Re: My version

At 1:28:36 PM on Friday, February 20, 2009, Andrew Jarrette
wrote:

[...]

> Francesco, I just wanted to ask, so that I can be certain
> that I understand:

> Were you saying that Sicilian, Corsican, Gallo-Italian,
> Venetian, Neapolitan, and all the other "dialects of
> Italian" are better considered modern dialects of Vulgar
> Latin, since that is their common starting point, and
> standard Italian is not a common starting point?

> If so, it seems that by that definition they are equal in
> status to Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc., and also
> Catalan, Occitan, and the other non-national modern
> descendants of Vulgar Latin.

It means that all of these varieties are siblings (with
various amounts of mutual influence), but they clearly
aren't equal in status as the term is usually used.

> So it would seem all these modern descendants of Vulgar
> Latin are languages, regardless of political boundaries.

That depends entirely on how one chooses to define
'language', and I doubt whether a useful, purely linguistic
definition is possible.

Brian