Rusinskij jazyk -- sources

[Don Livingston]

>> Max Pyziur <pyz at BRAMA.COM> WROTE:

>>The following is taken from Don Livingston, a translator,
associated with
the University of Washington:

...There is a rule of them that if two types of spoken speech are
more than
80% mutually comprehensible, we call them dialects of the same
language,
and if they are less than 80% mutually comprehensible, we call
them
separate languages. <<

Wow, who would've thought my early thoughts on language would
reappear on SEELANGS?  It's both flattering and amusing.  Allow
me to add a few comments.

My "80%" quote was meant as a rule of thumb (please forgive the
typo "rule of them" in the original post), which I had first
spotted on a handout from an introductory linguistics class
taught at the University of Arizona years agone.  The point of
the handout was this:  there is not a precise dividing line that
separates the things called "languages" and the things called
"dialects."  This is really no surprise to people who speak more
than one language or to people who study category theory.  The
divisions are somewhat (though not completely) arbitrary.  The
"80%" was not meant as a quantitatively precise measure.

The division of languages into dialects that are mutually
understandable or unintelligible is even trickier than our
discussions so far might suggest.  An example is to the point.
For several summers I worked at Silver Dollar City in
southwestern Missouri.  The employees came from all over the
country, including two girls who at the time we called "the Bama
belles" because they came from Alabama.  I'm from Arizona
originally.  Most of the time I understood them well.  But when
they became excited, their rate of speech and different
pronunciation of vowels literally made them incomprehensible to
me.  I had to ask them to repeat themselves three or four times
before they slowed sufficiently for me to grasp the differences
in their pronunciation and grammar.  I suspect that more than 80%
of our grammar matched.  The pronunciation was distinct in some
respects, sufficient to make them incomprehensible to me on
occasion.  So when they spoke quickly, were they speaking a
different language?  And when they spoke slowly, was it another
language again?  Of course not.  We were all speaking the same
language in different dialects, at least according to what I
consider the best understanding of those words.  Likewise there
are times when I hear Brits on TV who I cannot understand without
subtitles, but they are still speaking English.

All the best, Don Livingston.

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