language/dialect again

Alice Faber faber at POP.HASKINS.YALE.EDU
Wed Mar 22 21:32:08 UTC 2000


Laurence Horn wrote:
>There's a reference I have handy (in a volume under review by
>distinguished scholars who will have to remain nameless here) to the
>dictum in the form
>
>"A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy"
>
>attributed to Max Weinreich in his 1973 book History of the Yiddish
>Language.  No page reference, and no context to make it clear
>whether this was his own resigned commentary (ultimately reflecting
>on the arbitrariness of the language/dialect distinction, which is
>how I've always thought of it) or the aperçu of someone else.
>
At one other point when the subject came up, I spent a spell looking
through my copy of this book, with no luck. This is a translation of
the first two volumes of a four volume Yiddish publication. Notes and
indices were, as I recall, in the third and fourth volumes.

I'll try to give it another try tonight at home.


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Alice Faber                    new, improved email: faber at pop.haskins.yale.edu
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