Brian M. Scott wrote:
> At 8:52:50 on Monday, 24 October 2005, Grzegorz Jagodzinski
> wrote:
>
>> And, have dialectologists problems with counting each
>> single dialect as French, Occitan aka Provençal,
>> Catalonian, Spanish or Italian?
>
> What about the Franco-Provençal dialects?
French is a langue d'oil while Provençal is a langue d'oc. This is rather
generally accepted, so nobody should have problems with Franco-Provençal.
However, see also e.g.
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90061. The authors of
Ethnologue treat Franco-Provençal like a separate language from the
Gallo-Rhaetian branch. They treat many dialects as languages but they can be
right in this point (as far as I know, Franco-Provençal is acknowledged to
be a language in both France and Italy).
"Francoprovençal or Arpitan is a Romance language consisting of dialects
that can be found in Italy (Valle d'Aosta, Piemonte, Calabria, Apulia), in
Switzerland (cantons Fribourg, Valais, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Geneva, non-German
speaking parts of Bern, but not Jura, where the dialects spoken are French)
and in France (Dauphinois, Lyonnais, Savoy).
The language forms a linguistic sub-group of its own between the Langue
d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name Franco-Provençal was given to the group of
dialects in the 19th century as they shared features of French and Provençal
without belonging to either. Although the name of the language is well
established, there is some dissatisfaction with it, given that the
distinguishing feature of Franco-Provençal is that it is neither French nor
Provençal. The name Arpitan is sometimes used, as are, individually, the
names of the various dialects (Savoyard ("Savoyan"), Lyonnais, etc.) It is
now considered an endangered language."
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Proven%C3%A7al_language)
"Le francoprovençal ou arpitan, à ne pas confondre avec le provençal,
constitue l'une des trois grandes langues gallo-romanes avec l'occitan (ou
langue d'oc) et le français (langue d'oïl)"
(
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpitan)
Note also that the Franco-Provençal area do not separate Provençal from
French all along their border. So, I cannot see problems...
>
> [...]
>
>> By the way, the idea of nation is older than you think.
>> Ancient Greeks had strong feeling of belonging to a
>> particular region or town, and, as a consequence, to a
>> particular dialect. But they can have distinguished a
>> Greek from a barbarian as well. I can see striking
>> similarities to the idea of nation in modern times, and
>> can't you?
>
> No. That last is an example of the older notion of a
> people, quite different from the notion of a state.
>
> Brian
And what nation has to do with state???
Webster's:
na.tion
n.
1 a stable, historically developed community of people with a territory,
economic life, distinctive culture, and language in common
[...]
Not a word on state... Do the Basques are a nation according to you? And
what about the Welsh, the Scottish?
Grzegorz J.
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