same city as the one I live in (I occasionally miss an
>utterance of hers the first time around) -- all by listening and
>thinking in my own idiolect of English -- then I am dealing with
>intrinsically quantifiable phenomena of comprehension.
But how on earth do you quantify this signal? Let's take a concrete
example. My brother (two years of German under his belt) and his wife
(minimal exposure to it) are vacationing in Germany. As they pause to
admire a scenic overlook in the Black Forest, a stranded motorist comes up
to them and asks:
"Koennense mir eventuell Hilfe leischtn?"
My brother has no problem with the first three words; he immediately
understands that the person is addressing him formally, is making a polite
request, and so forth--but the last word has him stumped. In class, he
learned the verb "helfen" but never the idiom "Hilfe leisten". What does
the man want them to do? To send someone from the next town they pass
through? To let him use their carphone to summon the German equivalent of
AAA? To give him advice? He looks at him and says:
"Was wollen Sie?"
Meanwhile, my sister-in-law has picked up only on the word "Hilfe", which
sounds enough like the English "help" that she turns to my brother and
confidently says, "He wants us to lend him a hand."
Who has understood more of the message? If the primary purpose of lan-
guage is to communicate one's needs and observations, then my sister-in-
law should receive the higher score because she has correctly interpreted
the man's request while my brother remains baffled. On a morpheme-by-
morpheme basis, however, he obviously carries the day.
What your method involves is assigning an arbitrary weight to thousands of
aspects of the signal: So much for comprehending intent, so much for
noting speech register, so much for decoding unfamiliar phonology, etc.
There's a whole lot more to every speech act than just the grammar of the
utterance and every bit of information can be important. Sure, you can
assign values to each factor, but there's no real scientific basis for
rating one X points higher than the other. This is why I say there's no
reasonable method of quantification. This is why all general statements
of mutual intelligibility--like all statements of similarity between
cultures or degrees of prettiness of various landscapes--are ultimately
bound to be basically subjective.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34c9fbe2...@news.student.lu.se>,
>Wennergren) wrote:
>
>>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) skribis:
>>
>>been mentioned. Other examples are Arabic,
>>Spanish-Galician-Portuguese, Dutch-Afrikaans, etc.
>
Sez you! Speakers of these two languages have different opinions. In
fact, native Galician speakers have posted to this very newsgroup [by
which I mean sci.lang, not s.c.nordic] saying that the difference between
Standard Galician and the Portuguese of northern Portugal (the Standard is
based on a southern dialect) is less than the difference between certain
varieties of Galician.
>If Spanish and Portuguese are dialects, then English and Swedish probably
>are as well :)
Glad you included the smiley, or I would've suspected you knew nothing of
Spanish or Portuguese. The relationships aren't comparable at all.
Portuguese speakers can generally understand Spanish speakers without too
much trouble (although the reverse is generally not true--a big problem
with the standard of "mutual intelligibility". Too often, it ain't.)[*]
I defy you to present me with a case of a speaker of a Nordic language and
one of English, neither with prior exposure to the other's language,
having even a simple conversation without resorting to a third language.
But it doesn't matter even should you reject these examples; they can be
multiplied ad nauseum: Korean and Cheju-hwa; Japanese and Okinawan; Ladak
and Khams (Tibetan); Thai and Lao; Hindi and Urdu; Krimci, Anatolian
Turkish, Gaugaz, and Azeri; etc.
[*] For that matter, I've seen Spanish and *Italian* speakers have
rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
Torsten Poulin Nielsen
In article <34c985f7...@news2.means.net>, Mark Odegard wrote:
>|>I've been tempted to use the taxonomical language of biology,
>|>e.g., Family IndoEuropean, Subfamily Germanic, Genus West
>|>Germanic, species Modern Continental, subspecies Swabian.
>|>
>|>Am I being foolish?
>|
>|Misleading, perhaps: Despite our love for biological analogies, lan-
>|guage does not evolve like organisms.
>|
>|I find "[speech] variety" a suitably politically-neutral term. It can be
>|easily qualified (e.g. "geographical variety" = "dialect") and subdivided
>|(into "subvarieties").
>
>But doesn't "variety" get into botanical taxonomy?
The Linnean 'solution' isn't very satisfying, as it is too simplistic when
it comes to languages. They do not just evolve like branches on a tree (as often
depicted in popular works); The main structure may be tree-like, but there is
constant cross-pollination (to keep the botanical metaphor) from other branches -
even ones that are on other trees. Think of Norwegian that actually comes from
the West Nordic branch, but is very heavily influenced by Danish (East Nordic).
Also, a substantial part of the vocabulary of contemporary Danish has its
origins in Low German, not in Old Danish (similar for Swedish and Norwegian).
Or to take an extremely obvious example: English with its huge Norman/French
vocabulary...
-Torsten
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <6af9dt$pq6$1...@news.datakom.su.se>,
Jan Böhme <Jan....@REMOVE.THIS.sh.se> wrote:
>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>
>>Spanish and Portuguese? They are not that similar, nor is Galician. If
>>Spanish and Portuguese are dialects, then English and Swedish probably
>>are as well :)
>
>similar, true. However, _Galician_ would certainly be considered as a
>Portugese dialect if Portugal had extended all the way up the west
>coast of the Iberian peninsula.
[snip]
That depends on your perspective. I certainly see more similarities
between Spanish and Portuguese than I do between, say, Oberbairisch and
Badisch--both "dialects" not just of German but of High German.
Jarmo Ryyti
In soc.culture.nordic Juhani <ju-h...@ibm.net> wrote:
: In article <34c8e43e...@news.eunet.fi>, christia...@hedengren.fi
: says...
cut
: Last thursday there was a segment about tornedalians and the
: language issue in the main news breadcast of Finnish TV. According
: the status of standard Finnish and not the Tornedalian version.
cut to save space...
Well I am a member in Sweden's Tornedalian organization STR-T.
Some short remarks:
* very few of the Swedish Tornedalians are able to write or
read Torndelian Finnish or standard Finnish.
*They can speak it - the only way is to write it is to write
it the way you hear it spoken.
You get an idea if you write English same way as you hear it.
That is Tornedalian Finnish "language" in written form!!
Bengt Pohjanen created a grammar for Tornedalian Finnish.
As well Savo speakers can create a grammar for Savo dialect.
As well as Rauma,Turku,Helsinki,Tampere dialect speakers
can write a grammar for the "language" which is spoken
in those regions.
Council of Europe does not accept them being official
minority languages as it does not accept Tornedalian
Finnish being the minority Finnish language in Sweden
because it accepts only standardized languages of
a larger language group.
Sweden can of course exceed the criterias of CE,
but Sweden cannot make of Tornedalian Finnish
the only official Finnish in Sweden even if it was
so convewnient politically. Namely CE reacts to such
a decision immediately. And Sweden's actions are followed
closely. More precisely that of Swedish government
and prime minister Persson.
This fact that Sweden has a minority which is *illiterate*
speaks for itself what is Sweden minority language policy
in generally even today.
An open question:Is Tibetan speaking minority in as large
scale illiterate in poor China as Tornedalians in rich
and prosperous model "democracy" Sweden. Hardly!!!
In this ng the Swedes boast how openminded Swedish politics
is today compared to the past. There is no significant
change if estimating the outcome: They are illiterate.
All the information letters of Svenska Tornedalingarnas
Riksförbund-Tornionlaaksolaiset (STR-T) are written
in Swedish!!
What a lingual minority is a minority who cannot use
its own language/dialect!!???
Simply they have to write them in Swedish because Swedish
society, rich and prosperous, have educated them illiterate
in their own mother-tongue.
Compare China and Tibet. If China acted same way it was
protested internationally. There seem to be different
rules to differenct states in the international community.
STR-T publishes a bulletin named Met-Aviisi. It is also
written to the degree of 90 % in Swedish.
I believed that it is their language/dialect - not Swedish -
which is the language they should cultivate!!!!!
But they are unable to it. Because they are illiterate.
There is hardly anywhere else in the Nordic states
such a large bulk of population as in Sweden which
is illetare in their own mother-tongue. Only Norway's
Kvens can be a comparable group as a result of
Norway's similar policy than that of Sweden.
Swedish majority population had to change their centuries
long attitudes more tolerant concerning lingual minorities
Sweden and Norway cause bad will for all Nordic states
because of their politics. Silencey may help them,but
it is not any more possible in the world of internet.
regards,
jami
: There was no talk of any "normative body" funded by anyones tax
: money. Bengt Pohjanen is one of the authors of a grammar for
: Meän kieli (I don't know if that project received any state
: funding), so in a sense they have already formed norms for it.
: I don't know how widely accepted they are.
Stephane Di Cesare
On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 11:36:21 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil
Wennergren) wrote:
>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) skribis:
>My point is that if Spanish and Portuguese were spoken in the same
>country, and if the politicians had the same frame of mind as Chinese
>authorities (or Arabic or...) then the two languages would be seen as
>just dialects of one language.
Well, I don't speak either Spanish or Portuguese, but all speakers of
these languages I have met until now told me they were not mutually
intelligible. I heard some people saying that Portuguese is actually
closer to French than Spanish.
>If Galician were spoken in Portugal,
>then if would most surely be seen as a form of Portugese (or
>Portuguese as a form of Galician).
For Galician, probably.
>If English and Swedish were spoken (only) in two villages in Germany,
>they would be counted as two weird dialects of German - or could be
>so, if politicians wanted to.
But then, they would not respect our definition of dialect, which is
"two lects which are mutually understandable".
For example, Franco-Provencal spoken in Aosta in Italy is not
understandable to French and Italien speakers, even if some politicians
call it a dialect.
>Of course the existence of norms for written language is very
>important here, but such a norm is largely the result of political
>will to see a certain variety as a separate language.
But norms do not make different languages by themselves, as the Occitan
example proves.
Stephane Di Cesare
>In article <34c9fbe2...@news.student.lu.se>,
>Stephane Di Cesare <cie9...@student2.lth.se> wrote:
>>On Sat, 24 Jan 1998 11:34:21 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil
>>Wennergren) wrote:
>>
>>>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) skribis:
>>>
>>>Well, much more than just the _Nordic_ languages. Chinese has already
>>>been mentioned. Other examples are Arabic,
>>>Spanish-Galician-Portuguese, Dutch-Afrikaans, etc.
>>
>>Spanish and Portuguese? They are not that similar, nor is Galician.
>
>Sez you! Speakers of these two languages have different opinions. In
>fact, native Galician speakers have posted to this very newsgroup [by
>which I mean sci.lang, not s.c.nordic] saying that the difference between
>Standard Galician and the Portuguese of northern Portugal (the Standard is
>based on a southern dialect) is less than the difference between certain
>varieties of Galician.
I do not contest that Galician and Portuguese are similar, but Spanish
is not similar to these two from what I've heard.
>>If Spanish and Portuguese are dialects, then English and Swedish probably
>>are as well :)
>
>Glad you included the smiley, or I would've suspected you knew nothing of
>Spanish or Portuguese. The relationships aren't comparable at all.
>Portuguese speakers can generally understand Spanish speakers without too
>much trouble (although the reverse is generally not true--a big problem
>with the standard of "mutual intelligibility". Too often, it ain't.)[*]
But isn't because Portuguese are used to hearing Spanish more than the
opposite?
