Post
by Roger » Thu Aug 28, 2003 2:15 am
Here is a rough categorisation of languages and dialects we have been discussing:
- English: National accents and dialects (American English: Spelling
differences; vocabulary differences; pronunciation differing
locally); a variety of English as it and other Englishes are
almost perfectly mutually intellitgible.
2) Australian English: MIxed British/American spelling; local
pronunciation; admixture of home-grown vocabulary
(boomerang, kangaroo, etc.);
3) South African English: British English dominates; admixture
of vocabulary from Afrikaans (haartebeest, bok,
highveld) and African languages);
4) Singaporean English: British English, heavily accented and
modified by locals (Chinese ending -la added to verbs, many
admixtures from Asian languages); variety is called
'Singlish', and widely held to be substandard;
5) There are many other varieties, national, regional,
dialectal, impssible to enumerate and quantify.
They all share the same basis, but have some local features
- Canadian, New Zealand, etc. English.
Scottish and Irish English: Heavily accented variants.
FOR LEARNERS OF ENGLISH FROM OUTSIDE THE ANGLOPHONE
WORLD, BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH ARE THE TWO
REFERENCE MODEL LANGUAGE SYSTEMS.
Romance languages: For histori8c reasons, there are 'languages'
such as
1) FRENCH: natively spoken by French, Belgians, Quebeckers,
Swiss, Monegassses (Monte Carlo), Andorreans.
There is but one authoritiy that acts as a kind of "police",
and that's French-based Academie francaise. Although
pronunciation differs somewhat between the various
national variants, they are all mutually intelligible as
they are written and spoken in an almost identical way.
Vocabularies differ but slightly. One example is the
numbers: Standard French has 70 (soixante-dix,
literally 'sixty-and-ten', 4 20, or 'quatre vingt for 80 ),
4 20 10, that is, quatre vingt et dix, for ninety), whereas
some dialects use septante (70), ottante (80) and
nonante (ninety);
2) Spanish: National language in SPain and Ibero-America;
many dialects mutually intelligible; some have their own
written tradition but are intelligible and comprehensible
to standard Spanish speakers and even to speakers
of other Romance national languages;
Some variants, such as Catalan, have developed
their own writing traditions and are considered separate
languages.
3) Portuguese: Written form decypherable for speakers
of other Romance languages, especially Spanish; Bra-
zilian Portuguese is now dominant.
4) Italian: One standard (written) form, fragmented into
dozens upon dozens of highly differentiated local
dialects not readily intelligible to the untrained ear;
the standard Italian (in writing) is national norm in
Italy, Switzerland.
German: There is but one standard form, administered by the German Culture Foundation, or Goethe Institut. It is the national and official language in the united Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and it is spoken by minorities in France (Alsace), and Italy (South Tyrolia), Belgium (an area adjacent to the border with Germany); it also is widely spoken in Eastern Europe by German settlers that moved there 400 to 300 years ago.
There are many dialects, usually mutually intelligible but without writing traditions. The Eastern European Germans (including tens of thousands living in Kazakhstan) adhere to so-called 'High German'. "Low German" refers to dialects spoken in the "lower" (downriver on the river Rhine) varieties, including Dutch, Friesian etc., but these are unintelligible to 'HIgh German" speakers. Only Dutch has developed its own written standards, and it has further split up into Afrikaans and Flemish.
There are some interesting variants such as Pensylvania Dutch ('Dutch' being the corrupted form of the German word for "German', which is a dialect preserved in a very old form and thus unintelligible to speakers of any other German dialect, and Yiddish. Yiddish is a German dialect with many loanwords from other languages such as Gypsie dialects and Hebrew, and it is written in Hebrew characters.
Chinese: Chinese has at least three standard forms of writing, namely
the mainland 'Common Language", or Putonghua form using
simplified characters and a language simplified by central
government fiat. It is more prosaic, almost rustic in comparison
with the more traditional CHinese as still used in the Chinese
diaspora and in Taiwan.
Taiwan uses virtually the same vocabulary but has not simplified
it. It also uses the old, or standard (not simplified) characters.
For day-to-day things, people on both sides of the Taiwan
Strait use virtually the same oral Chinese, but in more com-
plicated situations you become aware of differences that
have been brought about by different political powers.
The Overseas Chinese are native speakers of dialects
spoken in their ancestral coastal home places, normally
Fujian and Guangdong; the pronunciation and vocabulary
differences set them apart from speakers of other dialects.
They would also use the old Chinese characteers in writing.
In China, local dialects are so numerous it is impossible to
give a rundown here. CLearly, speakers of dialects have one
common feature - they are often illiterate (also true of Italian
dialect speakers), and they tend to have communication
problems in social intercourse with speakers of other
Chinese dialects.
FOr instance, the very common name of WANG (Mandarin,
that is 'PUtonghua'), becomes 'Wong' in Cantonese, and
'Wee' in Fujianese (*beep*).
ALso, note differences in place-names: 'Amoy' (local dialect)
and 'Xiamen' (Mandarin); Heunggong (Hong Kong) and 'Xiang-
gang' in Mandarin).
However, the script unites most Chinese, and it even unites them with speakers of Korean (place-names in Korea are in Chinese script!) and in Japan!
I certainly could not have done that.