Re: [tied] Re: Franco-Provençal

>
>> [Corsican is] basically the same thing as most other dialects of
>> Italian. Latin evolved and mixed up with adstrates and substrates.
>
> "Dialects" of Italian -- and, as I suspect, also what
> you "nationalistically" refer to as mere "dialects" of French,
> Spanish etc. -- are historically languages by full right (in certain
> cases even endowed with distinctive literary productions that date
> from many centuries ago). I fully concur with the following remark
> made in the Wikipedia article entitled "Italian dialects":
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_dialects

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There's no "I suspect" and "nationalistically".

The issue is about the use and misuse of the word "language".

If one applies you approach of the word "language"" to English varieties
currently spoken around the world.
There is no English language.

I consider that there is an English language of which current varieties are
dialects.
There is a French language of which current varieties, including creoles,
are dialects.
and there is an Italian language, of which regional varieties are dialects.
And by the way, there is a Chinese language of which highly divergent
varieties are dialects, according to their speakers.

A.
=========

>> The oft-heard expression "dialects of Italian" is both inaccurate
>> and very misleading, since the dialects did not derive from
>> Italian, but directly from spoken Latin, often termed Vulgar
>> Latin: it was Italian that derived from the dialects, not the
>> other way around.
>
> Please bear in mind that both Romance national languages and Romance
> regional dialects evolved from various provincial (= spoken,
> or "Vulgar") forms of Latin, a "State language" that was initially,
> and continued to be for a long time, *foreign* to most of the
> European populations whose idioms subsequently developed into the
> multifarious Romance "languages" and "dialects" (the distinction
> between the two is not that clear to me). This is different from
> other known processes of linguistic development such as, e.g., the
> differentiation of Germanic "languages" and "dialects" from Proto-
> Germanic. Latin was no "Proto-Language". It was a pre-packaged
> official language (of the administration, trade etc.) that was
> politically superimposed on the natives of the various parts of
> Europe whose populations became the speakers of Romance "languages"
> and "dialects" during the Middle Ages.

=========

This is fancy.
The farmers and soldiers who conquered western Europe with their feet and
hands were not speaking a pre-packaged official language.
Typical garbage rewriting history.

A.
======

>
> A mosaic of Romance regional idioms, some of which became "national"
> languages due to political processes, is a more faithful
> representation of the situation in medieval Romance-speaking Europe
> than the absurd claim that "national" languages like French or
> Italian constitued a sort of Ur-model from which dialectal forms of
> Romance somehow deviated, but to which they are all reconducible
> (like Arnaud's Corsican would be to Italian).
>
> Regards,
> Francesco
>

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Empty talk, Mr Brighenti.
Bla bla bla.

Arnaud