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« earned its own spot » Linguistically, this chart doesn't have much value. Not sure what criteria were used for inclusion of this or that item, perhaps just p
by Lumich 2mo ago
« earned its own spot »
Linguistically, this chart doesn't have much value. Not sure what criteria were used for inclusion of this or that item, perhaps just presence in some ISO standard. “German” per se doesn't mean much, so-called “high-German” („hochdeutsch“, meaning „oberdeutsch“ in opposition to „niederdeutsch“), the language that you and I speak, is an artificial synthesis and administrative compromise on written variations that is not organically rooted in dialectical evolution and historically has been imposed by schooling (which has led to the eradication of the Northern dialects, „platt“, which are derived from old Saxon and thus are related to English), so it is questionable what its meaning should be in this chart.
Yiddish is a colonial sociolect and somewhat marginal to the evolution, so again, not clear why it was included. IIRC, Koestler wrote in “The Thirteenth Tribe” (where he rejects the mainstream hypothesis of the origin and nature of Eastern Jewry) that Yiddish is based on the South-Eastern variants, not on the South-Western variants.
Looking at the Latin languages, similar inadequacies can be seen. Very superficial and misleading, all in all.
Maybe this chart is meant more to showcase CSS and web graphics than linguistics.
- tacker2000 2mo agoYes, why include Bavarian explicitly? You could have included Tyrolean, Viennese, or whatever which are all local dialects on par with "Bavarian". These all belong to the Upper German dialects, as seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects Looks like this is just some Vibecoded app, with no real science behind it.
- nuxi 2mo agoAren't most Austrian dialects considered as sub-dialects of Bavarian? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language#Geographical_distribution_and_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language#Geographical...
- ithkuil 2mo agoDoes it mean the Lombard dialect of northern Italy is colonial sociolect too?
- Lumich 2mo agoNo. How did you arrive at that conclusion? The equivalent for Italian would be colonization of some area (say, somewhere around the Mediterranean or Black Sea) by Venetians and other Adriatic or Northern Italic peoples, founding new urban centers, developing a mish-mash of their original Romance dialects, and exerting cultural influence via their more advanced culture/technology ; and then some local non-Italic people adapting to that via economic/cultural exchange, losing their native language in the process, as they had already lost their original religion by converting to Judaism. Read Koestler's book to understand (or get an AI summary).
- ithkuil 2mo agoGermanic tribes did colonize northern Italy and eventually used the local latin language with heavy borrowings from their original language. Not sure why you used the word "colonizer" for Jews living in Germany. Perhaps I misunderstood, but given the book you referenced I made an educated guess
- Lumich 2mo ago« used the word "colonizer" for Jews living in Germany » I didn't. Rather, "Germans" (Suebians, Saxons, etc) settled in ("colonized") Eastern Europe, beyond the Empire, typically at the invitation of the local rulers. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochmittelalterliche_Ostsiedlung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hochmittelalterliche_Ostsiedlu... That's where the contact with Eastern Jews happened, which, according to Koestler, gave rise to Yiddish. Yes, the Langobards and the Goths settling in Italy and Spain lost their language, but the medieval Germans settling in Eastern Europe a couple hundred years later did not.