Swedes usually understand some German even if they haven't learned it,
because it is more usual to hear German in Sweden than Swedish in
Germany. However, from my own experience, when you speak Swedish in
Germany, most people don't even recognize what kind of language it is.
>[*] For that matter, I've seen Spanish and *Italian* speakers have
>rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
Yes, but they're "cheating" :)
Because all Romance languages have a lot of common vocabulary, and have
roughly the same word order, they understand one another with just using
words without grammar. (This does not work with French because the
prosody is too different. And not with Eastern Romance languages
obviously). I would not consider this mutual understanding, because only
very basic conversation is possible that way.
>I defy you to present me with a case of a speaker of a Nordic language and
>one of English, neither with prior exposure to the other's language,
>having even a simple conversation without resorting to a third language.
Without any prior exposure is the key point. You will meet few
Portuguese who haven't been exposed to Spanish.
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 20:26:01 GMT, cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane
Di Cesare) wrote:
>But isn't [that] because Portuguese are used to hearing Spanish more than the
>opposite?
>>[DEGvB:]
>>[*] For that matter, I've seen Spanish and *Italian* speakers have
>>rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
>
>Yes, but they're "cheating" :)
>Because all Romance languages have a lot of common vocabulary, and have
>roughly the same word order, they understand one another with just using
>words without grammar. (This does not work with French
or Portuguese!
>because the
>prosody is too different. And not with Eastern Romance languages
>obviously). I would not consider this mutual understanding, because only
>very basic conversation is possible that way.
The facts, as far as I know them, are that rudimentary conversations
*can* be carried out by Spanish and [standard] Italian speakers *and*
by Spanish and Portuguese speakers. The difference is that in the
latter case, this is more likely to be successful the more the
Portuguese speakers adjust their speech in the direction of Spanish.
In that sense, it *is* important that Portuguese speakers be used to
hearing and, more importantly, speaking Spanish.
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal ~ ~
Amsterdam _____________ ~ ~
m...@wxs.nl |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
Erland Sommarskog
Stephane Di Cesare (cie9...@student2.lth.se) skriver:
>I do not contest that Galician and Portuguese are similar, but Spanish
>is not similar to these two from what I've heard.
Originally Galician and Portuguese were more or less the same, but
as Galicia has been part of Spain for many years, Galician appears
to have picked up some elements from Spanish. Or maybe it is just
that Portuguese have kept on developping in its direction. Anyway,
from the little Galician I've seen and heard, it seems to be a mix
of Spanish and Portuguese with a few unique elements. (Such as a
syllable-leading velar nasal, unheard of in other European languages.)
>But isn't because Portuguese are used to hearing Spanish more than the
>opposite?
When first heard this claim, that was also my though. However, having
had some contact with the languages, I'm not sure that the situation
would have been the other way round, had Portuguese been the bigger
of the two languages. Spanish has a pronounciation which is close to
the spelling, and which also is quite consistent: no elusions, bindings
weakening of unstressed vowels etc. Portuguese on the other hand has
more of these features, and my naive impression is that there is a
greater variation, even with one single speaker, how one phoneme
can be realized. For instance the strong R can be a trilled dental
R, a trilled uvular R or an uvual voice fricative and probably a
few more ways.
>>[*] For that matter, I've seen Spanish and *Italian* speakers have
>>rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
>
>Yes, but they're "cheating" :)
>Because all Romance languages have a lot of common vocabulary, and have
>roughly the same word order, they understand one another with just using
>words without grammar.
But Spanish and Italian does not have so much common vocabularly as
Spanish and Portuguese.
[Followsups to sci.lang only.]
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
F=F6r =F6vrigt anser jag att QP b=F6r f=F6rst=F6ras.
B=65sid=65s, I think QP should b=65 d=65stroy=65d.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <6agecg$89g$1...@zingo.tninet.se>,
Erland Sommarskog <som...@algonet.se> wrote:
>Stephane Di Cesare (cie9...@student2.lth.se) skriver:
>>I do not contest that Galician and Portuguese are similar, but Spanish
>>is not similar to these two from what I've heard.
>
>Originally Galician and Portuguese were more or less the same, but
>as Galicia has been part of Spain for many years, Galician appears
>to have picked up some elements from Spanish. Or maybe it is just
>that Portuguese have kept on developping in its direction.
Both, actually.
>Anyway,
>from the little Galician I've seen and heard, it seems to be a mix
>of Spanish and Portuguese with a few unique elements. (Such as a
>syllable-leading velar nasal, unheard of in other European languages.)
Isn't that a feature of some Southern Italian dialects?
>>But isn't because Portuguese are used to hearing Spanish more than the
>>opposite?
>
>When first heard this claim, that was also my though. However, having
>had some contact with the languages, I'm not sure that the situation
>would have been the other way round, had Portuguese been the bigger
>of the two languages. Spanish has a pronounciation which is close to
>the spelling, and which also is quite consistent: no elusions, bindings
>weakening of unstressed vowels etc. Portuguese on the other hand has
>more of these features, and my naive impression is that there is a
>greater variation, even with one single speaker, how one phoneme
>can be realized. For instance the strong R can be a trilled dental
>R, a trilled uvular R or an uvual voice fricative and probably a
>few more ways.
Portuguese speakers' exposure to Spanish is a factor, as is the influence
of the written standards. Portuguese certainly *looks* more like Spanish
than it sounds and keeping archaic spellings in mind might be an aid to
Portuguese speakers' comprehension. (For instance, <x> and <ch> are both
pronounced [S] in Standard Portuguese, but words with the former are
generally cognate to those with Spanish <j> ([x]) and the latter to
those with Spanish <ll> ([j]).)
>>>[*] For that matter, I've seen Spanish and *Italian* speakers have
>>>rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
>>
>>Yes, but they're "cheating" :)
>>Because all Romance languages have a lot of common vocabulary, and have
>>roughly the same word order, they understand one another with just using
>>words without grammar.
So, who defines the "rules" of mutual intelligibility? I'm not saying
that if two languages are somewhat mutually intelligible, then it means
they have the same grammar. Grammatical differences are only one factor
contributing to incomprehension. It's possible to have lects with identi-
cal grammar that are mutually unintellible solely as a result of vocabula-
ry or pronuciation differences: That's the basis for most argots and play
languages, for instance. I-way ant-way ink-thay of-way any-way ammatical-
gray ifferences-day at-thay istinguish-day ig-Pay atin-Lay om-fray andard-
Stay English-way, an-cay ou-yay? Et ourp verlan?
Peter T. Daniels
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> Glad you included the smiley, or I would've suspected you knew nothing of
> Spanish or Portuguese. The relationships aren't comparable at all.
> Portuguese speakers can generally understand Spanish speakers without too
> much trouble (although the reverse is generally not true--a big problem
> with the standard of "mutual intelligibility". Too often, it ain't.)[*]
> one of English, neither with prior exposure to the other's language,
> having even a simple conversation without resorting to a third language.
>
> multiplied ad nauseum: Korean and Cheju-hwa; Japanese and Okinawan; Ladak
> and Khams (Tibetan); Thai and Lao; Hindi and Urdu; Krimci, Anatolian
> Turkish, Gaugaz, and Azeri; etc.
>
> rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
I think just yesterday someone mentioned that Estonian/Finnish are in
the same kind of relationship: Finnish is more conservative, so
Estonians can understand it better than Finns can understand Estonian,
which has some vowel reductions/mergers (wasn't it).
Kari Yli-Kuha
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.com> writes:
> I think just yesterday someone mentioned that Estonian/Finnish are in
> the same kind of relationship: Finnish is more conservative, so
> Estonians can understand it better than Finns can understand Estonian,
> which has some vowel reductions/mergers (wasn't it).
I'm not quite sure if people in southern Estonia understand Finnish
very well. Southern Estonian is somewhat different from northern Estonian,
and the people have not had the possibility see Finnish TV broadcasts.
But I'm quite certain that had the Finnish people had the opportunity
to hear and get used to Estonian as much the Estonians to Finnish,
there wouldn't be much difficulty in the understanding both ways.
Finnish is more conservative, or simpified, than Estonian.
For a Finnish speaker Estonian sounds... err... funny?
--
/Kari (male, btw.)
--
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. -Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
Lennart Regebro
marko...@ptel.net (Mark Odegard) wrote:
>Has anyone devised an English nomenclature for describing
>variations between closely related linguistic groups that avoids
>"political" questions?
Probably. :)
>I've been tempted to use the taxonomical language of biology,
>e.g., Family IndoEuropean, Subfamily Germanic, Genus West
>Germanic, species Modern Continental, subspecies Swabian.
>
>Am I being foolish?
The problem is that all langauges interbreed, which species doesn't do.
Therefore, the borders are mostly fuzzy. What dialects that should be
considered 'Swedish' is therefore just depending on where you put the
center.
--
Lennart Regebro len...@regebro.nu
Homepage http://www.regebro.nu/lennart/
Lennart Regebro
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>On 23 Jan 1998 15:08:36 +0100, Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se>
>wrote:
>>Dialects is one "kind" of varieties. The variety-concept is wider,
>>broader, including concepts as "Standard Speech" and stylistic levels
>>in general, (how to say "kanslisvenska" or "kurialstil" in English?),
>>they are all different varieties of language.
>
>Don't you mean "sociolects"?
I don't think kanslisvenska is a sociolect, is it? It's not spoken by a
special social class. It's rather an language of the official.
(I find it funny that that is a variety of Swedish that never has been
spoken. It's a purely written variety, really).
>I don't know about Gutnish, but I have seen texts written with a
>different script system in Scania.
These exist in Gotland too, but not in official writings.
Lennart Regebro
ju-h...@ibm.net (Juhani) wrote:
>(IMHO Pohjanen's comparison with Estonian was bad rhetorics,
>because Finnish and Estonian really are mutually incomprehensible,
>unlike Finnish and Meän kieli.)
I find it very interesting to see that all Finlanders claim this. However,
the few Tornedalians I have spoken too claim the exact opposite.
Lennart Regebro
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>But then, they would not respect our definition of dialect, which is
>"two lects which are mutually understandable".
Exactly. And nobody respects that definition, really.
And it also have the problem that for example, most Scanians have no
problem in understanding Danish, but people from northern Sweden, usually
don't. Where is the border between Swedish and Danish?
Johan Olofsson
len...@regebro.nu (Lennart Regebro) writes:
> And it also have the problem that for example, most Scanians have no
> problem in understanding Danish, but people from northern Sweden, usually
> don't. Where is the border between Swedish and Danish?
...AND, equal as has been pointed out for the relationship between
Estonian and Finnish: Danes from Zealand might find it more difficult
to understand Scanians than to understand people speaking a Svealand
dialect of the type common in Swedish TV soap operas.
Johan
--
e-mail: j...@lysator.liu.se
s-mail: Majeldsvägen 8a, 587 31 LINKÖPING, Sweden
www: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jmo/
Peter T. Daniels
Kari Yli-Kuha wrote:
>
> Finnish is more conservative, or simpified, than Estonian.
> For a Finnish speaker Estonian sounds... err... funny?
