Low Saxon, dialect or language?

I've always wondered about the position of Low Saxon within the West Germanic continuum, among the modern languages.

Since they are nonstandardised and looked down upon (and lack any modern literature) the position seems to be quite odd.

In the Netherlands and Belgium the modern Low Saxon dialects are often considered dialects ... of Dutch. They argue that Low Saxon and Dutch are closely related languages and that due to centuries and centuries of Dutch influence Dutch has more or less absorbed them to the point that they can be called variations of Dutch.

At the same time there's Germany, in which the dialects are also spoken (be it much less compared to the Dutch situation) but they see them as German dialects, eventhough Low Saxon is much closer to Dutch (both not having experienced the Second Germanic sound shift) despite its minor Anglo-Frisian features. What gives?

For laypersons, I would probably call Low Saxon a language in the greater Low German group, along with East Low German, Dutch, Afrikaans, and other Low Franconian dialects (that is, West Flemish and Zeeuws). I probably would not bother to explain Limburgish's place in all of this to laypersons (as it straddles the dividing line between Low German and High German).

For linguists, I would call Low Saxon a high level dialect group within a greater non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic dialect continuum, also including all High German dialects (including Yiddish), Dutch, Afrikaans, West Flemish/Zeeuws, Limburgish, and East Low German. In such I would also not call "German" and "Dutch" as commonly known "languages" but rather as standard norms within such a dialect continuum.

May I ask why you differentiate between Dutch and some of its dialects? Westflemish and Zeeuws etc?

Because they are no closer to Standard Dutch than, say, Afrikaans, Low Saxon, or even West Frisian are, and also because I am identifying "Dutch" with the norm based off the dialects of Brabant (which was later imported into Holland) within a greater non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic dialect continuum rather than within a model which treats "languages" as fixed entities.

On what do you base this? I'm sorry, but West Flemish and Zeeuws are just Dutch dialects, and mutually intelligeble as well. In fact West Flemish and Zeeuws are closer to Hollandic/Hollands (the dialect most dominant in pronunciation of standard Dutch) than all the others. Even Brabantic.

Again, I don't know where you've gotten this idea, but if West Flemish are somehow more distant or special, then thew New York accent is a language of its own. No offence.

>>On what do you base this? I'm sorry, but West Flemish and Zeeuws are just Dutch dialects, and mutually intelligeble as well. In fact West Flemish and Zeeuws are closer to Hollandic/Hollands (the dialect most dominant in pronunciation of standard Dutch) than all the others. Even Brabantic.

Again, I don't know where you've gotten this idea, but if West Flemish are somehow more distant or special, then thew New York accent is a language of its own. No offence.<<

It's more a matter of perspective than anything else. I am not viewing Dutch in terms of being a language here, but rather in terms of a norm largely corresponding to Brabantic Low Franconian dialects which has been spread into other parts of the Low Countries, particularly Holland (where it largely replaced native Hollandic dialects). I know that West Flemish and Zeeuws are just the set of Low Franconian dialects furthest from Standard Dutch (I do not really call Limburgish Low Franconian myself), but the key thing is that they are clearly distinct and independent from from the Dutch norm.

I am not denying that there is some crossintelligibility present, but then, the matter is that Afrikaans, Dutch Low Saxon, and West Frisian are all also significantly crossintelligible with Standard Dutch in reality (hence why I chose them as examples). Yet does anyone say that they are Dutch proper? (Well, one could really argue that Afrikaans really is Dutch, but that'd both result in some Dutch people saying that it is bad or simplified Dutch and would similarly annoy many Afrikaners - which goes to show how sociolinguistics ties very much into what one calls a "language".)

Of course, the above hinges on how I refer to Dutch as a "norm" rather than as a "language"; were one to call it a "language" and were one to define "language" in terms of crossintelligibility on a purely synchronic level, then one would likely have to include not just West Frisian and Zeeuws, but also Afrikaans, Dutch Low Saxon, and West Frisian all within Dutch. Of course, sociolinguistically the latter three are treated as separate from it. Furthermore, to redefine Dutch so that they are part of it would probably be detrimental to the long term survival of at least Dutch Low Saxon and West Frisian.

Well no, not really. I like to know from which book you've gotten these ideas, but Westflemish and Zeeuws are d e f i n a t e l y not the dialects most distant from SD.

