Re: If you were to design a language, how many vowels and consonants would you use?

In article
<c5a19550-40ff-42b0-816e-14e41ee16a67@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Jens S. Larsen" <jens_s_larsen@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Nathan Sanders:

"Jens S. Larsen" <jens_s_lar...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
What makes you think there are different languages?
[...]
Upon what evidence do you think there is only one language?

I do it the other way round. There is no evidence of difference of
language being anything else than ultimately a difference of dialect,
and then we might as well use the term dialect for the differences and
language for the sameness.

Why focus so much attention on changing accepted standard terminology?

It seems like it would be far more productive just to do actual
linguistics, rather than (fruitlessly) try to impose your own
idiosyncratic jargon on the field.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The whole dialect business
    ... >> competent language in its own right'? ... These characterise a DIALECT ... > Dialect speakers always understand the Standard form (colloqueal Scots ... English itself didn't develop a standard form until the ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: The whole dialect business
    ... >>> competent language in its own right'? ... These characterise a DIALECT ... >> Dialect speakers always understand the Standard form (colloqueal Scots ... >> and English both understand The Sun), but they do not always understand ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: The whole dialect business
    ... >> literal definition of the distinction between dialect and language. ... >> Zealand, RP English, etc.) which are called dialects of English despite ... that linguists routinely call these tongues "languages", specifically, ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • OT Southern Chinese dialects, was: Electric Kettle, was: Hello and Thank You
    ... Hokkien would be the Kejia language? ... word that English speakers in Singapore use to refer to Minnan dialect. ... You are correct that many languages are spoken in Hainan. ...
    (rec.food.drink.tea)
  • Re: nationalists, languages and dialects
    ... >> speak the language or dialect that you use in the home, ... happen with two mutually unintelligible "dialects" of German, ...
    (sci.lang)