You could say that Finnish is more conservative and simpler than
Estonian, but not simpliFIED, because this word describes a process--
if Finnish has BECOME more simpler, then it's less conservative. Or you
could say that Estonian has become more complex. (I don't know whether
Estonian is more or less simple than Finnish, though I would expect
it's more complicated in some areas of the grammar and more simple in
others!)
> Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. -Popular
> Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
An accurate forecast, no? (Why does it sound odd? The Gricean maxims
mentioned in my earlier post this morning.)
Mikko Levanto
Kari Yli-Kuha wrote:
> I'm not quite sure if people in southern Estonia understand
> Finnish very well. Southern Estonian is somewhat different from
> northern Estonian,
What I've heard in TV, southern Estonian is closer to Finnish
than northern Esotnian is.
But the southern part of Estonia was formerly the northern part
of Livonia. I wonder whether the southern Estonian is closer to
Livonian or northern Estonian.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Mikko J. Levanto ! Tel. +358 8 551 2448
VTT Electronics ! Fax +358 8 551 2320
P.O.Box 1100 !
FIN-90571 Oulu, Finland ! Internet: Mikko....@vtt.fi
----------- VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland -----------
Johan Olofsson
tor...@tyr.diku.dk (Torsten Poulin Nielsen) writes:
> You say that Swedish as spoken in Finland differs from standardized
> (or rather normalized) Swedish (Stockholm?). Well, so does the
> Swedish spoken in, say, Skåne. If we look at Denmark, the language
> spoken in West Jutland differs very radically from the language
> spoken in the rest of _Scandinavia_ in so far as nouns are inflected
> in a totally different way. It uses a separate definite article (and
> has only one gender for that matter). Still, it is considered yet
> another instance of that fuzzy that is known as Danish.
The point I try to raise is that there is a difference concerning
_languages_ (i.e. not dialects) when differences are established for
the norms taught in schools as correct forms of the mother tongue.
The English taught as correct in the US is different from the English
taught in Australia. The Swedish taught in Finland is different from
the Swedish taught in Sweden. The German taught in Austria might be
different than the German taught in Schleswig-Holstein. The Low-German
taught as Dutch in The Nederlands is different from what is taught as
Flemish in Belgium.
best regards!
Johan Olofsson
Christian R. Conrad
> ju-h...@ibm.net (Juhani) wrote:
> >(IMHO Pohjanen's comparison with Estonian was bad rhetorics,
> >because Finnish and Estonian really are mutually incomprehensible,
> >unlike Finnish and Meän kieli.)
> I find it very interesting to see that all Finlanders claim this. However,
> the few Tornedalians I have spoken too claim the exact opposite.
What, opposite on both counts?
My take on that would be that,
A) Finlanders would now better wether Estonian is comprehensible to them
and vice versa, since they (in the souther parts of Finland, at least)
get to hear it a lot more often than up north in Tornio, and
B) Tornedalians have a vested interest in making their language/dialect
out to be as much of an independent language as possible, while Finns in
general -- in Finland -- have no direct incentive to care, either way.
But I must admit that,
C) Ethnic Finns in Sweden do have such an interest, opposite to that of
Tornedalians, due to the Swedish government's silly stance on "Official
Minority Languages". (IMO, their grievance is justified, but I think I
will address this in another post -- if only I can find the post that
touched more directly on that subject... :-)
--
Christian R. Conrad
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Proud and sole owner of all opinions (except quotes) expressed above!
jkw...@cableinet.co.uk
What about Asturian?
Erland Sommarskog wrote:
>
> Stephane Di Cesare (cie9...@student2.lth.se) skriver:
> >I do not contest that Galician and Portuguese are similar, but Spanish
> >is not similar to these two from what I've heard.
>
> Originally Galician and Portuguese were more or less the same, but
> as Galicia has been part of Spain for many years, Galician appears
> to have picked up some elements from Spanish. Or maybe it is just
> from the little Galician I've seen and heard, it seems to be a mix
> of Spanish and Portuguese with a few unique elements. (Such as a
> syllable-leading velar nasal, unheard of in other European languages.)
>
> >opposite?
>
> When first heard this claim, that was also my though. However, having
> had some contact with the languages, I'm not sure that the situation
> would have been the other way round, had Portuguese been the bigger
> of the two languages. Spanish has a pronounciation which is close to
> the spelling, and which also is quite consistent: no elusions, bindings
> weakening of unstressed vowels etc. Portuguese on the other hand has
> more of these features, and my naive impression is that there is a
> greater variation, even with one single speaker, how one phoneme
> can be realized. For instance the strong R can be a trilled dental
> R, a trilled uvular R or an uvual voice fricative and probably a
> few more ways.
>
> >>rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
> >
> >Because all Romance languages have a lot of common vocabulary, and have
> >roughly the same word order, they understand one another with just using
> >words without grammar.
>
Lennart Regebro
Jarmo Ryyti <ry...@kanto.cc.jyu.fi> wrote:
>Tornedalian Finnish could be described as "Ebonics" of Finnish
>speaking Swedes of Northern-Sweden.
That may be an accurate description.
>It was used only in oral form. There was no schools and no official
>use. Its status was low, sometimes even forbidden. Sweden wanted
>to root it out often very brutally. And exactly as in Northern-
>America this "Ebonics" spoken in Sweden was considered causing
>social problems, isolate people and being a hinder for the
>development.
>
>Therefore the Swedes are so angry when reminding of this,
>because they believed to be benefactors when implementing
>projects which lead to a cultural genocide of Finnish
>speaking Swedes.
This is a lie. It's mostly empty words, of course, but the few hints of
substance there is are wrong. That Swedes would get angry when reminded of
the incorrect policies against minority languages in Sweden, for example.
Also that this was done by some sort of egoistic reason by the Swedish
people is a complete lie.
>What makes the issue interesting - international community
>accepted Sweden's policy by being silent and not protesting.
Yes, that's interesting. Maybe because most other countries did the same,
including Finland towards their Sami and Gypsy population?
>Sweden's policy has been by far not to give any official
>status for the standardized Finnish , because it has
>caused a status quo situation between standard Swedish
>and standard Finnish in Sweden.
This also is a direct lie. Finnish should have been given special status
long ago, of course, but that does not mean that you have to set up a
status quo situation.
Johan Olofsson
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) writes:
> You can most of the time divide a dialect into several dialects. There
> are different Scanian dialects, but most speakers in Scania have common
> pronounciation features which distinguish them from standard Swedish
> (using diphtongues is the most obvious one).
I see, You make "dialects" totally dependent on the criteria you at
the moment find best to define the dialects in question.
In other words: With such a definition of "dialect" you can almost
always divide any given dialect, by changing or refining the feature
you use to define it.
What use do we have for "dialects" of arbitrary size?
Finnish being a dialect of Estonian; Scanian being a dialect of Danish
AND Norwegian AND Swedish; Flemish being a dialect of German AND Dutch
AND South-Dutch...
Remember: The discussion is a reaction to the Swedish proposal that
"Finnish" (and not specificly the Tornedalen-variety of Finnish) is to
be declared a "national minority-language". ...and this in opposition
against the most articulated people in Tornedalen, but according to
the wishes of Finland's government and the Sweden-Finnish
immigrant-organizations.
The Swedish proposal could result in a development like that of
Finland-Swedish. The proposal doesn't say the Finnish language in
question is to be normated in Helsinki. It could well be normated in
Haparanda. It's without doubt the most flexible solution. However not
satisfying for all people of Tornedalen.
It's also proposed that Sweden is to join the other five states who
have signed the European Council's Convention regarding minority
languages. The wish in Finland, that immigrants from Finland to Sweden
should be favored by measures to promote the native minority's culture
and language lies hidden at the very center of this discussion.
I believe there is some fear to trace among Swedes in regard to
Finland's demands; fear for the tensions which might arise if one of
the immigrant groups were to be considerably favored.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34CCBF...@cableinet.co.uk>, <jkw...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
>What about Asturian?
What about it? It's a collection of minor dialects of Spanish having some
commonalities with neighboring Galician and Castilian and some unique fea-
tures. Attempts to create a formal written standard based on these have
not met with a great deal of success.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <6agd49$t8j$2...@news.datakom.su.se>,
Jan Böhme <Jan....@REMOVE.THIS.sh.se> wrote:
>de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>
>>Jan Böhme <Jan....@REMOVE.THIS.sh.se> wrote:
>>>
>>>Spanish (or rather, Castilian) and Portugese are not extremely
>>>similar, true. However, _Galician_ would certainly be considered as a
>>>Portugese dialect if Portugal had extended all the way up the west
>>>coast of the Iberian peninsula.
>>[snip]
>
>>That depends on your perspective. I certainly see more similarities
>>between Spanish and Portuguese than I do between, say, Oberbairisch and
>>Badisch--both "dialects" not just of German but of High German.
>
>cases. When you compare Spanish and Portugese you can _read_ them, and
>thus be aware of a profound similarity. Judging just by the auditive
>impression, Portugese, with its extensive nasalization and the uvular
>r:s cultivated by many current speakers _sounds_ indeed quite
>different from Castilian.
>
>Oberbairisch and Badisch have, to my knowledge, no written standard.
I believe there may be more than one competing standard for Oberbairisch;
Dr. Aman is a better person to respond to this question than I. Allowing
for local dialect variation, the written Badisch I have seen (mainly on
signs and in volumes of verse) is quite consistent.
In both cases, it is possible to compare the dialects both aurally and
visually.
>The possibility to judge them from text is thus defunct. Furthermore,
>it is always possible to rack up remote isolated dialects in Germanic
>languages that are not intelligible for people coming from the
>outside. This is at least the case in English, Danish, Swedish,
>Norwegian and German. (For Dutch I don't know.)
This is why I purposely picked two large, unisolated, geographically
proximate dialects for my example. It would've been quite easy to find a
couple of minor dialects from each area that were almost completely
mutually unintelligible, but I'm speaking of regional koines spoken by
well over a million people in each case.
>It is not obvious what bearing this should have on how we rate the
>degree of similarity between written language standards.
I didn't realise we were; I thought the discussion had strayed (at least
in this strand) from questions of written standards to questions of
mutually intelligibility and defining dialects in general. (I was using
"see" in my previous post in the sense of "perceive".) If you just want
to compare written standards, the mutually intelligibility of Spanish and
Portuguese is much higher--and more mutual--since most of the phonetic
divergences and allophonic variations that give Portuguese and Spanish
such different acoustic impressions are not depicted in writing: [R] and
[r] are both <r>, [Z] and [x] are both <g>/<j>, [a], [A], and [@] are all
<a>, etc.
And, FWIW, Badisch and Bairisch both make a rather different acoustic
impression, to me at least. I find the intonation and prosody of Spanish
and Portguese rather closer.
Koen de Troij
Johan Olofsson wrote:
> The English taught as correct in the US is different from the English
> taught in Australia. The Swedish taught in Finland is different from
> the Swedish taught in Sweden. The German taught in Austria might be
> different than the German taught in Schleswig-Holstein. The Low-German
> taught as Dutch in The Nederlands is different from what is taught as
> Flemish in Belgium.
Well, the Belgian example is not entirely correct. The language of
Flanders (northern half of Belgium, 60% of the Belgian population) is
officially called "Nederlands", i.e. Dutch (néerlandais, nederländska,
neerlandés, Niederländisch, etc.). For instance, mother-tongue education
is always called 'Dutch', never ever 'Flemish'. Dictionaries are the
same as those used in the Netherlands. And in fact, 'Dutch' is what most
Flemish people expect foreigners to call their language too.
