American (USA)

[pjt33]

Vale, pero eso no resuelve el asunto de como determinar si una lengua está muerta o no. De hecho, lo que acabas de decir lo hace aún más arbitrario: estás diciendo que una lengua puede morir aunque un dialecto de esa lengua siga con vida. ¿Cuál de los dialectos es "la lengua" que cuando muera convierte a los demás en lenguas hijas?

[Villa]

Ever wonder why there are so many "white" Americans en vez de people of color in the U.S.? Bascially it was because of the racist Immigration Act of 1924 that stayed in force until 1965. This law was based on a racist book that said people of northern Europe were the superior race. This racist immigration act excluded Asians, Africans, people from southern Europe and everybody else that was not considered "white." After 1965 when this law came to an end you started seeing more immigrants of color in the U.S. So it's not just by chance that the majority of people in the U.S. are blond and blue eyed. Por supuesto todo esto esta cambiando hora. Gracias a Dios o gracias a alguien.

The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, Asian Exclusion Act, (43 Statutes-at-Large 153) was a United States federal law that limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, according to the Census of 1890. It excluded immigration of Asians. It superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act. The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who were immigrating in large numbers starting in the 1890s, as well as prohibiting the immigration of East Asians and Asian Indians.
Congressman Albert Johnson and Senator David Reed were the two main architects. In the wake of intense lobbying, the Act passed with strong congressional support. There were six dissenting votes in the Senate and a handful of opponents in the House, the most vigorous of whom was freshman Brooklyn Representative Emanuel Celler. Over the succeeding four decades, Celler made the repeal of the Act into a personal crusade. Some of the law's strongest supporters were influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race. Grant was a eugenicist and an advocate of the racial hygiene theory. His data purported to show the superiority of the founding Northern European races. But most proponents of the law were rather concerned with upholding an ethnic status quo and avoiding competition with foreign workers.
The act was strongly supported by well-known union leader and founder of the AFL, Samuel Gompers. Gompers was a Jewish immigrant, and uninterested in the accusations by many Jews that the quotas were based on anti-Semitism.

[brute]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

@Elaina: Cuidado con confundir "dialecto" con "lengua" o "idioma". Un dialecto es una variante que de una lengua. Con frecuencia, se le llama "dialecto" a las lenguas indígenas de algunos países, pero en realidad son lenguas en toda forma.

According to your definition, American English should be demoted to an English dialect; similarly all the American variations should be classified as dialects of Spanish (Castillian). Whether a dialect is classified as a language is merly a political decision. Since there are are no Mayans left to contest the classification, then any surviving dialect should now be a language in its own right.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy
The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published the expression, "A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot" ("אַ שפראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט ", "A language is a dialect with an army and navy"; in Yivo-bleter.

An excellent working definition.

I believe that certain "dialects" of German are now classified a fully fledged languages

Yiddish , Letzburgisch (Luxembourg) and Swiss Germanand possibly others

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Brute: Sorry, but it's not my definition.

dialecto.
(Del lat. dialectus, y este del gr. διάλεκτος).

1. m. Ling. Sistema lingüístico considerado con relación al grupo de los varios derivados de un tronco común. El español es uno de los dialectos nacidos del latín.
2. m. Ling. Sistema lingüístico derivado de otro, normalmente con una concreta limitación geográfica, pero sin diferenciación suficiente frente a otros de origen común.
3. m. Ling. Estructura lingüística, simultánea a otra, que no alcanza la categoría social de lengua.

On principle, I have nothing against your objection, but Spanish, English, German, etc., despite the regional variations, obey to standard systematic rules that make them compose a whole language.
But I'm not going into this kind of debate; I only tried to underline a common mistake (rather a prejudice) against tongues that have their own specific rules which comply with the category of "lengua".


@Chileno: great off-topic, right?

[chileno]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

@Brute: Sorry, but it's not my definition.



On principle, I have nothing against your objection, but Spanish, English, German, etc., despite the regional variations, obey to standard systematic rules that make them compose a whole language.
But I'm not going into this kind of debate; I only tried to underline a common mistake (rather a prejudice) against tongues that have their own specific rules which comply with the category of "lengua".


@Chileno: great off-topic, right?

Confrontational to the max!

It is interesting but somehow a bit futile...

[irmamar]

I don't invent:

~ muerta. 1. f. La que antiguamente se habló y no se habla ya como propia y natural de un país o nación.




~ madre.
1. f. Aquella de que han nacido o se han derivado otras. El latín es lengua madre respecto de la nuestra




~ viva.
1. f. La que actualmente se habla en un país o nación.




~s hermanas.
1. f. pl. Las que se derivan de una misma lengua madre; p. ej., el español y el italiano, que se derivan del latín.




http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltCons...=3&LEMA=lengua

[brute]

Originally Posted by chileno

Confrontational to the max!

It is interesting but somehow a bit futile...

Sorry Angelica
I was not trying to be confrontational

But I did notice that one of your quoted definitions describes Spanish as Latin dialect:

El español es uno de los dialectos nacidos del latín.

I wonder, did it have to wait for Latin to die before it could be called a language? The question is akin to that of the evolution of an animal or plant. How much does it have to change from its ancestors before it becomes a new species?

[irmamar]

Yes, you have to wait until a language is dead. Its dialect(s) will be languages then. One must wait until their parents are dead to get their inheritance, doesn't he? It's the same with languages.

[pjt33]

Originally Posted by irmamar

I don't invent:

~ muerta. 1. f. La que antiguamente se habló y no se habla ya como propia y natural de un país o nación.

~ viva.
1. f. La que actualmente se habla en un país o nación.

Vale, son definiciones ajenas. Pero ¿son útiles? ¿Qué quiere decir "que se habla en un país"? Según las definiciones ahí parece que el latín está a la vez viva (porque se habla de el Vaticano, que es un país) y muerta (pues me parece que "natural" está en la definición de "lengua muerta" específicamente para excluir ese caso). ¿El quichua está viva o muerta? No es lengua oficial de ningún país, que yo sepa, pero es la "lengua de corazón" de millones de personas.

Y vuelvo a preguntar: ¿cuál dialecto es "la lengua"?

[Tomisimo]

Originally Posted by Elaina

Me gustaría aprender algun dialecto. Muchos de nuestros pacientes hablan el español como su segunda lengua ya que su primera lengua es alguna forma de dialecto. Sé que hay varios asi que no sé cual sería mejor para aprender.

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

@Elaina: Cuidado con confundir "dialecto" con "lengua" o "idioma". Un dialecto es una variante que de una lengua. Con frecuencia, se le llama "dialecto" a las lenguas indígenas de algunos países, pero en realidad son lenguas en toda forma.

Specifically in Mexico, a lot of people call the indigenous languages "dialectos", so sometimes I have used that term to make myself understood, even though I know it's wrong.

Dialects are mutually intelligible, with some differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, like American English and British English.

Languages may be derived from the same source (for example Romance languages), but are generally not mutually intelligible.

There is some truth in the quote "a language is a dialect with an army". For example, many people consider Catalán a separate language from Provençal, spoken in the South of France. Others conisder them both dialects of Occitan since they are mutually intelligible.