LINGUIST List 2.489

Tue 10 Sep 1991

Disc: Language and dialect

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Karen Kay, Responses /2-473
2. bert peeters, Weinreich
3. Ellen Prince, Re: FYI: Language vs Dialect, Software /2-476
4. , army/navy/nation

> In re: a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
> Herbert Paper told me that he had heard this analogy from
> Weinrich (the father). I searched briefly but unsuccessfully
> for it in his history of Yiddish. His son Gabriel (the physicist)
> told me it sounded like something his father would say but he
> had no specific recollection of it.
This sounds right to me--I took a course on Languages in Contact from
Ilse Lehiste in the late '70's, and I remember her telling us this
definition, and talking about Weinreich. (Sorry, this was in under-
graduate school--a long time ago...)
Karen Kay

> In re: a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
> Herbert Paper told me that he had heard this analogy from
> Weinrich (the father). I searched briefly but unsuccessfully
> for it in his history of Yiddish. His son Gabriel (the physicist)
> told me it sounded like something his father would say but he
> had no specific recollection of it.
Richard Bailey refers of course to Weinreich (Uriel), not to Weinrich
(Harald).
Dr Bert Peeters Tel: +61 02 202344
Department of Modern Languages 002 202344
University of Tasmania at Hobart Fax: 002 202186
GPO Box 252C Bert.Peetersmodlang.utas.edu.au
Hobart TAS 7001
Australia

>Date: Thu, 5 Sep 91 08:33:12 CST
>From: txsil!huttardallas%utafll.uta.eduRICEVM1.RICE.EDU
>Subject: language & dialect: thanks!
>
>
> The trickle of replies about the origin of "a language is a dialect
> with its own army and navy" seems to have stopped now, so I'll thank
> you all for your interesting range of responses. To summarize for
> those interested, and for those who compulsively read everything in
> LINGUIST: replies via LINGUIST or direct to me came up with Bill
> Welmers, Roman Jakobson via Paul Kiparsky, Otto Jespersen, and Max
> Weinreich. Weinreich got two mentions, but both derive from the same
> source, _The Native Speaker is Dead_; the reference there to MW's
> originating that aphorism sounds about as solidly based on hearsay and
> unexamined memory as the other replies. Dissertation on the rise and
> spread of ((meta)socio)linguistic myths, anyone?
> Thanks again.
> George Huttar
huh??? as one of the two who answered 'max weinreich', i'm totally
confused by this 'derivation'. what is _the native speaker is dead_? and
why is it my source?

The notion that an army and a navy is important for a nation is not new.
Shelby Foote, in volume 1 of his narrative history of the Civil War (p 791),
quotes the following lines by William Gladstone, Chanc>ellor of the Exchequer:
There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made
an army. They are making, it appears, a navy. And they have made what is more
than either; they have make a nation.
Bob Yates