undefined | Better HN

0 pointsCushman13y ago0 comments

It's a fuzzy line-- the old adage "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" is more or less accurate. If you're the official language of a country or religion, or are used extensively in business or politics, you get to be "Standard". If you're only spoken by a sub-national cultural group, or appear only in "informal" media and popular culture, you're just a dialect. The distinction itself actually is controversial, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics)

Not that there's anything wrong with having a standard language for business or politics, as long as you don't think that says something about people who grew up in the wrong place or class.

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

leephillips13y ago· 1 in thread

I think I get all that. So is there room for the idea of a vernacular that is not a "real English", to use your term? Or not the "relative equal" of Standard English? Can there be, or are there in the wild, vernaculars that are something other than these things?

CushmanOP13y ago

Absolutely, and I would take jargons as an example. American Legal English is a kind of English, but it's not "real" in the sense that there are ideas in English that it can't properly express, and vice versa, and even skilled legal practitioners frequently make inconsistent mistakes. This is predicted by the fact that it is learned in adulthood; the language has no native speakers. Conversely, among languages spoken from birth, we expect and find that they are internally consistent and of roughly equivalent expressive value.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse