language

[Tom Priestly]

Sandra,
I wish I was not retired but still teaching my 'minority languages'
course - I could use your comments as a good example of the
'literature-as-criterion' argument. You are absolutely right, of
course - but can you draw a clear line between "literature which
counts" and "literature which doesn't quite make it" in this respect?
Where would you put, e.g., Friulian, which almost every Italian
outside Friulia calls a dialect of Italian (even though it is
apparently closer to French than to Italian - but they don't know
that): it had a huge literature in the Middle Ages but virtually
nothing since. Does that literature, which has been far from
"abounding in great writers" for centuries, qualify it as a
"language"?
What about speech-varieties with only oral literature?
Were e.g. Mohawk and Apache not languages until the Mohawks and
Apaches learned to read and write?
And so on ...
And if the Aragonese want to call their way of communicating a
"language", why not let them? They may, given some encouragement,
produce a Nobel prize winner in their own literature one day.
Cheers, Tom
--
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Tom Priestly
9215-69 Street
Edmonton AB
Canada T6B 1V8
phone 780-469-2920
fax 780-492-9106
e-mail: tpriestlashaw.ca
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