[Foundation-l] Sassarese and Sardinian

[Marco Chiesa]

GerardM wrote:

>It does however not change the facts about the Italian language. The notion
>that someone knows more a language or a country because he lives there or
>speaks the language is wrong. When I lived and worked in Great Britain, my
>spelling was better then the spelling of my colleagues and I have proof read
>their texts on many occasions.. Yes, I make mistakes but everything is
>relative.
>Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>  
>
I think it all comes down to what linguists call a language and what 
people who speak that language know. You may not know anything about 
linguistics and speak correctly a language, and vice versa. For 
languages which have an institution that defines what is correct and 
what is not (e.g. Accademia della Crusca for Italian) it is easy to 
adhere to all definitions, ISO codes, etc. However, when it comes to 
regional languages/dialects, the situation is more complicated. For 
Italy, there is an added problem that the traditional divisions between 
dialects seems to be different from ISO defines as languages (for 
example, Western and Eastern Lombard are considered to be two separate 
groups of dialects, rather than variants of one Lombard language, that 
no one in Lombard has ever heard of as such, but that's what linguist 
say). I appreciate the effort of the LangCom to set rules that adhere to 
an international standard, and you're right to say that if someone does 
not agree with what ISO says they should complain to ISO and not to the 
LangCom. But at the same time people who want to start writing an 
encyclopaedia in their own dialect do not understand why they cannot do 
it while their neighbours cannot (sometimes people from Calabria ask why 
they cannot have a wiki while Sicilian have, and they may feel offended 
if they're told that their language is, actually, Sicilian). Sardinian 
is a different story, because traditionally Italian people are taught 
that Sardinian and Friulian are languages and the rest is pretty much 
dialects of Italian. But again, it is difficult to explain to someone 
who knows nothing about linguistics why Sassarese would be ok and 
Bergamasco is not.

Cruccone (who knows very little about linguistics)