"Iberian" languages questions

[Queequeg]

Changes in vocabulary.

One word does it?  Soda/pop, hoagie/grinder/sub?

I'm not an expert, but I think it's a lot of systematic differences.  So pop v. soda might not be it, but Appalachian would probably fit pretty easily as a dialect. 

[Jacob]

You'd have a far easier time understanding Swedish than a Portugese man would trying to communicate with someone monolingual in Catalan.

'

Definitely.

My point was simply that the Anglosphere is much wider than the regional accents found within the US. It does include Jamaican patois, Jo'burg pidgin, Delhi-standard English, Glaswegian, inner-city African-American, South Bostonian, and the Newfie brogue. Mutual incomprehension is still distinctly possible; just as it is with Spanish speakers (the comparison I was responding to was the Anglosphere vs Spanish-speakers, not "Iberian languages").

[Razgovory]

Jamaican isn't a patois.  It's a creole.  Pidgins aren't dialects either.  They are pidgins.  Neither of these are dialects.

[Jacob]

Jamaican isn't a patois.  It's a creole.  Pidgins aren't dialects either.  They are pidgins.  Neither of these are dialects.

... well according to Wikipedia, the Jamaicans themselves call it patois (or rather "patwa"), so I'm pretty content with calling it that even if linguists want to call it a creole

As for whether they're dialects or pidgins or indeed related but distincts languages (such as Astur-Leonese), that's beside the point I was making - namely that the Anglosphere has a wide range of ways of speaking and they are not always mutually intelligible.

Of course, you could exclude Jamaican patois and various pidgins if you wish, but then if you're complaining mutually unintelligible ways of speaking (and you weren't, but that's what I was talking about), then you'd probably have to exclude distinct languages (such as Astur-Leonese and Portuguese) when talking about linguistic variance within Spanish.

[Razgovory]

If they are different languages then they really aren't in the Anglosphere are they?

[Queequeg]

I'd consider Jamaica Anglosphere. The upper and middle class speaks English.

[garbon]

Actually I think you can exclude Jamaican patois as it isn't the same as Jamaican English. I looked up some youtube videos of Jamaican English and I don't think there would be much trouble there.

Also Jacob I think you're misconstruing what I said which that in general, English speakers generally don't have to worry that they'll be understood by other English speakers. Not sure how grabbing out isolated speech patterns here and there counters that.  Now perhaps our posters here are overstating the degree of incompatibility between different Spanish dialects / different Portuguese dialects but on the face of what they are saying - sounds different.

[Razgovory]

English is a bit of an odd bird as languages go.  It was standardize fairly early on so separate regional languages died away a long time ago.  It doesn't have any close relatives with the exception of Scots and Frisian, two minor languages.  The difference between "dialect" and "language" is largely political.  Take for example Scandinavia and Italy:  Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are considered different languages, though I'm told they are mutually intelligible at least to some degree (Jake would know more, I can't speak any of those languages).  On the other hand, German is considered a language with several dialects that aren't mutually intelligible.  I suspect this is because of politics.  Calling Swedish a different language rather then a dialect helped facilitate a separate Swedish nation identity, while calling German one language instead of several helped facilitate the idea of a unified German nation.

Jake is picking out these pidgins and creoles, but these should be considered their own language and not part of English just as English isn't considered a dialect of French.  After all, modern English is a mixture of Old English with French and could be considered a creole of sorts.

[Jacob]

Actually I think you can exclude Jamaican patois as it isn't the same as Jamaican English. I looked up some youtube videos of Jamaican English and I don't think there would be much trouble there.

Also Jacob I think you're misconstruing what I said which that in general, English speakers generally don't have to worry that they'll be understood by other English speakers. Not sure how grabbing out isolated speech patterns here and there counters that.  Now perhaps our posters here are overstating the degree of incompatibility between different Spanish dialects / different Portuguese dialects but on the face of what they are saying - sounds different.