Also, Brabantic didn't replace the Hollandic dialects, not at all. It simply altered the written form even further, as Brabantic was already the most dominant written form of the middle ages, not speech.

Could you provide me your linguistic reference to your statement?

>>Well no, not really. I like to know from which book you've gotten these ideas, but Westflemish and Zeeuws are d e f i n a t e l y not the dialects most distant from SD.<<

I don't remember how I found it, but I do specifically remember a study of the distances between different Low German (in the broad sense) dialects in the Low Countries, and West Frisian was found to actually be quite close to Standard Dutch (despite genetically falling within two entirely separate sections of the West Germanic languages), while Dutch Low Saxon was a bit further than it from Standard Dutch (despite being genetically closer), and the furthest dialects were West Flemish and Limburgish. However, I am not really including Limburgish here due to it not clearly falling within Low German.

>>Also, Brabantic didn't replace the Hollandic dialects, not at all. It simply altered the written form even further, as Brabantic was already the most dominant written form of the middle ages, not speech.<<

Okay, "replace" was not the best of words, as there are still surviving North Hollandic dialects with things like significant Frisian influence. However, it did very strongly influence them, through large-scale immigration to Holland from Brabant during the Eighty Years' War.

>>Could you provide me your linguistic reference to your statement?<<

I'm sorry, but I do not keep a list of sources around with me, unfortunately.

Well, I have to qualify my above statement - such is from how I remember such, and I think I might be confusing such with a different thing I saw that put Dutch Low Saxon as closer to Standard Dutch than West Flemish. The study I was referring to I think may have actually placed Dutch Low Saxon further from Standard Dutch than West Flemish... if I only had the URL so I could go back and look...

I would have loved seeing the source of your information. If only to see who or which institution is spreading this nonsense.

The problem here is more perspective than anything else; you are still thinking in terms of *languages*, where I am thinking in terms of dialects, dialect groups, dialect continua, and norms. I honestly don't care whether you call West Flemish part of the same language as Standard Dutch, actually, and you should not have read my reference to West Flemish as really saying *anything* about "languages" at all - I was simply identifying it as a significant dialect group distinct from Standard Dutch.

All dialects are distinct from standard Dutch, because Standard Dutch isn't just a dominant dialect. So what are you saying?

What I meant is that I am not even talking about languages, especially in the layman's sense of the term, and what people assign to different languages is not all that important to me except politically*. Languages to me are purely sociolinguistic/sociopolitical in nature, and have little to do with linguistics proper unto themselves.

And of course dialects are separate from standards/norms, as they are two different kinds of things altogether. However, though, one can speak of dialects being closer to standards than others (for instance, Brabantic dialects are closer to Standard Dutch than West Flemish dialects). And often one may invoke standards when referring to dialects very close to them (for instance, one may speak of someone speaking "Standard Dutch" when they speak a dialect which is very close to it.)

* I often support calling distinct/isolated dialects and Abstandsprachen "languages" from a sociolinguistic/sociopolitical level as such is likely to support their overall long-term survival through turning them into Ausbausprachen which are more likely to have their own defined standard, to be actively taught, and to be politically recognized and protected.

However, this does not pertain to linguistics in and of itself. Note though that I may speak of "languages" at times, but I generally am using such as a shorthand to refer to a wider dialect group associated with a particular Dachsprache or set of associated Dachsprachen or which can be reasonalbly thought of as belonging to an Abstandsprache. Note that such should not actually imply crossintelligibility, though - I often speak of "German" so as to referring to all High German dialects or simply all dialects where Standard German is used as a corresponding standard (which excludes Yiddish) without regard to whether said dialects are all actually crossintelligible to each other (not all High German dialects are crossintelligible, for the record).

Im not interested in your definition of language, I'm only interested in why you think West Flemish is so different, let alone Zeeuws.

I was just referring to it as a distinct dialect group outside of the dialects closely associated with Standard Dutch, similar to Limburgish or Dutch Low Saxon; I was not trying to make a definitive statement about just how different it is from Standard Dutch or in what manners it is distinct from Standard Dutch. (I was not planning on getting into any details, such as preservation of West Germanic /ai/ and /au/ as distinct from West Germanic /e:/ and /o:/.)