Obviously there are certain regional differences: especially
pronunciation can vary, but also some vocabulary and to a minor degree
even grammar.
On the other hand, the Dutch and Flemish cultural and linguistic history
is strongly intertwined. Modern literature written by Flemish authors is
widely read in the Netherlands, and vice versa. Furthermore, the three
major dialect groups in Flanders (Flemish as such, Brabantic, and
Limburgian) are also spoken across the border in the southernmost parts
of the Netherlands. And typically, there's even a Dutch-Flemish
intergovernmental language-board, called "De Nederlandse Taalunie" (The
Dutch Language Union).
So, despite the fact that many foreigners erroneously make a distinction
between 'Dutch' and 'Flemish', and even though the Dutch and the Flemish
live in two different countries, they speak one and the same language.
Afrikaans, however, is a different story. The grammar is surprisingly
different. And to a certain extend the vocabulary has developed
independently. Afrikaans and Dutch are still mutually understandable,
but are now considered to be two separate languages.
Kind regards,
Koen de Troij
Stockholm, Sweden
Bertil Wennergren
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) skribis:
>On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 11:36:21 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil
>Wennergren) wrote:
>>If English and Swedish were spoken (only) in two villages in Germany,
>>they would be counted as two weird dialects of German - or could be
>>so, if politicians wanted to.
>But then, they would not respect our definition of dialect, which is
>"two lects which are mutually understandable".
That definition has not been used much at all when the languages of
Europe were defined. It is more or less a fantasy. Language is a
political term.
======================================================================
Bertil Wennergren
<http://www.algonet.se/~bertilow/>
<bert...@hem1.passagen.se>
======================================================================
Bertil Wennergren
Koen de Troij <koen.d...@botkyrka.mail.telia.com> skribis:
>So, despite the fact that many foreigners erroneously make a distinction
>between 'Dutch' and 'Flemish', and even though the Dutch and the Flemish
>live in two different countries, they speak one and the same language.
So true. The error of calling Flemish a separate language is very
common indeed in Sweden. Explaining the truth is almost always a waste
of time. Noone believes it.
>Afrikaans, however, is a different story. The grammar is surprisingly
>different. And to a certain extend the vocabulary has developed
>independently. Afrikaans and Dutch are still mutually understandable,
>but are now considered to be two separate languages.
But the grammatical differences have very little to do with the fact
that Afrikaans is now a separate language. If it were spoken somewhere
in the Netherlands it would be a strange dialect of Dutch.
Torsten Poulin Nielsen
In article <34ccdcf8...@news.algonet.se>, Bertil Wennergren wrote:
>Koen de Troij <koen.d...@botkyrka.mail.telia.com> skribis:
>common indeed in Sweden. Explaining the truth is almost always a waste
>of time. Noone believes it.
Yes, that misconception is very deeply entrenched.
>>Afrikaans, however, is a different story. The grammar is surprisingly
>>different. And to a certain extend the vocabulary has developed
>>independently. Afrikaans and Dutch are still mutually understandable,
>>but are now considered to be two separate languages.
>
>But the grammatical differences have very little to do with the fact
>that Afrikaans is now a separate language. If it were spoken somewhere
>in the Netherlands it would be a strange dialect of Dutch.
I think Bertil is right and that was what I was trying to hint (albeit
too clumsily) by posing the question in the first place and then saying
that some western Danish dialects deviate substantially in grammar from
standard Danish (which is basically a sociolect from Copenhagen in the
eastern part of the country); vocabulary and phonology is also somewhat
different. Had they been spoken in different countries then I'm sure
somebody would have decided at some point that they were different
languages, just like Afrikaans and Dutch.
-Torsten
Torsten Poulin Nielsen
In article <34d03ef5...@news.kth.se>, Lennart Regebro wrote:
>
>And it also have the problem that for example, most Scanians have no
>problem in understanding Danish, but people from northern Sweden, usually
>don't. Where is the border between Swedish and Danish?
In the minds of some Swedes? :)
-Torsten
Torsten Poulin Nielsen
In article <yzz4t2r...@sally.lysator.liu.se>, Johan Olofsson wrote:
>len...@regebro.nu (Lennart Regebro) writes:
>
>> And it also have the problem that for example, most Scanians have no
>> problem in understanding Danish, but people from northern Sweden, usually
>> don't. Where is the border between Swedish and Danish?
>
>Estonian and Finnish: Danes from Zealand might find it more difficult
>to understand Scanians than to understand people speaking a Svealand
>dialect of the type common in Swedish TV soap operas.
Except if those Danes from Zealand have spent far too much time listening
to things like Radio Kristianstad and other local radio stations ...
-Torsten
Peter T. Daniels
Christian R. Conrad wrote:
>
> C) Ethnic Finns in Sweden do have such an interest, opposite to that of
> Tornedalians, due to the Swedish government's silly stance on "Official
> Minority Languages". (IMO, their grievance is justified, but I think I
> will address this in another post -- if only I can find the post that
> touched more directly on that subject... :-)
>
What does this mean? The Swedish Ministry of Education has been quite
encouraging toward Turoyo, the Aramaic [Semitic] language of a
good-sized community of gastarbeiters. (As it happens, the Turoyo
people seem to prefer the existing roman orthography used by German
scholars to the one the government commissioned for use in Sweden, but
at least they are not trying to wipe out at least one linguistic
minority.)
Peter T. Daniels
People, if you're going to start fighting about Swedes vs. Finns vs.
Gypsies, could you please take it off of sci.lang? It's bad enough we
have to scroll past a score or more postings on the Irish troubles
every day.
Christian R. Conrad
> Christian R. Conrad wrote:
> > C) Ethnic Finns in Sweden do have such an interest, opposite to that of
> > Tornedalians, due to the Swedish government's silly stance on "Official
> > Minority Languages". (IMO, their grievance is justified, but [ . . . ]
> What does this mean?
This means I thought it was the truly _puny_ minority of Tornedalians
who were going to get their dialect/language/whatever recognised as an
"Official Minority Language" in Sweden, while the gigantic group of
Finnish immigrants were not. If I got this backwards, and the Swedish
government looks to some five or six hundred thosand speakers of "real"
Finnish before those what, thirty thousand speakers of "Meän Kiel",
which at least one post here seems to imply -- then there is of course
no grievance.
[MUNCH Aramaic/Semitic "gastarbeiter"(?) language Turoyo; don't know it]
Herman Beun
Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se> wrote in article
<yzzafcj...@sally.lysator.liu.se>...
> The Low-German taught as Dutch in The Nederlands is different
> from what is taught as Flemish in Belgium.
It is of no importance to your general point, but as far as the
_standard_ language is concerned, i.e. the language that is _taught_,
there is only one Dutch language, one grammar and one spelling. That is
at least the official policy of the Netherlands and Flanders, which
have even concluded a "Taalunie" (Language Union): an official
institution responsible for e.g. the common official spelling (usage of
which is obligatory for the civil service).
Less officially, there is for instance a popular language quiz ("Tien
voor taal") broadcasted on both Dutch and Belgian (Flemish) TV, in
which always a Dutch and a Belgian team (consisting of for instance
journalists, politicians, comedians, artists) are compete on their
knowledge of all aspects of the standard language. And maybe contrary
to what you would expect, the Belgians always win. ;-)
There are of course dialects spoken on Flemish soil, and dialects
spoken on Netherlandish soil, which do influence the language used by
newspapers, radio and TV stations (but not in books, now I come to
think of it). Usually, I can see if a text has been written by a
Belgian or by a Dutchman. But I can't see the difference when the
person in question e.g. studied Dutch in university or for other
reasons received high doses of standard language (e.g. historians).
And why do you refer to it with that confusing term 'Low-German'?
Modern Dutch as a culture language developed from about 1600 in the
Hollandish dialect area, at a time when it was culturally strongly
influenced by Flemish (!) immigrants (*). The Hollandish and Flemish
dialects belong to the larger Low-Frankish group, which I think is not
considered to be part of Low-German (Niederdeutsch) nowadays. As far as
I understand, only the Low-Saxon dialects spoken in the north-east of
the Netherlands and the north-west of Germany are thought of as
Low-German.
See e.g. on Dutch and Flemish dialects:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Roger_Thijs/homepage.htm
and on languages, their families and ancestry:
http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/families/Indo-European.html
(*) This was also when the confusion begun: The language (set of
dialects) spoken between 1100 and 1500 in the culturally advanced
southern regions Flanders, Brabant and Limburg was then refered to as
Diets or Duuts. Same origin as the modern words Deutsch and Dutch,
meaning: "(language) of the common people" (as opposed to Latin).
Nowadays we call it 'Middelnederlands' (Middle Dutch).
When from about 1500 the northern provinces started to gain in
importance, a cultural standard began to develop there. This standard
was at first refered to as 'Nederduytsch' (the spelling varies);
"Diets" as spoken in the "Nederlanden" (Low Countries). Later, it was
called 'Nieuwnederlands' (New Dutch) or simply 'Nederlands' (Dutch).
So in short, the old name for the Dutch language 'Nederduytsch', and
the name of the German dialect group known as 'Niederdeutsch' (Low
German) have the same _etymological_ origin. But that does not
automatically mean that the "Nederduytsch" language is also
Niederdeutsch _linguistically_.
Sorry, nothing to do with Funnish. But at least a few things have
become clearer to myself now :-)
--
Herman Beun, Nederland http://home.worldonline.nl/~chbeun/
CHB...@WorldOnLine.NoSpam (Replace NoSpam by NL)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Concordia res parvae crescunt = motto of the Republic of the
United Netherlands (1579-1795)
Discordia maximae dilabuntur = the next line
---( Sallustius - De Bellum Iugurthinum )---------------------
Coby (Jacob) Lubliner
In article <34CDCB...@uscmail.usc.es>,
Gabriel Tojo <qoga...@uscmail.usc.es> wrote:
>Spanish and Italian sound very similar because they share the same rythm. In
>both languages every syllable takes the same amount of time, regardless of
>being stressed or not. This leads to a very clear articulation of every vowel,
>and to a simple system of only five vowels with a perfectly distinctive sound.
>This five vowel system is the natural tendency in languages with this rythmic
>pattern and is found in many languages of completely different families, like
>Japanese and, I believe, Finish.
G. Tojo must be referring to Italian as spoken by Spaniards, not by
Italians. As Alwyn Thomas has pointed out, Italian lengthens
stressed syllables considerably. Moreover, Italian has, like
Portuguese, seven stressed vowels, with open and closed e and o just
like Portuguese.
Coby
Peter T. Daniels
Christian R. Conrad wrote:
>
> [MUNCH Aramaic/Semitic "gastarbeiter"(?) language Turoyo; don't know it]
>
"Gastarbeiter" is just a loan in English of the German word for the
euphemism "guest workers," people from outside Germany who come to do
the menial work. In Germany they're stereotypically Turkish, but in
Sweden there is a significant community of Aramaic-speakers. Their
homeland is near where Turkey, Iraq, and Syria meet (not the most
placid place to raise a family), so large numbers have come to Europe
in recent years, and the Swedish government has actually recognized
their existence and provided for the children's education. (Unlike some
states of the USA that rely on Mexican immigrants for their harvests
and their service work, but are now trying to prohibit the use of
Spanish in public schools.)
