[Foundation-l] [Fwd: Sardininan - Sassarese languages or language and dialect?]

Tue Sep 11 09:41:31 UTC 2007

2007/9/11, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it>:

> a) a language without an army
> b) a way of expressing orally that developed out of a language and that
> has some differences , for example in pronunciation, some expressions
> etc, even having the same basics when it comes to grammar (just to
> mention one example)
>
> So could
>
>     Campidanese (ISO 639-3: sro)
>
>     Gallurese (ISO 639-3: sdn)
>
>     Logudorese (ISO 639-3: src)
>
>     Sassarese (ISO 639-3: sdc)
>
> be dialects of the Common Sardinian Language? Well ... only from a
> logical POV this is not possible, because they were there long before
> the Common Sardinian Language was created ...

I disagree with that form of reasoning. When looking at my own Dutch,
it was created in the 17th century based on existing dialects
(basically, Dutch can be defined as the language the
[[Statenvertaling]] was written in), but those dialects are considered
dialects of Dutch nowadays (there are some dialects that are
considered separate languages in Wikipedia, but the languages that
most influenced the official language are the Holland and Brabant
dialects, which are not). The question should be whether the 4
languages and the newly created official version are close enough to
be considered dialects of a single language. If that is the case, then
there's only one official form of the language, and using that is not
a strange thing to do.

> In any case the code "sc" stands for the macro language Sardinian and
> not for the Limba Sarda Comune, so there is no reason why it should have
> the right to claim that code for the language.

Just compare this with the Belarus situation: I don't think anyone is
disagreeing that be: and be-x-old: are two versions (whether different
orthographies, different dialects or something else) of the same
language. And it seems clear to me that that single language is
Belarusian. So be: is the language that includes both versions, and
following your reasoning there is no reason why be: should have the
right to claim that code for its language.

There is no hard line between two dialects of the same language and
two different, related languages. As such, I don't have any trouble
with considering the same lingual entity at the same time a variation
of Sardinian and a language in its own right. We can be hierarchical
in that. And if there is a single formalized version for a language,
giving that version the code for the language as a whole seems like a
logical thing to do.

-- 
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels