Comments on: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy” https://thehistoricallinguistchannel.com/a-language-is-a-dialect-with-an-army-and-a-navy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-language-is-a-dialect-with-an-army-and-a-navy Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:23:41 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.9 By: MichelleKGross https://thehistoricallinguistchannel.com/a-language-is-a-dialect-with-an-army-and-a-navy/#comment-6801 Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:23:41 +0000 http://thehistoricallinguistchannel.com/?p=163#comment-6801 Lisa–
Go back in time to ponder the significance of the language of the original quote. If Yiddish were a language and did have an army, then the army could protect its speakers from antisemitism. The folks in the room were all Jews who could laugh at the irony underlying the words. Remember that this was an utterance at a gathering, reported only in recollection, not having been written down. You could say that Yiddish is a dialect of archaic German or you could say that German is a modernized dialect of Yiddish, but only one of those two observations will help you predict who has the army and who does not.

]]> By: Emanuel https://thehistoricallinguistchannel.com/a-language-is-a-dialect-with-an-army-and-a-navy/#comment-3829 Fri, 07 Feb 2020 11:11:03 +0000 http://thehistoricallinguistchannel.com/?p=163#comment-3829 I disagree that language cannot be defined linguistically. It’s not that it cannot be, is just most linguists don’t bother (for various reasons) and they keep telling that stupid joke with the army and a navy.

A couple of examples:
– Occitan – to my knowledge, it never had and army and a navy (there was never and independent Occitan state). Yet, occitan is widely regarded as a language, and never a french dialect, even though it is a gallo-romance language (so, close to french).
– Friulian: never had an army and a navy, but it is regarded as a separate language, and not an italian dialect (same case for sardinian), even though it is a romance language as italian. What is most striking is the fact that venetian is regarded as an italian dialect, even though it had at one point an army and a navy. So how come venetian is regarded as an italian dialect, while friulian not ?
– Frisian: never had an army and a navy, but is regarded as a separate language from dutch and german.

I could keep going, but the point is – there are actually linguistic reasons when deciding on language vs dialect, and it’s not (all) politics.
And yes, mutual inteligibility is (should be) a main criteria. Yes, norwegian and swedish are mutual inteligible to a very high degree (~85%) and constitue a single language. Calling them 2 separate languages so we don’t hurt people’s feelings is silly.
Linguistic should be separated from politics and stop using political corectness as an excuse for not putting together a proper definition for language.

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