Arabic-L:GEN:Army responses

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Tue 03 Oct 2000
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1) Subject: Army response
2) Subject: Army response
3) Subject: Army response
4) Subject: Army response

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1)
Date: 03 Oct 2000
From: Jim Rader <jrader at Merriam-Webster.com>
Subject: Army response

The question of who actually said/wrote "A language is a dialect
with an army and navy" has come up on the Linguist list and other
linguistics lists a number of times.  The candidate put forward most
often is the Yiddish specialist Max Weinreich, though others, (e.g.,
Roman Jakobson, Edward Sapir) have been mentioned.  I think
there's agreement that it was said, not written, so the only
evidence can be no better than hearsay.

Jim Rader

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2)
Date: 03 Oct 2000
From:  "Kaye, Alan" <akaye at Exchange.FULLERTON.EDU>
Subject: Army response

Assalaamu 9aleekum liljamii9,

There is a page discussion of this some 3-4 years ago in Language in
Society.  It was first said in Yiddish by Max Weinreich, the father of
Columbia linguist Uriel Weinreich.  All the details are there.

ma9a 'ajmal ittaHiyyaat wa bittawfiiq ...

'axuukum,

Alan Kaye

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3)
Date: 03 Oct 2000
From: Martha Schulte-Nafeh <marthas at u.arizona.edu>
Subject: Army response

Ahmed,

This subject came up earlier this year.
Apparently the origin of the quote is contended. I am copying below a
message that I posted before to Arabic-l. It is from a Linguist list
discussion of this same topic in 1997.
Hope this helps.

Peace,
Martha

Martha Schulte-Nafeh
University of Arizona

Message 1: Re: 8.306, Sum: Weinreich quote
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 1997 12:39:21 EST
From: Ellen F. Prince <ellen at central.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: 8.306, Sum: Weinreich quote

Joshua Fishman (Mendele, 10/28/96) reported that the quote is indeed from
Max Weinreich and was located by Avrohom Novershtern as:

 'a shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot.'
  Weinreich, M. 1945. Der yivo un di problemen fun undzer
  tsayt. [YIVO and the problems of our time.] Yivo-bleter
  25.1.13.
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Message 2: Re: 8.306, Sum: Weinreich quote
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 1997 10:15:14 -0800
From: Raymond S. Weitzman <raymondw at csufresno.edu>
Subject: Re: 8.306, Sum: Weinreich quote

The source for the quote "a language is a dialect with an army and navy"
is not Max Weinreich but Robert A. Hall. I'm not sure what work he said
it in, but check "Leave Your Language Alone".

Ray Weitzman

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4)
Date: 03 Oct 2000
From: Paul Auchterlonie <J.P.C.Auchterlonie at exeter.ac.uk>
Subject: Army response

The epigram "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" is
attributed by Leo Rosten (The Joys of Yiddish, Penguin edition, 1971,
p. xxi) to the Polish Yiddish philologist Max Weinreich (1894-1969).
Most of Weinreich's publications are in Yiddish or Polish, and I have
no idea in which of them this phrase appears. However, there is a
brief study of Weinreich in English:
King, Robert D. "The Weinrich legacy" (Oxford: Oxford Centre for
Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, 1988),
and, for those who know Yiddish, a Festschrift for Weinstein was
published in the Netherlands in 1964 ("Maks Vaynraykhen..." The
Hague: Mutan).

----
Paul Auchterlonie
Librarian for Middle East Studies
University of Exeter

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End of Arabic-L: 03 Oct 2000