ELL: Re: Question and Announcement

[Cristian Mocanu]

          I have been mainly silent on this list preferring to read what far more competent people have to say in the field of EL-s, which is very close to my heart &I intend to maintain this silence, as I am just an amateur linguist. But I thought I might contribute something to the language/dialect discussion.
          I have no personal opinion in this matter;however, I remember that when I was studying general linguistics at the university (Romania, late '80-s) the Conventional Wisdom was that the ultimate criterium for defining an idiom as a language was the consciousness/feeling of the speakers that they form a separate nation. This would account for speaking about Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian;Dutch and Flemish; Farsi and Dari;Portuguese and Galician;Turkish, Azeri and Gagauz; Kirundi and Kinyarwanda and the examples may continue, whereas on the other hand we have Mandarine, Cantonese, Hakka etc. as dialects of Chinese, Piemontese and Neapolitan as dialects of Italian (they are certainly far more divergent than, say, Croatian and Bosnian), and so on.
            As to Patrick's example, of course, according to this principle, Ladino would qualify as a language in its own right. But even beyond that, one cannot say Ladino is merely Spanish written in Hebrew characters. The number of non-Romance lexical items (from Hebrew, Balkan languages, Arabic) is quite significant.I had the opportunity to read Sefardi texts from Istanbul, Salonica and Pazardjik (Bulgaria) and my arguably good, knowledge of Spanish (incidentally, I am a certified translator of Spanish) was not enough to understand them.
         But as I said, this point of view is not mine-I'm a bit puzzled myself-and I just wanted to throw it in the discussion. BTW, I'd like to ask the Celtists on this list, what are we to think about Irish vs. Scottish Gaelic. I know Gaelge speaking Irish people acknowledge Scottish Gaelic as Gaelic (Gaeilge Albanach). Do Gaelic speakers in both countries regard themselves as part of the same nation?
            Regards to all,
               Cristian
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