My point was simply that the if you are comparing mutual intelligibility amongst Spanish speakers to that amongst English speakers, you should exclude roughly the same level of "isolated speech patterns". I don't think your initial comparison did that, Raz and Spellus' tangents about creoles, patois, dialects, and accents notwithstanding. If you exclude Jamaican patois from the English comparison, you should exclude the Spanish/Portuguese equivalents; if you exclude Glaswegian, or South Boston, or urban African-American, or Delhi-standard from the English analysis, you should exclude the Spanish/Portuguese equivalents.

I think you're right that if you're a speaker of something close to TV-American or RP-British you won't have to worry about anyone in the Anglosphere understanding. I'd venture, however, that if you're a speaker of Castilian or Telenovela-Mexican you'd be equally well understood amongst Spanish-speakers worldwide. The issue goes the other way. So to the point of unequal comparisons, comparing how well you personally are understood while travelling in the Anglosphere to how much difficulty Breogan may have in understanding Astur-Leonese isn't really sound data analysis IMO.

[mongers]

English is a bit of an odd bird as languages go.  It was standardize fairly early on so separate regional languages died away a long time ago.  It doesn't have any close relatives with the exception of Scots and Frisian, two minor languages.  The difference between "dialect" and "language" is largely political.  Take for example Scandinavia and Italy:  Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are considered different languages, though I'm told they are mutually intelligible at least to some degree (Jake would know more, I can't speak any of those languages).  On the other hand, German is considered a language with several dialects that aren't mutually intelligible.  I suspect this is because of politics.  Calling Swedish a different language rather then a dialect helped facilitate a separate Swedish nation identity, while calling German one language instead of several helped facilitate the idea of a unified German nation.

Jake is picking out these pidgins and creoles, but these should be considered their own language and not part of English just as English isn't considered a dialect of French.  After all, modern English is a mixture of Old English with French and could be considered a creole of sorts.

Raz, not so sure about that, as at it's heart something like 95% of the top 100 most used words are Old English. With then, as you note, a shed load of borrowings from all over the place, principally Latin and French.

[Jacob]

English is a bit of an odd bird as languages go.  It was standardize fairly early on so separate regional languages died away a long time ago.  It doesn't have any close relatives with the exception of Scots and Frisian, two minor languages.  The difference between "dialect" and "language" is largely political.  Take for example Scandinavia and Italy:  Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are considered different languages, though I'm told they are mutually intelligible at least to some degree (Jake would know more, I can't speak any of those languages).  On the other hand, German is considered a language with several dialects that aren't mutually intelligible.  I suspect this is because of politics.  Calling Swedish a different language rather then a dialect helped facilitate a separate Swedish nation identity, while calling German one language instead of several helped facilitate the idea of a unified German nation.

The best Scandinavian example of the language/dialect thing is probably modern Norwegian. Norwegian and Danish shared the same written language until Norwegian independence, at which point they started bringing in all kinds of words that would previously have been considered indications of a heavy dialect, as well as "rationalizing" the spelling (which makes sense IMO), and there you have it - a totally different language.

But yeah, Swedish/Norwegian/Danish are mutually intelligible after a few weeks of being immersed. If someone speaks Swedish or Norwegian at me in Vancouver I'll nod politely. But if I'm in Sweden or Norway for a few weeks I'll pick it up; same with the reading, it's close enough that you can pick it up pretty quickly.

Jake is picking out these pidgins and creoles, but these should be considered their own language and not part of English just as English isn't considered a dialect of French.  After all, modern English is a mixture of Old English with French and could be considered a creole of sorts.

The pidgins and the creoles were incidental to my point, though I expect that those definitions are as much political as the ones you speak of when it comes to accents, dialects and languages.

[Razgovory]

English is a bit of an odd bird as languages go.  It was standardize fairly early on so separate regional languages died away a long time ago.  It doesn't have any close relatives with the exception of Scots and Frisian, two minor languages.  The difference between "dialect" and "language" is largely political.  Take for example Scandinavia and Italy:  Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are considered different languages, though I'm told they are mutually intelligible at least to some degree (Jake would know more, I can't speak any of those languages).  On the other hand, German is considered a language with several dialects that aren't mutually intelligible.  I suspect this is because of politics.  Calling Swedish a different language rather then a dialect helped facilitate a separate Swedish nation identity, while calling German one language instead of several helped facilitate the idea of a unified German nation.

