Bad words

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 7/9/02 3:07:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
maberry at U.WASHINGTON.EDU writes:

> > In fact we have here one-language-two-cultures, as opposed to English's
>  > two-languages-one-culture.  This should make German/Yiddish a good test
> bed
>  > for investigating why bad words are bad.
>
>  Of course, there are a number of Yiddishists who consider German and
>  Yiddish to be two separate languages.

By the old criterion, "a language is a dialect with an army", German is a
separate language and not a dialect of Yiddish!

Seriously, it is by mutual agreement that German and Yiddish are separate
languages.  Their using different alphabets makes them comparable to Serb and
Croat.  I only said "one-language-two-cultures" to contrast with the
situation in post-Conquest England.

        - Jim Landau