Deutsch and Schwytzduetch

Travis   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 21:42 GMT
Because West Flemish's crossintelligability with Dutch in actual speech as actually very low, as a whole, and it maintains much of the phonology and word-forms and like of Middle Dutch. If West Flemish is a dialect of Dutch, then dammit, the Frisian languages are just dialects of English (and Scots is a set of dialects of English as well). The only reason why one wouldn't go on to say that Afrikaans is just a set of dialects of Dutch as well is that it already has an established standard variety of its own.
Sander   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 21:46 GMT
(english would rather be a dialect of Frisian BTW)


WF is a dialect ,case closed.
Travis   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 21:52 GMT
But then, if English is a dialect of Frisian, than Dutch is a dialect of West Flemish (not the other way around). ;) And yes, the case has been closed, and it's that West Flemish is a separate language from Dutch.
Sander   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 21:55 GMT
OBJECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Dare to overrule me!)


Who do i have to kill to get into your mind that its not!
Bill H.   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 22:08 GMT

Great post Travis,lots of information. I guess with languages there is more than meets the eye. :) My mistake was seeing similarities and patterns in Dutch and German kind of lumping them together. The high and low German languages...I vaguely remember learning the terms but had totally forgotten about them until reading your post. Regarding what constitutes a dialect,I think I follow most of it but will have to do further reading on it. Not sure why I find languages so interesting but maybe it is like seeing different parts of a huge and ancient puzzle and of trying to figure out how it was originally put together.

I had a cyber friend in Sweden and he said that the Norwegians and the Swedish could pretty much understand each others languages with no problems. Interesting. I wonder if this holds true for Danish as well?
Travis   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 22:10 GMT
Sander, objection overruled!
Sander   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 22:10 GMT
Travis! Consider yourself sued!
Travis   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 22:16 GMT
Do you mean "high" and "low" *Germanic* languages, as I myself at least would not call Low Saxon "Low German", even though some still seem to use that term, although in English the term "Low Saxon" seems to be the one that has been settled upon for such. The main problem with the term "Low German", or similar terms like "Plattdeutsch", "Plattdüütsch", "Niederdeutsch", and "Nedderdüütsch" is that they implicitly make Low Saxon subordinate to standard Hochdeutsch, which has the result of making it be considered by many as just some "nonstandard dialect(s)", even though Low Saxon is generally not inherently crossintelligable with German per se, ignoring people who speak both Low Saxon and German natively. Such ideas help obstruct the overall preservation of Low Saxon as a distinct language, and also in particular get in the way of any real possibility of using Low Saxon in a literary capacity outside of just things like poetry and whatnot.
Sander   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 22:21 GMT
In what way do English speakers use "per se " Travis
Kess   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 23:31 GMT
I think Brazilians should have two national languages: Brazilian vernacular (spoken by 2/3rds of population, mainly in small cities) and Portuguse (spoken by rich people in big cities; the language we encounter in Brazilian soap operas). The same thing is functioning in Norway pretty efficiantly: Nynorsk (spoken by rural people) and Bokmal (spoken by urban population). Norway is democratic enough to respect the linguistic rights of all its population.
Sander   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 23:32 GMT
And the conextion with "Deutsch and Schwytzduetch" ? :)
Travis   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 23:39 GMT
Kess, to be exact, Bokmål is the formal written language used for most of the population in Norway today, with Nynorsk being the other formal written language, but Bokmål isn't necessarily *spoken* by most of the population of Norway (and actually, spoken Norwegian dialects vary a lot, all things considered).
Hoshi   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 00:06 GMT
but, microsoft windows is available in both bokmal and nynorsk :)
Travis   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 00:09 GMT
Anyways, in many cases, Nynorsk is closer to much of spoken Norwegian than Bokmål is, even though more people today write in Bokmål than in Nynorsk.
Bill H.   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 01:56 GMT

"And the contextion with Deutsch and Schwyzerduetsch?" :) " -Sander

Actually I guess we did wander from the original topic but it has been interesting. I remeber that some of my Swiss buddies said that in some parts of the CH the sub -dialects of Swiss German are fairly unintelligable
across Areas/Cantons. When that happens they revert to the "default" Schweizerdeutsch dialect of Deutsch. Wild,huh?

I know in Germany some of the regional dialects are just as alien to each other. What do they speak in Bayern? I had a tutor that spoke to me in that dialect and it was very nasal and seemed as far from Hochdeutsch as you could get. I think most americans don`t fully understand the depth and richness of subtlties(sp?) within some of the European languages. The most we deal with is accents and or different pronunciations(not counting the cajun/creole areas of LA). Maybe in a few thousand years or so,eh? :)