What's MUNCH?
Coby (Jacob) Lubliner
In article <6akqoj$n...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>,
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.com> wrote:
>Christian R. Conrad wrote:
> but in
>Sweden there is a significant community of Aramaic-speakers. Their
>homeland is near where Turkey, Iraq, and Syria meet (not the most
>placid place to raise a family),
Sounds like a description of Kurdistan
> so large numbers have come to Europe
>in recent years, and the Swedish government has actually recognized
>their existence and provided for the children's education.
Are these by any chance the so-called "Assyrians" (Nestorian
Christians), also found in Iran, of whom there is a fair
number in Central California?
>(Unlike some
>states of the USA that rely on Mexican immigrants for their harvests
>and their service work, but are now trying to prohibit the use of
>Spanish in public schools.)
And which states might those be?
Coby
Alwyn Thomas
Perique des Palottes wrote:
> Alwyn Thomas wrote:
> >
> > Gabriel Tojo wrote:
> >
> > > Spanish and Italian sound very similar because they share the same rythm. In
> > > both languages every syllable takes the same amount of time, regardless of
> > > being stressed or not.
> >
> > Not so! Italian has very heavy stress, which lengthens the affected syllable very
> > considerably.
>
> Mmm, it depends a lot on what we are refering to with "Italian".
> The tempo and weakening of unstressed vowels seems to work
> quite similarly in Portuguese, Catalan, and the northern Italian
> "dialects" (or "languages"?).
It is _southern_ Italian dialects (e.g. Neapolitan) that typically centralise vowels
in unstressed syllables, not northern ones. But I did once hear Genoese compared to
Portuguese.
I don't know of a single Italian dialect that has syllable time (like Spanish or
French), although those of the Veneto are probably closest.
> I would not be so sure, though, for standard Italian, meaning
> "lingua toscana in bocca romana" (sp?).
Strangely, this saying is more current among foreigners than among Italians
themselves. I'm not aware that a Roman accent is particularly prestigious in Italy as
a whole. (But your spelling is correct!)
> Is there someone more qualified that could enlighten us about the
> matter for Sicilian (which I would label as "another" language)?
It has particularly heavy stress and associated syllable-lengthening. Lots of
geminated consonants initially and medially.
Alwyn
Hiski Haapoja
Peter T. Daniels (gram...@worldnet.att.com) wrote:
: I think just yesterday someone mentioned that Estonian/Finnish are in
: the same kind of relationship: Finnish is more conservative, so
: Estonians can understand it better than Finns can understand Estonian,
: which has some vowel reductions/mergers (wasn't it).
Estonian also has a lot of Indo-European loan words, while Finnish
prefers (used to prefer) translating the concepts into Finnish.
AFAIK the long vowels of Estonian _are_ the original form, while
the (originally Eastern) Finnish diphtongs in similar places are
mutations.
Hiski
# Pohjimmiltani olen pieni hoikka brunetti. #
Gabriel Tojo
jkw...@cableinet.co.uk wrote:
>
I speak Spanish, Galician and Portuguese, and my impresions are the following:
> >
> > Originally Galician and Portuguese were more or less the same, but
> > as Galicia has been part of Spain for many years, Galician appears
> > to have picked up some elements from Spanish. Or maybe it is just
> > that Portuguese have kept on developping in its direction. Anyway,
> > from the little Galician I've seen and heard, it seems to be a mix
> > of Spanish and Portuguese with a few unique elements. (Such as a
> > syllable-leading velar nasal, unheard of in other European languages.)
Portuguese and Galician are very close. In my opinion they should be
considered dialects of each other. The test of mutual comprehension is
completely fulfilled.
Galician is not something in the middle of Portuguese and Spanish. In many
ways it departs from Spanish more than Portuguese, but at the same time it has
taken many words from Spanish. Galician, Potuguese and Spanish are not located
in a line, with Galician in the middle, but in a triangle, with Galician and
Protuguese quite close.
Regarding pronunciation, we see certain trends going southwards in the Iberia
peninsula, for example the merging of the ³s² and ³c² sounds. Thus, as
Galician is spoken in the north, it has a pronunciation in the consonants with
many features of nothern Spanish, which is the standard one.
Regarding the pronuntiation of diphthongs, Galician makes things their own
way. Por example we have Galician ³oi², with Spanish and Portuguese ³u²:
³choiva² versus ³lluvia and chuva², ³froita² versus ³fruta² and ³loita² versus
³luta and lucha². We have Galician ³a² against Spanish and Portuguese ³ua²
like in Galician ³cal² against ³cual and qual², and ³catro² against ³cuatro
and catro²
> > Spanish has a pronounciation which is close to
> > the spelling, and which also is quite consistent: no elusions, bindings
> > weakening of unstressed vowels etc. Portuguese on the other hand has
> > more of these features
> >
> > >>[*] For that matter, I've seen Spanish and *Italian* speakers have
> > >>rudimentary conversations, each speaking her own variety.
> > But Spanish and Italian does not have so much common vocabularly as
> > Spanish and Portuguese.
Spanish and Italian sound very similar because they share the same rythm. In
both languages every syllable takes the same amount of time, regardless of
being stressed or not. This leads to a very clear articulation of every vowel,
and to a simple system of only five vowels with a perfectly distinctive sound.
This five vowel system is the natural tendency in languages with this rythmic
pattern and is found in many languages of completely different families, like
Japanese and, I believe, Finish.
By the way, it leads to nice opera singing, as opera is full of long sustained
notes which demand clear vowels. That is why Italian is much better for opera
than German.
Portuguese and Galician on the other side have a completely different rythmic
pattern. The amount of time taken for each syllable depends on the stress put
on it, and there is a tendency to put the same amount of time between every
stressed syllable. This leads to an very clear distinctive vowel sound on
stressed syllables, allowing for a total of seven vowels on stressed
syllables. On the other hand, the vowel sound on unstressed syllables is quite
relaxed, leading to a three vowel system on unstressed syllables, which
curiously is not easely recognized by native speakers.
A native Portuguese or Galician speaker would be quite surprised to notice
that the final vowel in ³taxi² and ³taxe² is pronounced exacly the same in
practical terms.
This rythmic pattern is shared by English and most Germanic languages,
including German. It makes for nice rock singing. Rock singing in Spanish
sounds artificial, and sometimes it even produces an unpretended foreing
accent.
Spanish and Portuguese share a lot of common words, while they have a
completely different rythmic and pronunciation pattern.
Spanish and Italian share the same rythmic and pronunciation pattern but the
words are quite different.
A Spanish-speaking person finds difficult to understand the sounds of a
Portuguese speaker, but the words are similar. On the other hand he/she would
understand the Italian sounds but would not know the meaning of the words.
Gabriel Tojo
Alwyn Thomas
Gabriel Tojo wrote:
> Spanish and Italian sound very similar because they share the same rythm. In
> both languages every syllable takes the same amount of time, regardless of
> being stressed or not.
Not so! Italian has very heavy stress, which lengthens the affected syllable very
considerably.
Alwyn
Perique des Palottes
Mmm, it depends a lot on what we are refering to with "Italian".
The tempo and weakening of unstressed vowels seems to work
quite similarly in Portuguese, Catalan, and the northern Italian
"dialects" (or "languages"?).
I would not be so sure, though, for standard Italian, meaning
"lingua toscana in bocca romana" (sp?).
Is there someone more qualified that could enlighten us about the
matter for Sicilian (which I would label as "another" language)?
--
...Si hoc tibi placet mitte nobis XX dollaria...
Hiski Haapoja
Kari Yli-Kuha (yli...@beta.sqc.fi) wrote:
: Finnish is more conservative, or simpified, than Estonian.
Simplified? Finnish is phonetically and grammatically more
complex and demanding. More diphtongs and double consonants,
longer words and more suffixes to them.
: For a Finnish speaker Estonian sounds... err... funny?
Irresistibly.
Hiski Haapoja
Christian R. Conrad (christia...@hedengren.fi) wrote:
: > I find it very interesting to see that all Finlanders claim this. However,
: > the few Tornedalians I have spoken too claim the exact opposite.
: A) Finlanders would now better wether Estonian is comprehensible to them
There are no people called "Finlanders". This comes from the racist
Swedish term "finländare", coined by Swedish-speaking Finns who
wanted to underline their superiority to the 'Mongol-Finns'.
: B) Tornedalians have a vested interest in making their language/dialect
: out to be as much of an independent language as possible,
If they understood what is good for them, they would push for standard
Finnish.
Gabriel Tojo
>
> >Spanish and Italian sound very similar because they share the same rythm. In
> >both languages every syllable takes the same amount of time, regardless of
> >and to a simple system of only five vowels with a perfectly distinctive sound.
> >This five vowel system is the natural tendency in languages with this rythmic
> >pattern and is found in many languages of completely different families, like
> >Japanese and, I believe, Finish.
>
> Italians. As Alwyn Thomas has pointed out, Italian lengthens
> stressed syllables considerably. Moreover, Italian has, like
> Portuguese, seven stressed vowels, with open and closed e and o just
> like Portuguese.
>
> Coby
Obviously, I was oversimplifying matters. There is always a certain lengthening of
stressed syllables, even in Spanish. On the other hand, I hear the Italian vowel
sounds in unstressed syllables much more distictively than in Portuguese, and, of
course, English, which tends to produce plenty of swas.
Regarding the open and closed e`s and o`s, according to my Italian book, there is
not a single couple of words, spoken in the whole Italy, which are differenciated
by an open versus closed ³e² or ³o².
Gabriel Tojo
Christian R. Conrad
On Tue, 27 Jan 1998 09:27:11 -0500,
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.com> said:
> Christian R. Conrad wrote:
> > [MUNCH Aramaic/Semitic "gastarbeiter"(?) language Turoyo; don't know it]
[ M U N C H explanation of what "Gastarbeiter" means ]
I know what _that_ means, it's just that I'm surprised you use the word
in this context, talking about Sweden. AFAIK, there _are_ no such espec-
ially disadvantaged, "short-term only", immigrants in Sweden; we are all
just immigrants, period.
At least, this is the first time I've seen the term used about any other
country than Germany, where it is an _official_ status of "not-quite-a-
real-immigrant" -- although I agree it does seem to fit the bill rather
well in the case of those Mexicans harvesting produce, etc, in the USA.
> Their homeland is near where Turkey, Iraq, and Syria meet [ . . . ]
Menar han "assyrier"/"syrianer" (vilket som nu är PC)? Inte kurder väl?
> What's MUNCH?
The sound of the bandwidth-preserving muncher, chomping down on quotes.
Christian R. Conrad
On 27 Jan 1998 13:30:12 GMT,
ki...@sci.fi (Hiski Haapoja) said:
> Christian R. Conrad (christia...@hedengren.fi) wrote:
> : A) Finlanders would now better wether Estonian is comprehensible to them
> There are no people called "Finlanders".
OK, then Finland is a country without _a_ people,
i.e, not _a_nation_ in the full sense of the word.
> This comes from the racist Swedish term "finländare",
Hiski, meet Jerzy. Jerzy, meet Hiski.
