You already know that the word "language" refers to our ability to communicate with
speech. But we saw that what exactly that ability is, turned out to be quite a quagmire.
So now let's turn to the other thing we mean by "language" - you know, the specific languages
we speak with their own words, their own grammar and their own pronunciation.
I mean, English is a language, right? And this is English! But so is this.
And back in time, this was English. Even further back, but we call this English, too.
Wait, I get it. This is Old English, and this one is Middle English, and this is Modern English.
So are these three languages or three different stages of the same language?
But I know, history's always messier than we want it to be. So let's just stick to the
present. Here are some basic words in English. And these are the same words in a totally
different dialect of English. They're two dialects because, if the same language gets
spoken in different ways by different groups of people, we call those different dialects.
Moving on, let's translate those words into Norwegian (the Norwegian language). And here's how we would write
those same words in Swedish (the Swedish language). So, Swedish and Norwegian are different languages,
but British and Scottish are different dialects of the same language?
Where's the line between a dialect and a language anyway? Is it just arbitrary or conventional?
Maybe in the end it really is buttoned up by a phrase Max Weinreich passed along. During a lecture
series he gave in the 1940s, a member of his audience made the witty remark, "a language is a dialect
with an army and a navy." If that's so, it's about politics and power just as much as it's
about grammar.
Language vs. languages, languages vs. dialects... oh, what a mess I've dragged you into! And
with that, I welcome you to my YouTube channel. Subscribe if you want to learn more, because
from the looks of it we've seriously got some stuff to sort out together.