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«A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot»

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:41 am
by M. Henri Day
Whether or no that chap who famously goes to and fro upon the Earth would accept your humble servant without a letter of introduction, I am convinced that all my fellow Agorists will find this article concerning how many languages He encounters in his travels as fascinating as I did. And it also provides us with what seems to be the original version of that much cited aphorism concerning what it takes to make a language out of a dialect....

Henri

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 6:16 pm
by Slava
The politics of how many languages there are (or aren't) never occurred to me. Add in the religious aspects and you've got a nice olla podrida going there.

I wonder how many there will be in the next edition. Which should be coming out this year, though the website still lists only the 2005 edition.

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:56 pm
by Perry
Henri,

Welcome back to the fold!!!

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:06 pm
by Stargzer
Henri,

Welcome back to the fold!!!
Alas, M. Henri is still the Prodigal Physician. Check the date; Slava was trolling through old posts. Good posts, but old just the same.

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:57 pm
by Slava
Thanks for catching that, stargzer. I wasn't looking forward to being the one to point out that the original post was nearly 4 years old. Excellent post, which for some reason never even got a response, but it seems the author has abandoned the fold. Over eleven-hundred posts in less than a year, and then, POOF!

I do hope that trolling old posts doesn't make me a troll.

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 12:48 am
by Stargzer
I thought Henri was here for more than a year, but it looks like it was only 11 months. He was the 16th refugee from the old site to sign up, I was 18th. That particular post is 2005, the number is his total number of posts. The newest post I can find in searching his post history is January 15. Here's that thread for the last series of post, started by the GWOTD Fluctuate:

http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewt ... =7015#7015

I miss M. Henri. And Grant. And Uncronopio. And Tim. And Palewriter. And many others ...

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 7:07 pm
by Perry
Chalk it up to wishful thinking. Where have all the pundits gone?

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:37 pm
by LukeJavan8
Old postings. But I am learning things. I won't question
expecting an answer, but I'll bet the Old Site was
YourDictionar:Word of the Day. I recognize names here
that were in older threads there.

I guess I am a refugee here from that same site, as it is now
defunct, and I've found 'safe haven' here, with some
fine folks helping me out. Thank you very much.

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 1:21 pm
by sluggo
Now here's a nice bump. I hadn't seen this before- great to have this resource.


This paragraph in the article hung me up:

>> However, such tests are not always clear-cut. Unintelligible dialects are sometimes combined into one language if they share a literature or other cultural heritage. And the reverse can be true, as in the case of Danish and Norwegian. <<

That's where they left it, without explaining exactly what the reverse of that sentence is...

Intelligible dialects are sometimes combined into one language if they share a literature or other cultural heritage?

Unintelligible dialects are never combined into one language if they share a literature or other cultural heritage?

Unintelligible dialects are sometimes combined into one language if they lack a literature or other cultural heritage?

Not clear cut indeed!
It has to be the first, but you'd have to know something about mutual Nordic intelligibility to pin it down. If you don't, you're just set adrift.

Somebody at NYT got paid to proofread an article on language... :roll:

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 1:28 pm
by LukeJavan8
Totally hilarity. Proofreaders.
Was reading a novel last night.
"The seargeant lead Sir Basil, the suspect, out the
main door".
Lead/led.
Makes you wonder who pays these people.

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 10:24 am
by skinem
I'm still hung up over the line of "unintelligible dialects"...must have been "intelligible" to someone at some point...

...otherwise it's just gibberish.

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 12:52 pm
by LukeJavan8
It has to be a "typo" or some such thing. It makes
no sense as it stands to me either. Dialects form
new language, maybe, but not unintelligible ones.
(Klingon, maybe?)