I'm sure you'll become great friends.
> coined by Swedish-speaking Finns who wanted to
> underline their superiority to the 'Mongol-Finns'.
"Swedish-speaking Finns" want to oppress other Finns? Ahh, you mean
Finland-Swedes! Oh, so they coined a term _to_include_themselves_, and
*meant* it to be derogatory?!? Yeah, sure, they're all masochists...
Hiski, _you_ look like a racist asshole, straight
from the Lappo movement. I'm sure you spend a lot of
time whining about "pakko-ruotsia" too, don't you...?
Alwyn Thomas
Gabriel Tojo wrote:
> Obviously, I was oversimplifying matters. There is always a certain lengthening of
> stressed syllables, even in Spanish. On the other hand, I hear the Italian vowel
> sounds in unstressed syllables much more distictively than in Portuguese, and, of
> course, English, which tends to produce plenty of swas.
Italian has heavy stress and lengthened stressed syllables _plus_ ringing clear
vowels in unstressed syllables. The two features are not incompatible, as you
imagine.
> Regarding the open and closed e`s and o`s, according to my Italian book, there is
> not a single couple of words, spoken in the whole Italy, which are differenciated
> by an open versus closed ³e² or ³o².
It is controversial whether Italian has a 5-vowel or 7-vowel system. Southern
dialects definitely have a simple 5-vowel system. Central Italian have a 7-vowel
system and will make a distinction for example in Florentine between legge (law) and
lEgge (he reads), botte (barrel) and bOtte (blows); however, the different dialects
sometimes differ amonst themselves which words have closed vowels and which open.
Northern Italian dialects have open and closed e and o in complementary distribution
(and have thus effectively a 5-vowel system).
Standard Italian pronunciation is based on educated Florentine and makes
phonologically significant distinctions between open and closed e and o as above. But
standard pronunciation does not have in Italy the following that it has, say in
England or France.
Alwyn
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34ce05e6...@news.eunet.fi>,
Christian R. Conrad <christia...@hedengren.fi> wrote:
>On Tue, 27 Jan 1998 09:27:11 -0500,
>"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.com> said:
>
>> Christian R. Conrad wrote:
>> > [MUNCH Aramaic/Semitic "gastarbeiter"(?) language Turoyo; don't know it]
>
>[ M U N C H explanation of what "Gastarbeiter" means ]
>
>I know what _that_ means, it's just that I'm surprised you use the word
>in this context, talking about Sweden. AFAIK, there _are_ no such espec-
>ially disadvantaged, "short-term only", immigrants in Sweden; we are all
>just immigrants, period.
So the aforementioned immigrant groups (Finns, Assyrians, etc.) are all
Swedish citizens? What distinguishes Gastarbeiter from other "immigrants"
is that they are non-citizens with little chance of being naturalised.
Historically, this is because they were first recruited as temporary la-
bour, but German (and Swiss and French and Belgian etc.) Gastarbeiter are
now producing their second generation of locally-born residents.
Unless Swedish naturalisation policies are considerably more generous than
those of the above-mentioned countries, many of their "immigrants" are in
the same boat. (Because of their _ius soli_, which confers citizenship on
anyone born within their borders, Canada and the USA don't have a self-
perpetuating class of resident aliens.)
>At least, this is the first time I've seen the term used about any other
>country than Germany, where it is an _official_ status of "not-quite-a-
>real-immigrant" -- although I agree it does seem to fit the bill rather
>well in the case of those Mexicans harvesting produce, etc, in the USA.
Not really, since the meaning of 'Gastarbeiter' has shifted. Insofar as
they don't remain to raise families, these Mexicans are "guest workers" in
the true sense. (Those who do remain retroactively become "first genera-
tion American immigrants".)
This is part of the reason for the difference in attitude toward minority
languages: Gastarbeiter children are allowed native-language instruction
partly because of the (illusory) expectation that their parents will re-
turn with them to their "homeland", where they'll need it to integrate.
It's acknowledged that the USA *is* the homeland of migrants' children and
thus English is the language most vital to their integration.
Gabriel Tojo
Alwyn Thomas wrote:
> > Obviously, I was oversimplifying matters. There is always a certain lengthening of
> > stressed syllables, even in Spanish. On the other hand, I hear the Italian vowel
> > sounds in unstressed syllables much more distictively than in Portuguese, and, of
> > course, English, which tends to produce plenty of swas.
> > Regarding the open and closed e`s and o`s, according to my Italian book, there is
> > not a single couple of words, spoken in the whole Italy, which are differenciated
> > by an open versus closed 3e2 or 3o2.
>
> It is controversial whether Italian has a 5-vowel or 7-vowel system. Southern
> dialects definitely have a simple 5-vowel system. Central Italian have a 7-vowel
> system and will make a distinction for example in Florentine between legge (law) and
> lEgge (he reads), botte (barrel) and bOtte (blows); however, the different dialects
> sometimes differ amonst themselves which words have closed vowels and which open.
> Northern Italian dialects have open and closed e and o in complementary distribution
> (and have thus effectively a 5-vowel system).
>
> Standard Italian pronunciation is based on educated Florentine and makes
> phonologically significant distinctions between open and closed e and o as above. But
> standard pronunciation does not have in Italy the following that it has, say in
> England or France.
>
> Alwyn
Thank you very much for your much precise information about Italian.
Portuguese people know very well that Spanish is quite close to Portuguese. They are
quite exposed to Spanish by the media. On the other hand, it is quite surprising to
find that Brazilians tend to think that Italian and Spanish share more similitudes
than Spanish and Portuguese, because of their perceived similitude between Spanish and
Italian pronunciation. Spaniards also perceive a much greater similitude between
Spanish and Italian pronunciation, as opposed to Spanish and Portuguese pronunciation.
I would like to hear the point of view of some Italian-speaking person.
Gabriel Tojo
Coby (Jacob) Lubliner
In article <34CE2D...@uscmail.usc.es>,
Gabriel Tojo <qoga...@uscmail.usc.es> wrote:
>Portuguese people know very well that Spanish is quite close to Portuguese. They are
>quite exposed to Spanish by the media. On the other hand, it is quite surprising to
>find that Brazilians tend to think that Italian and Spanish share more similitudes
>than Spanish and Portuguese, because of their perceived similitude between Spanish and
>Italian pronunciation.
It shouldn't really be too surprising, because the Spanish that
Brazilians are most likely to be exposed to is Argentine and
Uruguayan Spanish, which is heavily influenced by Italian,
especially with regard to lengthening of stressed vowels.
Coby
Stephane Di Cesare
On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 22:29:34 GMT, som...@algonet.se (Erland Sommarskog)
wrote:
>But Spanish and Italian does not have so much common vocabularly as
>Spanish and Portuguese.
They still have a lot in common. I read somewhere that Romanian had 75%
similarity with Italian (considering roots of words, of course), so the
figure is probably even higher for Spanish.
Stephane Di Cesare
Lund University - Computational Linguistics Student
Sweden
Stephane Di Cesare
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998 11:14:17 GMT, len...@regebro.nu (Lennart Regebro)
wrote:
>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>
>>But then, they would not respect our definition of dialect, which is
>>"two lects which are mutually understandable".
>
>Exactly. And nobody respects that definition, really.
>
>And it also have the problem that for example, most Scanians have no
>problem in understanding Danish, but people from northern Sweden, usually
>don't. Where is the border between Swedish and Danish?
Scanians *understand* Danish, but their major language is definitely
Swedish. I think if you ask a Scanian and a Danish to write something in
Danish, it won't look like.
Stephane Di Cesare
>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>
>>On 23 Jan 1998 15:08:36 +0100, Johan Olofsson <j...@lysator.liu.se>
>>wrote:
>
>>>Dialects is one "kind" of varieties. The variety-concept is wider,
>>>broader, including concepts as "Standard Speech" and stylistic levels
>>>in general, (how to say "kanslisvenska" or "kurialstil" in English?),
>>>they are all different varieties of language.
>>
>>Don't you mean "sociolects"?
>
>I don't think kanslisvenska is a sociolect, is it? It's not spoken by a
>special social class. It's rather an language of the official.
>(I find it funny that that is a variety of Swedish that never has been
>spoken. It's a purely written variety, really).
Officials are people who are in a certain social position (representing
the state). Thus, yes, kanslisvenskan is a sociolect.
Mario Pavesi
Gabriel Tojo wrote:
> ...
> Regarding the open and closed e`s and o`s, according to my Italian
> book, there is not a single couple of words, spoken in the whole
Yes and not. The rules for pronouncing, in a certain word, an open or
closed 'e','o' depend very much on regional accents, and the same
applies to their discriminating power. For instance in my area (north),
where the difference in sound between a single or double consonant is
rather weak, we would recognise "vello" (=skin) from "velo" (=veil)
more by the open sound 'e' takes before a double 'l' than by the double
'l' itself. That's why pronouncing correctly 'e','o' is so important
for not native speakers of Italian - at least in my area (I have spent
quite an amount of time with that with several foreign friends).
I even tend to think that, were it not precisely because of its
discriminating power in spoken language, the sound difference would
have faded away long ago.
Peter T. Daniels
> >homeland is near where Turkey, Iraq, and Syria meet (not the most
> >placid place to raise a family),
>
> Sounds like a description of Kurdistan
There are Aramaic-speakers throughout Kurdistan. But the Turoyo come
from the Tur Abdin, which is a mountain just where I said it is.
>
> > so large numbers have come to Europe
> >in recent years, and the Swedish government has actually recognized
> >their existence and provided for the children's education.
>
> Are these by any chance the so-called "Assyrians" (Nestorian
> Christians), also found in Iran, of whom there is a fair
> number in Central California?
Assyrians (and other Aramaic-speaking communities in the US) speak
various varieties of NENA--North East Neo-Aramaic; one expert says
there is more variety just within NENA than there is in all the
"dialects" of Arabic. Turoyo is an Aramaic language distinct from both
NENA and Modern West Aramaic, which is found in three villages in the
Anti-lebanon, in Syria. Part of the income of the latter, in fact, is
derived from tourists who come to hear the non-Arabic language that is
zealously preserved despite the Arabic surroundings.
> >(Unlike some
> >states of the USA that rely on Mexican immigrants for their harvests
> >and their service work, but are now trying to prohibit the use of
> >Spanish in public schools.)
>
> And which states might those be?
Well, Arizona's legislation is currently in litigation; a California
"initiative" will be on the ballot in 1998; there have been noises in
that direction in Illinois. There are applied linguists (and doubtless
newsgroups) who make it their business to be aware of such things.
Urban Domeij
Stephane Di Cesare wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Jan 1998 11:34:21 GMT, bert...@algonet.se (Bertil
> Wennergren) wrote:
>
> >cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) skribis:
> >
> >Well, much more than just the _Nordic_ languages. Chinese has already
> >been mentioned. Other examples are Arabic,
> >Spanish-Galician-Portuguese, Dutch-Afrikaans, etc.
>
> Spanish and Portuguese? They are not that similar, nor is Galician. If
> Spanish and Portuguese are dialects, then English and Swedish probably
> are as well :)
>
> Stephane Di Cesare
>
> Lund University - Computational Linguistics Student
> Sweden
Not that similar???
