Relationship between languages

Relationship between languages

• possible interactions between language and society
• social structure influence
• language influence society
• mutual influence
• no influence

• Culture:
• how a group of people perceives, believes, thinks, behaves (different verbal and nonverbal communication patterns, values, cognitive styles, expectancies, etc.)
• Three main factors that distinguish one culture from another:
• 1) ethnicity
• 2) language
• 3) social class

Inter-relationship between linguistic items and social evaluations a. butter, budder, bu’er b. fishing, fishin’ etc… p.26 Wardhaugh

Okay, can we define “dialect”

• Nope
• But I like analogy with speciation. If it is different but mutually intelligible, I’d call it a dialect. If it so different that speakers can not understand each other, a language.
• But sometimes the distinction is political. Think of Chinese: Mandarin vs. Cantonese and conversely Swedish vs Danish

Taking a slow walk through villages from southern Italy to northern France? Where does French end and Italian begin? Some French dialects are very Italian and some Italian dialects are very French. (p. 44)

English Scottish American English

A Scots sampler Below is a selection of Scots/English differences in three parts (Scots on the left, English on the right). All listed forms are in current use. As regards pronunciation, whatever their typical speech (more Scots, more English, or mixed), a majority of the Scottish people differ in speech from other Anglophones in two ways that are shibboleths of Scottishness: (1) a tapped or rolled alveolar r in such words as breathe, world, and there; (2) a voiceless velar fricative as in the ch of such words as ach, loch, Bach, Munich.

(1) Pronunciation and typical spelling hame, stane, sair, gae home, stone, sore, go hoose, oot, doon/doun, coo house, out, down, cow ba(w), ha(w), faut, saut ball, hall, fault, salt buit, guid, muin, puir boot, good, moon, poor licht, micht, richt, sicht light, might, right, sight

(2) Grammar lookit, mendit looked, mended tell/tellt, sell/sellt tell/told, sell/sold gae/gaed/gan go/went gie/gied/gien give/gave/given eye/een eye/eyes he’ll no can come the day He won’t be able to come today ah micht could gae the morn I might be able to go tomorrow ah dinna(e) ken I don’t know we couldna(e) dae it We couldn’t do it he’ll no be comin He won’t be coming that’s me awa(e) hame I’m going home now ah, it’s yirsel Ah, it’s you

(3) Vocabulary an ashet a serving dish a bairn a child tae blether to talk nonsense a brae a slope (of a hill) braw fine, beautiful, handsome tae dicht to clean, wipe douce sweet, especially in manner a dwam a stupor, dazed state fantoosh flashy glaikit stupid-looking