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> Another group of activists called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence created a Polari Bible, running a Polari wordlist through a computer program on an Engli

> Another group of activists called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence created a Polari Bible, running a Polari wordlist through a computer program on an English version of the Bible. > “And the rib, which the Duchess Gloria had lelled from homie, made she a palone, and brought her unto the homie.” Translation: “And the rib which God had taken from man was made into a woman and brought to the man.” I'm interested how a language is judged to be distinctly different such that it can be called a separate language and not a dialect or variant. If the language heavily borrows sentence structure and filler words from English, is it a separate language or merely a variant or dialect?

willvarfar 9y ago
> It developed from an earlier form of language called Parlyaree which had roots in Italian and rudimentary forms of language used for communication by sailors around the Mediterranean. > Polari itself had Parlyaree as a base, but once in Britain was supplemented with a wealth of slang terminology from different sources, including Cockney Rhyming Slang, backslang (pronouncing a word as if it was spelt backwards), French, Yiddish and American airforce slang. So perhaps its a dialect of Italian which borrows heavily from English? Or?
apendleton 9y ago
To the extent that there's a rule to go by, it's that in general dialects are mutually intelligible and languages are not, and video of this speech is not comprehensible at all to me (a native English speaker), so that arguably pushes it into "language." But of course there really isn't a rule, though. In practice what gets called a language vs. a dialect is mostly political. Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are at least somewhat mutually intelligible, and Moldovan and Romanian are essentially the same language but for a border in between, as are Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin. By contrast, Mandarin and Cantonese aren't mutually intelligible at all but are supposedly both "Chinese dialects," and ditto for the various colloquial flavors of Arabic. The saying among linguists is "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
azernik 9y ago
A shprakhe iz a dialekt mit en armey un a flot. It's a political distinction, and linguists generally try not to make that distinction, using words like "tongue" (for the language/dialect) or "speech community" (for the people who speak it). cf. the way that Serbian/Croatian, or Danish/Swedish, are considered different languages, while the much more distinct Arabic and Chinese spoken tongues are considered dialects. (Note - Tunisian is considered a separate "language" in Tunisia, purely because of the way Tunisians view it. It's not actually any more distinct from other Arabics than, say, Iraqi or Moroccan.) Or the way that Dutch is considered a separate language, while the very similar tongues that exist in Germany on a continuum between Standard German and Dutch are considered German (or Frisian, or Dutch) dialects.

willvarfar 9y ago

> It developed from an earlier form of language called Parlyaree which had roots in Italian and rudimentary forms of language used for communication by sailors around the Mediterranean. > Polari itself had Parlyaree as a base, but once in Britain was supplemented with a wealth of slang terminology from different sources, including Cockney Rhyming Slang, backslang (pronouncing a word as if it was spelt backwards), French, Yiddish and American airforce slang. So perhaps its a dialect of Italian which borrows heavily from English? Or?

apendleton 9y ago

To the extent that there's a rule to go by, it's that in general dialects are mutually intelligible and languages are not, and video of this speech is not comprehensible at all to me (a native English speaker), so that arguably pushes it into "language." But of course there really isn't a rule, though. In practice what gets called a language vs. a dialect is mostly political. Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are at least somewhat mutually intelligible, and Moldovan and Romanian are essentially the same language but for a border in between, as are Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin. By contrast, Mandarin and Cantonese aren't mutually intelligible at all but are supposedly both "Chinese dialects," and ditto for the various colloquial flavors of Arabic. The saying among linguists is "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

azernik 9y ago

A shprakhe iz a dialekt mit en armey un a flot. It's a political distinction, and linguists generally try not to make that distinction, using words like "tongue" (for the language/dialect) or "speech community" (for the people who speak it). cf. the way that Serbian/Croatian, or Danish/Swedish, are considered different languages, while the much more distinct Arabic and Chinese spoken tongues are considered dialects. (Note - Tunisian is considered a separate "language" in Tunisia, purely because of the way Tunisians view it. It's not actually any more distinct from other Arabics than, say, Iraqi or Moroccan.) Or the way that Dutch is considered a separate language, while the very similar tongues that exist in Germany on a continuum between Standard German and Dutch are considered German (or Frisian, or Dutch) dialects.