QotD [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

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"Une langue, c'est un dialecte qui possède une armée, une marine et une aviation." -- Hubert Lyautey (1854 - 1934)

This quote is better known in the form used by linguist Max Weinreich (1893 - 1969) who heard it from some third party and used it in an article in 1945 thus: "A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot" (Well almost -- it seems to be best known, as far as I can tell, in this form, but was published using the Hebrew alphabet.)

[Do I need to give an English translation, or is this one clear enough even to folks who speak neither French nor Yiddish? "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy [and an air force]."]

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There are 9 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

I didn't even realize it was in Yiddish, although your hint about using the Hebrew abugida should have made that clear. I honestly thought I was reading it as variant English.
Guess I'm better at German (and its derivants) than I thought.

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I speak neither Yiddish nor anything more closely related to German than Modern English, but that particular sentence seemed particularly accessible to me. (Just like one line out of a CD full of early Middle English songs jumped out at me as being more intelligible than the rest the first time I heard it.)

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One might also phrase it, "A language is an orphaned dialect," since the definition of a language versus a dialect is loss of mutual intelligibility between speakers of members of the same language family. (Granted, there are other definitions of "language," versus, say "pidgin" or "creole," but those aren't usually used contrastively against "dialect.")

Ahem. What does it say about me that I was able to read both of those in the (quasi-)originals with no problems? :) The first person to say "LANGUAGE GEEK!" will be hunted down, drug out in the street, and shot... ;)

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Damn, I was hoping for something more fun, like a spanking ...

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the definition of a language versus a dialect is loss of mutual intelligibility between speakers of members of the same language family.

Ah, but where do you draw the line for a linguistic family that exhibits a geographical gradation, where everyone can understand their neighbors, but across the entire span there are two or more mutually unintelligible sets?

Having the power to draw those lines is power indeed...

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What does it say about me that I was able to read both of those in the (quasi-)originals with no problems? :)

In Europe that would have gone pretty much without comment. It's only stereotypical Americans, for the most part, that take a perverse pride in being unilingual.

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My browser doesn't understand the entity “&eactutu;” — did you perhaps
mean “é”?

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Fixed now. Surprised nobody else pointed it out earlier. Thanks.

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... as witness the new languages in the Balkans these days.

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