language

[Tom Priestly]

OK. If I understand you right you are wondering about the
classification of "languages." (There are also several definitions of
"minority" !!!)

Linguists try to avoid terms like "language" and "dialect" because
(a) there is no easy way to distinguish between the two things and
(b) the terms are emotionally charged. Well-recognized languages are
of course usually called languages, but ways of talking that are not
normally recognized as languages are a problem. You can use criteria
such as: how different is it from its neighbors (although nobody
really knows how to measure differences) ? does it have its own
literature (but what exactly is a literature?!) and/or other cultural
monuments? and (the subjective one) do its speakers think it is a
separate language?

Which is why I covered myself (so to speak) by saying that Asturian
and Aragonese have semi-official status in Spain. This means that
some more or less important people at least once decided that these
two ways of talking (which many Spaniards probably refer to as
"dialectos") are "languages" according to one or more criteria.

Linguists who do research on ways-of-talking used people who do not
talk the way that the majority in their country talk, have become
used to calling them "minority languages" in order to recognize, most
of all, the subjective criterion.

I hope I haven't bored list members. If so, I'll continue off-list. I
don't wish to give anyone a bad impression of linguists.

Tom


>Do clarify what you mean by "minority languages". Mightn't such
>classification be a rather subjective assessment?