Indeed they are! I speak Spanish, and I have often communicated with
Portuguese-speakers, both from Portugal and from Brazil. The difference
between the languages isn't greater than between the Swedish-Danish or
German-Dutch. Myself I see Galician rather as a variety of Portuguese
than a dialect of Spanish, but galicians may have another approach.
To find Romance languages as dissimilar as Swedish and English, you
would have to compare for example French with Romanian, which are
hardly inter-intelligible. However you wouldn't find a really close match
if you try to pair for dissimilarities. For similarities though it's
simpler.
Then Rikssvenska-Finlandssvenska fairly closely match the pair
american English and british English. And the trio Norwegian-
-Swedish-Danish match Spanish-Portuguese-Italian ...
Yes, I dare you ...
Then we'd perhaps fight over where to place Catalan... is it a
language or is it a dialect ... You'd find that even in Italy, there
are dialects that are far from 'standard' Italian, so far, that they
are hardly intelligible to people from other parts of the country.
Of course you'll always find people in any of those countries,
who refuse to understand the language of their neighbours, but
openmindedness is really the only prerequisite needed to be able
to communicate over the boundaries of any of these pairs/triplets.
That is not the case between English and Swedish.
Wennergren's statement is correct.
Urban
Erland Sommarskog
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff (de...@midway.uchicago.edu) skriver:
>So the aforementioned immigrant groups (Finns, Assyrians, etc.) are all
>Swedish citizens?
Not all, but many are.
>Unless Swedish naturalisation policies are considerably more generous than
>those of the above-mentioned countries, many of their "immigrants" are in
>the same boat.
You need five years of permanent residence in Sweden to become a
citizen (two if you are from another Nordic country). The very major
part of the immigrants in Sweden have permanent residence, as they
are refugees, or relatives of refugees.
There are also people who status is precisely the one of a gastarbeiter.
They only hold temporary residence permit and this is often not prolonged
if they stay here for more than four years. Typically they work in
restuarants or are sportsmen, but they appear in other trades as well.
Recently there was a case with two Chinese table-tennis players who
had been here for 6-7 years. They applied for permanent residence
permit, as they had a child born in Sweden. This had the result that
they lost the temporary residence permit, and now face extradiction!
[Followups to soc.culture.nordic only. As I don't read that group,
please mail me a copy of anyhting you want me to see.]
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, som...@algonet.se
Lennart Regebro
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>On Mon, 26 Jan 1998 11:14:17 GMT, len...@regebro.nu (Lennart Regebro)
>wrote:
>
>>And it also have the problem that for example, most Scanians have no
>>problem in understanding Danish, but people from northern Sweden, usually
>>don't. Where is the border between Swedish and Danish?
>
>Scanians *understand* Danish, but their major language is definitely
>Swedish.
Now you switch definitions again. If you want to talk about understanding
each other, then Scanans commonly understand Danish, hence, they must be
the same language. But people from Northern Sweden commonly do NOT
understand Danish, hence that is not the same languag. But people from
south and north of Sweden DO understand eachother so this is ALSO the same
language.
Onviously, this definition of language has problems in practicality.
--
Lennart Regebro len...@regebro.nu
Homepage http://www.regebro.nu/lennart/
Lennart Regebro
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>Christian R. Conrad <christia...@hedengren.fi> wrote:
>So the aforementioned immigrant groups (Finns, Assyrians, etc.) are all
>Swedish citizens?
No. But thats mostly because they haven't become that yet. :)
There is no special 'gastarbeiter' status. You are either a refugee,
seeking permit to stay, or a citizen, basically.
You can of course live in Sweden with jus a work permit, if you can get
one, but if you have stayed in Sweden or several years you can always
become a citizen.
>Unless Swedish naturalisation policies are considerably more generous than
>those of the above-mentioned countries, many of their "immigrants" are in
>the same boat.
They are in any case, really, since it is hard to get work in Sweden, and
especially for immigrants. During the last ten years or so we have an
increasing split between immigrant groups and Swedes, because large scale
immigration is something new for Sweden, and we don't know how to handle it
yet. However, these immigrants are citizens.
>(Because of their _ius soli_, which confers citizenship on
>anyone born within their borders, Canada and the USA don't have a self-
>perpetuating class of resident aliens.)
Sweden also has this rule, AFAIK.
Stephane Di Cesare
On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 09:49:56 GMT, len...@regebro.nu (Lennart Regebro)
wrote:
>cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 26 Jan 1998 11:14:17 GMT, len...@regebro.nu (Lennart Regebro)
>>wrote:
>>
>>>And it also have the problem that for example, most Scanians have no
>>>problem in understanding Danish, but people from northern Sweden, usually
>>>don't. Where is the border between Swedish and Danish?
>>
>>Scanians *understand* Danish, but their major language is definitely
>>Swedish.
>
>Now you switch definitions again. If you want to talk about understanding
>each other, then Scanans commonly understand Danish, hence, they must be
>the same language. But people from Northern Sweden commonly do NOT
>understand Danish, hence that is not the same languag. But people from
>south and north of Sweden DO understand eachother so this is ALSO the same
>language.
I'm not switching definitions. People from Scania (those who understand
Danish, at least), are very aware that Danish is not the same thing than
Swedish. They speak Swedish (or its Scanian dialect), but they don't
speak Danish when at home. There is no doubt the dialect spoken in
Scania is much nearer Swedish than Danish.
Most Swedes don't understand Danish, and most Danes don't understand
Swedish, thus they can be considered as two different languages. The
fact that Scanians can speak both languages does not change that.
For example, you can't say that French and German are one language
because people in Luxembourg speak both.
The problem with Swedish and Danish is that they're very close
grammatically, and thus you may argue that a Swede left in Denmark may
learn the language without help; which would mean that Swedish and
Danish are dialects, and this is also a valid interpretation.
Stephane Di Cesare
>Then Rikssvenska-Finlandssvenska fairly closely match the pair
>american English and british English. And the trio Norwegian-
>-Swedish-Danish match Spanish-Portuguese-Italian ...
>Yes, I dare you ...
No way. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian grammar are very different, and
even their vocabulary is much more different than the Nordic languages.
If you can write in any of the three Nordic languages, you can easily
read the others, and that is not true at least for Italian. Furthermore,
most Spanish speakers I've met told me they couldn't read Portuguese,
farther than getting the general idea of the text.
>Then we'd perhaps fight over where to place Catalan... is it a
>language or is it a dialect ...
Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish. It can be discussed if Catalan and
Occitan/Provencal are dialects, but Spanish is different from those.
>You'd find that even in Italy, there
>are dialects that are far from 'standard' Italian, so far, that they
>are hardly intelligible to people from other parts of the country.
Then, they're maybe not dialects. I don't know much about Italy myself,
but some people say that there are different languages in Italy. I know
someone who speaks Istrian (a Romance language spoken outside the
Italian outer border), and does not understand Italian.
Where do you put French by the way?
>Of course you'll always find people in any of those countries,
>who refuse to understand the language of their neighbours, but
>openmindedness is really the only prerequisite needed to be able
>to communicate over the boundaries of any of these pairs/triplets.
I wonder why I've seen Italians and Spanish communicating in English,
then.
Lennart Regebro
cie9...@student2.lth.se (Stephane Di Cesare) wrote:
>Most Swedes don't understand Danish, and most Danes don't understand
>Swedish,
Yes they do. Maybe not most Swedes, but surely most Danes. And the big
difference is only in pronunciations. Sure, there are other differences,
but they do not hinder understanding.
>thus they can be considered as two different languages.
But most Swedes understand Norwegian, and Almost all Norwegians understand
Swedish. Is this then the same language?
>The fact that Scanians can speak both languages does not change that.
Scanians to not SPEAK Danish. They UNDERSTAND it, because their dialect is
so close to Danish.
Urban Domeij
Stephane Di Cesare wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 08:53:23 -0800, Urban Domeij
> <urban....@kingwall.se> wrote:
>
> >Then Rikssvenska-Finlandssvenska fairly closely match the pair
> >american English and british English. And the trio Norwegian-
> >-Swedish-Danish match Spanish-Portuguese-Italian ...
> >Yes, I dare you ...
>
> No way. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian grammar are very different, and
> even their vocabulary is much more different than the Nordic languages.
> If you can write in any of the three Nordic languages, you can easily
> read the others, and that is not true at least for Italian. Furthermore,
> most Spanish speakers I've met told me they couldn't read Portuguese,
> farther than getting the general idea of the text.
>
No. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian grammar are very similar, the
mostoutstanding difference being the subject dropping in Spanish, which is
not
essential to the language, use of a subject in the phraze isn't forbidden.
Also the vocabulary is generally the same. The statement from "most
Spanish speakers you have met" is equal to the experience of most
nordic people visavis their neighbour languages.
> >Then we'd perhaps fight over where to place Catalan... is it a
> >language or is it a dialect ...
>
> Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish. It can be discussed if Catalan and
> Occitan/Provencal are dialects, but Spanish is different from those.
>
By definition, a dialect is different from another dialect.
> Where do you put French by the way?
>
Not at all within this scheme, as I find it too different from any of
thediscussed pairs/triplets to be bundled in the same package ... however
this is only a matter of judgment, you may regard it differently.
I didn't mention it as it wasn't mentioned before, together with
Romanian and Moldavian.
> >Of course you'll always find people in any of those countries,
> >who refuse to understand the language of their neighbours, but
> >openmindedness is really the only prerequisite needed to be able
> >to communicate over the boundaries of any of these pairs/triplets.
>
> I wonder why I've seen Italians and Spanish communicating in English,
> then.
Bear in mind that Galician is closer to portuguese than to Castilian.
You may wonder, but it's as easily explained as the fact that also
danish and swedish people are sometimes communicating in another
language both know well. In order to avoid confusion, it is sometimes
necessary to take this step, and it may also be simpler. However, few
people who do know another language would have to do this, as
training in other languages tends to make you more open to different
ways of expression, thus making it easier to understand the neighbour
language.
How would you explain that I understand both Portuguese and Italian,
both written and spoken, when I haven't studied them? Of course this
sometimes is limited to the general meaning, but this is not different
from my understanding of Danish and Norwegian.
Urban
Jens Stengaard Larsen
Gabriel Tojo wrote:
[...]
> Regarding the open and closed e`s and o`s, according to my Italian book, there is
> not a single couple of words, spoken in the whole Italy, which are differenciated
> by an open versus closed łe˛ or ło˛.
"Pesca"?
--
Jens S. Larsen * <"http://dorit.ihi.ku.dk/~steng/index">
Mikko Levanto
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
> So the aforementioned immigrant groups (Finns, Assyrians, etc.)
> are all Swedish citizens?
Although there are many immigrants from Finland, the subject
line does not refer to them but to natives.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Mikko J. Levanto ! Tel. +358 8 551 2448
VTT Electronics ! Fax +358 8 551 2320
P.O.Box 1100 !
FIN-90571 Oulu, Finland ! Internet: Mikko....@vtt.fi
----------- VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland -----------
Neil
Alwyn Thomas wrote:
>
> Gabriel Tojo wrote:
>
> > Obviously, I was oversimplifying matters. There is always a certain lengthening of
> > stressed syllables, even in Spanish. On the other hand, I hear the Italian vowel
> > sounds in unstressed syllables much more distictively than in Portuguese, and, of
> > course, English, which tends to produce plenty of swas.
