[Foundation-l] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)

[Mark Williamson]

In the science of linguistics, standard languages are considered to be
dialects which, simply through historical and political factors,
rather than any intrinsic expressive capabilities, are given added
prestige and wider realms of use than other dialects.

I am not from Italy, but speaking generally about languages and
language varieties around the world, I will say that it is true that
for the most part, any concept that can be expressed in one language
can be expressed in another. In some cases, this may require the use
of loanwords or other lexical adaptations, but there is no such thing
as a language variety that is "unsuited" to discuss politics, science
or philosophy. Just because the variety has not been used for that
kind of thing in the past does not mean it is incapable of expressing
those concepts.

When you say that the "dialect", by which I assume you mean the
nonstandard dialect, is only "for daily and familiar use", this
implies to me that just because this is the usual realm of these
language varieties, that it is impossible or not feasible or desirable
to use them outside of these domains. None of these are true, although
of course "desirable" is an own decision of the speaker.

-m.

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 4:42 AM, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>  On 19.09.2010 13:01, Marcus Buck wrote:
>>    An'n 19.09.2010 11:32, hett Mark Williamson schreven:
>>> We have heard this type of criticism before, that lower-prestige
>>> varieties or languages that are not "official" or "national" languages
>>> are somehow intrinsically incapable or unsuited to encyclopedic
>>> writing. Article quality on a Wiki is not high or low due to some
>>> intrinsic characteristic or trait of the language variety used, it is
>>> a result of the content not being well-developed. Also, many languages
>>> in a relatively small territory does not mean living in a ghetto; on
>>> the contrary, count how many national languages there are in Europe,
>>> then count how many across all of Latin America, then take a look at
>>> economic indicators and you'll see that there is no necessary
>>> correlation between linguistic diversity and poverty.
>>>
>>> -m.
>>
>> Estonian is a nice example. There are only 1.25 million speakers of
>> Estonian. That's a rather low number. Less than the speaker numbers of
>> most of the Italian tongues Eco is talking about (Piedmontese has 2
>> million, Sicilian even 8 million). But the Estonian-speaking society is
>> in no way inferior to other societies. If Siclian or Piedmontese were
>> not suppressed by the Italian standard language and were allowed to
>> establish their own education systems there would be no problem. There
>> would be no "ghettoization".
>>
>> Marcus Buck
>> User:Slomox
>>
>
> The example of Eco is a little bit complex.
>
> In few words: an article about philosophy written in a dialect has not
> the same value of another written in a standard language.
>
> It is normal because any standard language has different registers, the
> dialect has limited registers and in general only for daily and familiar
> use.
>
> The synthesis is in one sentence "Infatti il dialetto, ottimo per il
> comico, il familiare, il concreto quotidiano, il
> nostalgico-sentimentale, e spesso il poetico, alle nostre orecchie
> deprime i contenuti concettuali nati e sviluppatisi in altra lingua"
> which can be translated "The dialect, excellent for the funny, the
> homely things, the daily use, the nostalgic memories, and frequently for
> poetry, lowers in our understanding the conceptual contents  born and
> developed in other language".
>
> It seems to me normal.
>
> The standard Italian has had eight centuries to become the current
> standard language, and the Latin has been used in Italy for a lot of
> time to write scientific and philosophical books (and it is still used
> for ecclesiastic matters).
>
> I understand the position of Eco because for eight centuries no language
> has been ghettoized in Italy, if the Italian standard is used as
> "super-language" probably there is a reason.
>
> The process for a dialect to be a language is long and complex.
>
> In the opposite side the Italian standard is not suitable for familiar
> language: it's a "standard" and aseptic language without "nuances".
>
> If a dialect would be a language, probably it should accept to lose the
> wealth of words and expressions for daily communication.
>
> It is what happened for Rumantsch Grischun and Limba Sarda who are
> "artificial" super-languages not used in the families or in the group of
> friends, but at the same time so weak to clash the expansion of more
> common standard languages.
>
> Ilario
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>