From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63120
Date: 2009-02-18
> From: Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...>It's an interesting dichotomy, at least in my reading or counter-reading: dialects as forms derived from a common standard and which still recognize that standard as an acrolect
> Subject: [tied] Re: Franco-Provençal
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 5:22 PM
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
> <fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
>
> > The issue is about the use and misuse of the word
> "language".
> >
> > If one applies your 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.
>
> This is yet another special case that cannot be compared
> with that
> of the origin and development of Italian and its so-
> called "dialects".
>
> The varieties, sub-varieties and sub-sub-varieties of
> English spoken
> in countries colonized by the British in the course of the
> Modern
> Age (the U.S.A., Canada, Australia etc.) are the outcome of
> a
> process of divergence (especially as regards pronunciation)
> from a
> relatively homogeneous mother tongue, English, which was
> spoken by
> the white colonizers themselves (N.B. I won't take into
> account here
> the varieties of English spoken by the colonized
> non-Caucasian
> natives of former British colonies in Asia and Africa,
> which is an
> entirely different matter: English speakers in those
> countries are,
> indeed, for the most part bilingual). Thus, Modern English
> came
> first; further to colonization, Modern English
> differentiated into
> new geo-cultural varieties of English -- American English,
> Australian English etc. -- with their own sub-varieties and
> separate
> linguistic histories (including a very moderate tendence to
>
> creolization). This process of linguistic differentiation,
> motivated
> by geo-cultural reasons, is quite understandable (the same
> cannot be
> said for the internal differentiation of British English
> dialects).
>
> Can you maintain a similar process to have occurred in the
> case of
> the historical differentiation of Italian
> "dialects"? Did the latter
> diverge from a homogeneous Italian "language"
> spoken in the Middle
> Ages, or did they rather diverge directly from Vulgar Latin
> as I
> have pointed out in my earlier post? And, what is older,
> Italian or
> its "dialects"?
>
> > There is an Italian language, of which regional
> varieties are
> > dialects.
>
> This statement looks quite dogmatic and inspired by
> nationalistic
> prejudices to me. It doesn't tell all the story.
>
> > 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.
>
> What did they speak then? Were they the speakers of some
> already
> differentiated varieties of Latin which, in the European
> lands they
> conquered, turned magically into 'Proto-French',
> 'Proto-
> Castilian', 'Proto-Rumanian' etc. etc.? Or
> wasn't their own common
> Latin language, to a great extent, a standardized one which
> evolved
> locally into the various Romance languages and dialects
> long after
> the Romans conquered those lands?
>
> Regards,
> Francesco