>
> vowels in unstressed syllables. The two features are not incompatible, as you
> imagine.
>
> > not a single couple of words, spoken in the whole Italy, which are differenciated
Only common examples are "ho" (I have) and "o" (or) and "pésca" =
fishing and "pèsca" peach, but probably only elocutionists really
distinguish them. In most contexts whether one says an open or closed
"e" or "o" depends on the surrounding consonants. I've been quite amazed
at how many educated Italians do not know they spell "perché" with "é"
but "è" (is) with "è".
> It is controversial whether Italian has a 5-vowel or 7-vowel system. Southern
> dialects definitely have a simple 5-vowel system. Central Italian have a 7-vowel
> system and will make a distinction for example in Florentine between legge (law) and
> lEgge (he reads), botte (barrel) and bOtte (blows); however, the different dialects
> sometimes differ amonst themselves which words have closed vowels and which open.
> Northern Italian dialects have open and closed e and o in complementary distribution
> (and have thus effectively a 5-vowel system).
>
> Standard Italian pronunciation is based on educated Florentine and makes
> phonologically significant distinctions between open and closed e and o as above. But
> standard pronunciation does not have in Italy the following that it has, say in England or France.
The above is simply not true because a simplified form of standard
Italian pronunciation is widely spoken throughout Italy while there are
greater dialectal variations in vocabulary and grammar than in Britain,
or if you prefer, than just in England. Only a minority of speakers of
British English emulate anything approaching RP. Don't confuse this with
a distinct bias on national TV and radio for affected RP-ish or
Southeast English accents.
Realisations of phonemes such as /uH/ as in "cut" and phonemes such as
/uHU/ as in "coat" or /eHi/ as in "kate" vary considerably, without
considering known variations in preconsonantal and final "r", "w/wh"
distinction, "sure / shore" distinction etc.....
While Italian dialects are still very common in some regions,
particularly in Veneto and Sicily, most Italians make a distinction
between standard Italian and their local dialect, except for Tuscans who
regularly pronounce hard "c" (/k/) as a highly aspirated "h" before
stressed syllables, hence the joke
Una hoha hola hon la hunnuccia
A coca cola with a straw.
>
> Alwyn
--
Neil Gardner
=================================================================
Translator Italian / Spanish > English
Home page: http://www.infotrad.demon.co.uk/homepage.htm
=================================================================
Neil
Gabriel Tojo wrote:
>
> Alwyn Thomas wrote:
>
> > > Obviously, I was oversimplifying matters. There is always a certain lengthening of
> > > stressed syllables, even in Spanish. On the other hand, I hear the Italian vowel
> > > sounds in unstressed syllables much more distictively than in Portuguese, and, of
> > > course, English, which tends to produce plenty of swas.
>
> > > not a single couple of words, spoken in the whole Italy, which are differenciated
> >
> > It is controversial whether Italian has a 5-vowel or 7-vowel system. Southern
> > dialects definitely have a simple 5-vowel system. Central Italian have a 7-vowel
> > system and will make a distinction for example in Florentine between legge (law) and
> > lEgge (he reads), botte (barrel) and bOtte (blows); however, the different dialects
> > sometimes differ amonst themselves which words have closed vowels and which open.
> > Northern Italian dialects have open and closed e and o in complementary distribution
> > (and have thus effectively a 5-vowel system).
> >
> > Standard Italian pronunciation is based on educated Florentine and makes
> > phonologically significant distinctions between open and closed e and o as above. But
> > standard pronunciation does not have in Italy the following that it has, say in
> > England or France.
> >
>
> Thank you very much for your much precise information about Italian.
> quite exposed to Spanish by the media. On the other hand, it is quite surprising to
> find that Brazilians tend to think that Italian and Spanish share more similitudes
> than Spanish and Portuguese, because of their perceived similitude between Spanish and
> Spanish and Italian pronunciation, as opposed to Spanish and Portuguese pronunciation.
> I would like to hear the point of view of some Italian-speaking person.
>
> Gabriel Tojo
Italian pronunciation and orthography much easier and thus many words
look and sound alike "la mano" means "the hand" in both Italian and
Spanish but in Portuguese it's "a mao". Indeed comparisons between the
two langauges can be quite amusing "Vorrei mangiare del burro" means
"I'd like to eat some butter" while "Quisiera comer un burro" means "I'd
like to eat a donkey (or burro if you live in Texas)", "encantado" means
"delighted (to meet you)" while "incantato" means "dazed", "bewildered"
or "frozen" (Lo schermo si è incantato = The screen froze), "salir" is
"go out, leave, exit" is Spanish but "salire" means "rise, go up, get
on, board" in Italian. Thus when Italians tourists see "Salida" in
Spanish buses they try to enter there. But the more you study the two
languages the more you realize they are quite different. Italians rarely
use the simple past (I did, hice, feci) in the spoken language except in
parts of Sicily and Calabria and love complex and tautologous sentence
constructions. Italian uses prepositions quite differently often
combining them verbs almost like English phrasal verbs.
In a few cases Italian is closer to Portuguese as it retains the initial
"f" in words like "fegato" (liver, hígado, fígado) and "fare" (do,
hacer, fazer) and doesn't mutate "o" to "ue" in stressed syllables, so
"Il porto" is "el puerto" in Spanish but "o porto" in Portuguese
However, at least 80% of Portuguese and Spanish grammar and vocabulary
overlap and one thinks the same in both languages..
What's surprising is how few Spaniards and Italians realize these
similarities and differences. I've heard Italians addressing Spaniards
in English or French and then realizing they understand each other
better by speaking slowly in their native languages.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34cf1da6...@news.student.lu.se>,
Stephane Di Cesare <cie9...@student2.lth.se> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 08:53:23 -0800, Urban Domeij
><urban....@kingwall.se> wrote:
>
>>Then we'd perhaps fight over where to place Catalan... is it a
>>language or is it a dialect ...
>
>Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish. It can be discussed if Catalan and
>Occitan/Provencal are dialects, but Spanish is different from those.
Of course they're dialects. All of the above mentioned varieties are
dialects of Romance (Western Romance, if you accept that crude division).
>>You'd find that even in Italy, there
>>are dialects that are far from 'standard' Italian, so far, that they
>>are hardly intelligible to people from other parts of the country.
>
>Then, they're maybe not dialects. I don't know much about Italy myself,
>but some people say that there are different languages in Italy. I know
>someone who speaks Istrian (a Romance language spoken outside the
>Italian outer border), and does not understand Italian.
>
>Where do you put French by the way?
It's another set of Romance dialects, just like the local speech varieties
of Italy (with the exception of local forms of Albanian, Serbo-Croatian,
Slovenian, Greek, German, etc.).
>>Of course you'll always find people in any of those countries,
>>who refuse to understand the language of their neighbours, but
>>openmindedness is really the only prerequisite needed to be able
>>to communicate over the boundaries of any of these pairs/triplets.
>
>I wonder why I've seen Italians and Spanish communicating in English,
>then.
I think another poster answered this: Lack of exposure. One never knows
how hard or easy something like this is until one tries it, and most
people never do.
Bjorn Vennstrom
In article <yzzafcj...@sally.lysator.liu.se>, Johan Olofsson
<j...@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> The Swedish taught in Finland is different from
> the Swedish taught in Sweden.
I disagree. The Swedish taught Finland-Swedes is not really different from
what students are taught in Sweden. At best, the Swedish in Finland is a
tiny bit more "oldfashioned" (e.g. you write 'skall' instead of 'ska' in
essays). In terms of vacabulary there are really no differences in the
formal language. I suggest that you pick up an issue of the major Swedish
daily newspaper in Finalnd, Hufvudstadsbladet, and study the written
language: you will that the language in some sections will remind you of
the Swedish language written in Sweden soem decades ago, whereas other
sections will appear fully "modern".
Bjorn
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <34CF6E...@vtt.fi>, Mikko Levanto <mikko....@vtt.fi> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
>> So the aforementioned immigrant groups (Finns, Assyrians, etc.)
>> are all Swedish citizens?
>
>Although there are many immigrants from Finland, the subject
>line does not refer to them but to natives.
Yes, I realise that. My bad for not changing the subject line to reflect
the shift in topic in this part of the thread. Many thanks to those who
filled me on Sweden's progressive naturalisation policies.
Peter T. Daniels
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
> Yes, I realise that. My bad for not changing the subject line to reflect
> the shift in topic in this part of the thread.
That's the second time you've written "my bad" for 'my fault'. Is that
a personal idiosyncrasy, or netslang, or something catching on that
hasn't reached the Glorious East yet?
Hiski Haapoja
Christian R. Conrad (christia...@hedengren.fi) wrote:
: > There are no people called "Finlanders".
: OK, then Finland is a country without _a_ people,
: i.e, not _a_nation_ in the full sense of the word.
Finland has Finns (who speak several languages).
: > This comes from the racist Swedish term "finländare",
: Hiski, meet Jerzy. Jerzy, meet Hiski.
: I'm sure you'll become great friends.
Who is Jerzy?
: > coined by Swedish-speaking Finns who wanted to
: > underline their superiority to the 'Mongol-Finns'.
: "Swedish-speaking Finns" want to oppress other Finns?
They used to.
: Ahh, you mean
: Finland-Swedes! Oh, so they coined a term _to_include_themselves_, and
: *meant* it to be derogatory?!? Yeah, sure, they're all masochists...
To separate themselves from Finnish-speaking Finns, the Swedish-
speakers refused to be included under 'finne' anymore, some time in the
1920s/1930s. This is why the term 'finländare' stinks.
: Hiski, _you_ look like a racist asshole, straight
: from the Lappo movement.
The Lapua movement was not racist AFAIK (anti-Communist, anti-SocDem,
and anti-Liberal, but Communists, SocDems and Liberals are not a
race). Where did you get the idea of me being a racist?
: I'm sure you spend a lot of time whining about "pakko-ruotsia" too,
: don't you...?
I do. It's a form of oppression and major waste of resources, although the
politicians to really be blamed are Finnish-speakers. SFP (Svenska
Folkpartiet) couldn't mandate it alone. Why did you conjugate pakkoruotsi?
It doesn't look good in English, and in this case you would have needed
the form 'pakkoruotsista'.
Hiski, removing sci.lang from the follow-ups
# Pohjimmiltani olen pieni hoikka brunetti. #
El Gordo
C Malte Lewan skrev:
> och med), "ett kärt ämne" (ett populärt ämne) and "andlig spis" (don't
> know)
Andlig spis=spiritual/intelectual nuitrition
> The brand new _Skånes litteraturhistoria II_ writes (1997, p 29): "Skåne
> har i jämförelse med andra landsändar varit förhållandevis väl försett
> med kulturella institutioner och har därmed i viss utsträckning kunnat
> motverka den stockholmska dominansen." (But they add: "Det utesluter
> inte att man samtidigt har godtagit storstadsidealen.") These Scanian
> cultural institutions probably have helped the above-mentioned modest
> deviations of written language and the less modest deviations in
> (acceptable) spoken regional standard language.
A lot of the economical and cultural world of Sweden is just now changingits
geographical position a few 100Km southwards.When Scania gets the bridge
to the Continent, it will be of great influence.
Best Regards Jan Rosbäck