From: Petr Hrubis
Message: 63162
Date: 2009-02-19
>You may disagree with it, but it's being used anyway.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Petr Hrubis" <petr.hrubis@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 12:20 AM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Franco-Provençal
>
> I totally agree that differentiating between "language" and "dialect"
> is a sociopolitical (or sociolinguistic) question. No matter how the
> differences have arisen, no matter how numerous they are, no matter
> how heavy they are, no matter to what extent the two speeches are
> mutually intelligible, no matter whether they have an immediate common
> ancestor, "language" and "dialect" will be what we define them to be -
> no matter which criteria (uniting/distinguishing) we use.
> ========
> I disagree with that relativist approach.
> A.
> ========
> From the political perspective, languages tend to have better status,Have they always been? (not that I agree with their ways)
> they tend to be somewhat "safer", or, if you like, protected. And I
> think it should be up to the speakers' communities. Do they want to
> call their speech a "language"? Do they feel they need to protect
> their distinctive traditions? Let them keep their traditions, let them
> preserve their (feeling of) distinctiveness. Give them schools, books,
> TV/radio channels and there won't be any ETA's or FNLC's or whatever,
> will they (or will they not)? Maybe somewhat naïve, I know, but... ;-)
>
> =======
> Basques are not far from independence.
> This has done nothing about getting rid of ETA...
>
> A.