On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 8:56 PM, Crazy Lover
<always_yours.forever(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
It is inevitable we have to use scientific tools, one
of them is the Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache criterion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbausprache_-_Abstandsprache_-_Dachsprache
I don't know whether it's any use for deciding what to include and
what not to include as a language, but it is certainly interesting
because it shows that the world 'language' as opposed to 'dialect'
has, indeed, two wholly different meanings. On the one hand,
'language' is used for Abstand languages, which are _collections_ of
dialects, on the other hand it is used for Ausbau languages, which are
single dialects with a special status.
We do find this difference in Wikipedia too - where there is an Ausbau
language 'within' an Abstand language, there will usually be a
Wikipedia in the Ausbau language. If there is none, there is not a
single dialect that can lay claim on the Wiki, and one tends to resort
to a single Wikipedia with pages in several different dialects
instead.
--
André Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com