Fāngyán 方言 ("topolect") is a very convenient concept if you want to be linguistically vague and imprecise. You simply don't need to worry about scientific classification, they're all just speech forms of different places. In the fāngyán 方言 ("topolect") way of looking at linguistic variety, all we need to do is specify where a certain lect, whether large or small, is spoken. language, than you can buy into the Chinese concept of fāngyán 方言 ("topolect", almost universally mistranslated as "dialect"), which makes no effort to differentiate between "language" and "dialect". If you want a real cop-out to the question of dialect vs. This is something that I've written about endlessly on Language Log and elsewhere. On the other hand, I am not guilty of seeking "to delegitimize the very notion of distinguishing languages from dialects", since I believe that the mutual intelligibility (or lack thereof) between forms of speech is a workable approach to the problem of dialect vs. It is, as the author correctly states, "a joke". I am guilty of being dismissive of the saying itself since I believe that it is irrelevant to the serious study of linguistics. If so, I am both guilty and not guilty as charged. 273, ostensibly as belonging to the dismissive school.
#NAVY PERSIAN LINGUIST TO SPANISH LINGUIST PDF#
The paper is available as a pdf from and ResearchGate. Linguists from both schools invoke the joke to avoid discussing political factors in their own work. Linguists apparently take two main approaches to the witticism: a ‘dismissive’ approach which seeks to delegitimize the very notion of distinguishing languages from dialects, and an ‘engaged’ approach which highlights the non-linguistic factors at play in language-dialect disputes. This article gives a brief history of the witticism, documenting both a surprising inability to cite it correctly and an equally surprising willingness to alter the original wording. The Weinreich witticism, ‘a language is a dialect with an army and navy’, enjoys great popularity among linguists. Now we have it in Alexander Maxwell's "When theory is a joke: The Weinreich witticism in Linguistics", Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 28.2 (2018), 263-292. I've long wished for a thorough, impartial, informed examination of the army-navy quip on historical, linguistic, and political grounds. Subsequently, however, Weinreich did make a point of popularizing the saying, so it is not entirely wrong to associate it with him.Ĭountless pundits have adduced the army-navy witticism in support of their view that the only real difference between a dialect and a language is military power), which is to abandon linguistics for politics.
#NAVY PERSIAN LINGUIST TO SPANISH LINGUIST SERIES#
Readers of Language Log are certainly no strangers to it, since we've written a number of posts that are about the adage or mention it prominently (see Readings below), and it is often cited in the comments, even when there is no conceivable rhyme or reason for doing so.Īctually, it wasn't Max Weinreich (1894-1969), a specialist in sociolinguistics and Yiddish, who dreamed up the army-navy quip, but - by his own testimony - someone who attended a series of his lectures and mentioned it to him after one of them. It may well be the most frequently invoked formula in all of linguistics. See, I didn't even quote the whole quip, and you already knew that this post is about Max Weinreich's ubiquitous saying: "A language is a dialect with an army and navy".
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