Jake is picking out these pidgins and creoles, but these should be considered their own language and not part of English just as English isn't considered a dialect of French.  After all, modern English is a mixture of Old English with French and could be considered a creole of sorts.

Raz, not so sure about that, as at it's heart something like 95% of the top 100 most used words are Old English. With then, as you note, a shed load of borrowings from all over the place, principally Latin and French.

Yes, but Old English shifted dramatically, not just in vocabulary (which was extensive), but also in grammar when it mixed with French.   It simply wasn't Old English anymore.  It was now a mix of two languages and an entirely new language that wasn't a dialect of either Old English or French.

[garbon]

So to the point of unequal comparisons, comparing how well you personally are understood while travelling in the Anglosphere to how much difficulty Breogan may have in understanding Astur-Leonese isn't really sound data analysis IMO.

Well good thing I didn't do that?  Page 1 we have a discussion on the difficulties of understanding presumably Portugal Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. None of that seems esoteric to me but examples of rather mainstream speech. Totally could be off but I think Portugal and Brazil have the highest concentrations of Portuguese speakers.

Then we also had some bits about Spanish and difficulties of understanding pronunciations in various parts of the same country. Is that comparable to picking a few places out of anglosphere?

Also, who said anything about excluding South Boston, urban African-American or Delhi-standard - I didn't agree to that and I'm not sure I'd agree either that there would be difficulties to the extent that two speakers would be unable to communicate.

Not sure what to make of this TV-American unless the suggestion is that most Americans all speak that way - as again like I said there really isn't a lot of difficultly understanding English as one travels about America.

[dps]

The difference between a dialect and a distinct language is that theoretically, dialects of a language are mutually understandable, while distinct languages aren't.  But even that breaks down, in part because what's mutually understandable can be an individual thing, but beyond that there are also degrees of understandability.  Even professional linguists can't agree on how many living Romance languages there are--some only acknowledge 5 (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian), while others would say there are upwards of 20.

[Razgovory]

Actually I think you can exclude Jamaican patois as it isn't the same as Jamaican English. I looked up some youtube videos of Jamaican English and I don't think there would be much trouble there.

Also Jacob I think you're misconstruing what I said which that in general, English speakers generally don't have to worry that they'll be understood by other English speakers. Not sure how grabbing out isolated speech patterns here and there counters that.  Now perhaps our posters here are overstating the degree of incompatibility between different Spanish dialects / different Portuguese dialects but on the face of what they are saying - sounds different.

My point was simply that the if you are comparing mutual intelligibility amongst Spanish speakers to that amongst English speakers, you should exclude roughly the same level of "isolated speech patterns". I don't think your initial comparison did that, Raz and Spellus' tangents about creoles, patois, dialects, and accents notwithstanding. If you exclude Jamaican patois from the English comparison, you should exclude the Spanish/Portuguese equivalents; if you exclude Glaswegian, or South Boston, or urban African-American, or Delhi-standard from the English analysis, you should exclude the Spanish/Portuguese equivalents.

I think you're right that if you're a speaker of something close to TV-American or RP-British you won't have to worry about anyone in the Anglosphere understanding. I'd venture, however, that if you're a speaker of Castilian or Telenovela-Mexican you'd be equally well understood amongst Spanish-speakers worldwide. The issue goes the other way. So to the point of unequal comparisons, comparing how well you personally are understood while travelling in the Anglosphere to how much difficulty Breogan may have in understanding Astur-Leonese isn't really sound data analysis IMO.

I don't think anyone is gong to exclude Glaswegian, South Boston or urban African American (I don't know exactly what Delhi standard is).  These are all intelligible to an English speaker.  It require no long term immersion.  While there may be some misunderstanding most people will understand each other.

The point about English derived creole languages is they aren't a comparable to Iberian languages.  Castillian and and Catalan developed side by side as separate dialects or languages.  Catalan isn't derived from Castillian.  An English-Yoruba Creole is derived from English and Yoruba.  It's not a dialect of either or both, but neither one.