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> "American" is a language. "American" covers a number of very distinct varieties of English. It isn't considered its own language for political and cultural r
by derleth 14y ago
> "American" is a language.
"American" covers a number of very distinct varieties of English. It isn't considered its own language for political and cultural reasons, not necessarily linguistic ones. (As another example, look at the divide between Hindi and Urdu.)
- kylebgorman 14y agoThere is no legitimate linguistic authority that recognizes a language or dialect called "American". Even the term "General American", used to discuss features shared by most forms of American English requires "scare-quotes" to indicate that it's an abstraction across many different dialects.
- fusiongyro 14y agoBy the "standard" of mutual intelligibility you could cook up a much more compelling case for AAVE as a separate language from English than American English from British English. I get that you're playing devil's advocate, but seriously.