On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 01:09, caeruleancentaur
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:
>>
>> If having its own army and navy turns a dialect into a language...
>
> How can a dialect have its own army and navy?  :-)

Honest question?

Perhaps you're not aware of the saying "A language is a dialect with
an army and a navy" (or "a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un
flot"), attributed to Max Weinreich.

So Eldin was saying that if a group of speakers have an army and a
navy of their own (i.e., roughly, if they form a sovereign nation with
its own defence), then what they speak would no longer be considered a
dialect but a separate language. (As, for example, Bosnian might be
considered a separate language from Serbo-Croatian or BCS
[Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian] only once Bosnia and Herzegovina became a
country of its own, but a dialect of BCS while part of Yugoslavia.)

So it's not literally the _dialect_ that has the army and navy, but
its speakers.

Cheers,
-- 
Philip Newton <[log in to unmask]>