Draft:Arabic dialects

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Arabic dialects[note 1] are a set of so-called varieties of Arabic spooken in Malta[note 2], North Africa, Mesopotemia (i.e. Iraq), the Levent and the Arabian peninsula. Modern Standard Arabic is the standard form of arabic based on Quranic Arabic with a modernized vocabulary. It is the official language of all the Arab countries[note 3] and is used as a lingua franca in the arabic world, which enables people from different native dialects to understand each other.

The arabic dialect continuum.

Language vs. dialects[edit]

The distinction between language and dialect is not obvious at all. There is currently no concensus among linguists about what makes something a language or a dialect of a language. Many linguists belief that the distinction between language and dialect is just a social construction and therefore meaningless. Despite this, many linguists tried to figure out a distinction between language and dialect, but no one of them is rigorous enough and therefore not widely accepted. Despite this, many people try to define a distinction between languages and dialects, but they are not without their problems. Let's examin 6 common definitions for dialect.

The following is a side-by-side rebuttal.

Some common definitioons for dialects[1]:RationalWiki:

Standardization[edit]

Language is linked to a standard but a dialect is devoided of. Let's take for exemple french. It is a well standarized language with a body which regulates it (the French Academy). A dialect, however, would typically not be standarized.This is a clever argument but without it's problems. First, a language is absolutly not limited to standard and is not uniform. Second, what is sometime seen as a dialect might be more or less standarized. Wallon, which is often seen as a french dialect (although this is debated) has a well standarized orthography, independent from french.


Descendence[edit]

A dialects descends from a languageThis is even more problematic, for obvious resons. First, while it can be the case, the standard language is not always the mother language of it's dialects, but sometimes a sister language. Second based on this definition, we can conclude that all romance languages are dialects of latin. We can even go further and say that all romance, germanic, celtic, baltic, slavic, indo-aryan, indo-iranian, greek, albanian, armenian languages, are in reality dialects of Proto-Indo-European. And finally every language would be a dialect. This criterion is rejectable.


Geography and demography[edit]

We must take in account the geographic area and the number of speakers.This is really dumb. Because a language A can have more speakers than the language B but spooken in a smaller geographic area. This is not the best criterion


Patrimony[edit]

A language has a patrimony while a dialect doesn't. The existence of different litteral traditions explains why very close languages are not dialects of the same language.What is exactly a patrimony? Why must the patrimony be limited to literature? Oral traditions can be seen as a patrimony. In fact writen dialect exist!This is an interresting criterion but too subjective to be used.


Intercomprehention[edit]

Two speakers of different varieties but which understand each other speak a same language.Don't forget that there are multiple degrees of mutual intelligibility. This can lead to different problems when taking in accoount dialect continuums. The accumulation of small changes from a dialect to another would make two different dialects harder and harder to understand. Good criterion, but fails to be consistent with itself.


Officialization[edit]

What is not an official language of a country is a dialect.This is the dumbest one of the list. According to this criterion, Breton would be a dialect of French.


Conclusion[edit]

All the criteria we saw aren't without their flows. Of corse there are other criteria we didn't see. But linguists still don't agree on what is a dialect. Thus many linguists (and that's the position we will aply for the rest of the article) see the distinction between language and dialect as being purely social rather than rigorously definable.

Notes[edit]

  1. Due to the extrem differences and sometime the impossibility of mutual intelligiblity between them which can exist from a variety to another, some linguists belief that they more properly be seen as indpendent languages rather than actual dialects. We will speak about that in more details later in the article.
  2. Maltese is a descendent of an arabic dialects once spooken in Sicilia, but is now generally considered an independent language rather than an Arabic dialect
  3. Exept Malta

References[edit]