How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book at a Time

Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by Bayart on Monday December 18, 2023 @04:09AM (#38680544)

Hardly. Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages, despite what the name would lead you to think. Quebec French is at most a dialect of French. There's as much different as there is between say RP English and Scottish English.

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by 4ggr0 on Monday December 18, 2023 @04:36AM (#38680691)

As a Swiss who's mother tongue is swiss-german, but also talks french, AND has a French-Canadian co-worker - Disagree.

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by BSDobelix on Monday December 18, 2023 @04:37AM (#38680697)

>Swiss German and Standard High German are entirely different languages

Not a different language but a dialect-group within high german called Alemanic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German

Also interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by ffgjgf1 on Monday December 18, 2023 @05:03AM (#38680802)

Based on that definition Dutch also wouldn’t be a different language but a dialect within High German called Franconian.

Now try telling Dutch people that they don’t actually have their own language and are all speaking Low Country German and see what happens…

Most distinctions between dialects and languages are socio-political and not linguistic.

There is a similar continuum between North/Low German and Frisian. Yet you cross a border and just like Dutch/Franconian it’s no longer a dialect but a different language.

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by acjohnson55 on Monday December 18, 2023 @05:42AM (#38681016)

According to Wikipedia, Franconian is split between Low Franconian dialects, including Dutch, and the others, which underwent the same consonant shift as the High German languages. But I agree that the boundaries of languages are not purely linguistic.

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by BSDobelix on Monday December 18, 2023 @05:36AM (#38680990)

Let's see what happens if you tell them that we all talk Indo-European ;)

Except Hungary, Finnland and Estland

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by acjohnson55 on Monday December 18, 2023 @05:30AM (#38680945)

I don't think you have that quite right. Alemannic does not include Standard High German. Alemannic is a group of High German dialects in the southwestern German-speaking areas.

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by BSDobelix on Monday December 18, 2023 @05:41AM (#38681010)

>>dialect-group within high german

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by BSDobelix on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @02:33AM (#38692880)

>Alemannic does not include Standard High German.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages

>>The High German languages (German: hochdeutsche Mundarten, i.e. High German dialects), or simply High German (Hochdeutsch) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German"

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by ffgjgf1 on Monday December 18, 2023 @04:58AM (#38680785)

To be fair Scots was/is an actual language. Scottish English isn’t it but it certainly was heavily influenced by Scots. In all the three cases you’ve mentioned it’s a spectrum.

The distinction between a language and a dialect is not clear at all. e.g. while it wouldn’t be correct to call Swiss-German a dialect of standard German both languages are German Dialects.

> Quebec French is at most a dialect of French.

Yes it’s a dialect of French, it’s not a dialect or accent of standard French.

There is nothing special about Standard German or French besides the fact that they are dialects which have outcompeted all other dialects of those languages to a less or more successful degree due to entirely political and economical reasons.

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Re:How Africans Are Changing French – One Joke, Rap and Book... by FeloniousHam on Monday December 18, 2023 @01:44PM (#38686459)

""A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" is a phrase attributed to Max Weinreich, a Yiddish scholar and sociolinguist. Weinreich is said to have heard the phrase from an audience member at one of his lectures in the 1940s. "

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