Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

[linguoboy]

Is there a generally-agreed upon cutoff line/point between Low German and Dutch?

Not really, because "Low German" includes both "Low Saxon" and "Low Franconian" and Dutch is a Low Franconian variety. As MisterBernie notes, the boundary between Low Saxon and Low Franconian is pretty well defined, but drawing a boundary between Kleverländisch and other neighbouring varieties is an exercise in arbitrariness.

[Drydic]

Well, Wikipedia gives this map of Low Saxon dialects. Apparently the rest of the Netherlands speaks Low Franconian.

As for the number of dialects, yeah, it really depends on where you wanna draw the line between different dialects. This map has the larger dialect groups as 53 (although they include all of continental West Germanic there), but you could easily subdivide each of those a few times.

ETfix links

I just opened those links

OH MY GODS THE BEAUTY

THEY SHOULD HAVE SENT A POET

[MisterBernie]

I just opened those links

OH MY GODS THE BEAUTY

THEY SHOULD HAVE SENT A POET

Ahahaha, you should see the maps in my "Kleiner Bayerischer Sprachatlas". Attention to detail ftw.

[linguoboy]

As for the number of dialects, yeah, it really depends on where you wanna draw the line between different dialects. This map has the larger dialect groups as 53 (although they include all of continental West Germanic there), but you could easily subdivide each of those a few times.

I can speak a bit to the Alemannic area, since the local dialect I was exposed to was that of the city of Freiburg. First of all, I notice this map goes with a quadripartite division whereas many descriptions prefer to break out Lake Constance Alemannic (Bodeseealemannisch) from the rest of Low Alemannic, which is termed Upper Rhine Alemannic (Oberrheinalemannisch).

Naturally, this wasn't a term I heard from the locals themselves; their dialect was simply "Alemannisch" (Alemannic) or "Badisch" (Badener) and they were emphatic that it was not a form of Swabian. (To a lot of Germans from outside the area, all of southwest Germany is "Swabia".) Interestingly, no one ever tried to call it a variety of Alsatian, although it has so much in common with those varieties that the two groups are lumped together as Upper Rhine Alemannic--I guess the international border took care of that. (There's also a rather salient isogloss in the form of /u/ > /y/ west of the Rhine.)

Two terms I've come across in other popular sources are "Breisgauer Alemannisch" (Breisgau is a historical territorial division in what is now Baden) and "Südbadisch" ("South Badener"). But the latter is a confusing term, since it embraces varieties from both sides of a major isogloss (the Kind/Chind-Linie). This actually cuts right through the mountains in the southwest part of the city, less than a kilometre from where I lived.

There are also important isoglosses dividing the eastern part of the Breisgau (along the upper Rhine) from the western part (in the Black Forest/Schwarzwald) and most people seemed to agree that natives of the Kaiserstuhl (a volcanic mountain just north of the city) had a distinct dialect. So, all in all, the area (historically) covered by the local dialect might have been as small as 150-200 km² or so. Historical Baden alone was 3,400 km². So you can easily see how one could end up with a total of 300 for the whole of Germany.

[Zumir]

Thread Bump!
I think that in terms of pure linguistic quackery, Korzybski is king. I haven't read the blue peril myself, but from what I do know... whoa.
Heres the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics.

[Mr. Z]

What do you do in this thread?

[Astraios]

What do you do in this thread?

Laugh at linguistics fails.

[Mr. Z]

What do you do in this thread?

Laugh at linguistics fails.

What does that mean? Any fail that is related to linguistics?

[Astraios]

What does that mean? Any fail that is related to linguistics?

Obviously. For example, someone who says something like, "Turkish is the world's oldest language, and all other languages come from it."

[Drydic]

What do you do in this thread?

Laugh at linguistics fails.

What does that mean? Any fail that is related to linguistics?

Did you bother reading the thread?

[linguoboy]

"Baltimorese is one of only two rhotic dialects (the other being Philadelphia English) of American English. In a rhotic language the ‘r’ following a vowel is pronounced."

(From this PowerPoint presentation on Baltimore dialect: http://www.cog.jhu.edu/courses/205/pres ... /10-3a.ppt.)

[Mr. Z]

"Baltimorese is one of only two rhotic dialects (the other being Philadelphia English) of American English. In a rhotic language the ‘r’ following a vowel is pronounced."

(From this PowerPoint presentation on Baltimore dialect: http://www.cog.jhu.edu/courses/205/pres ... /10-3a.ppt.)

Überfail.
Who wrote that?

[TomHChappell]

.

[Shrdlu]

"Knapp" is Swedish for "button". Suits her. Also, I am not really certain what i just watched.

[Zumir]

From Russian for Dummies:

You may be surprised to find out that English and Russian are very distant relatives. They both come from the same ancestor - Sanskrit - and both belong to the same family of Indo-European languages.

[dhok]

I facepalmed.

[Mr. Z]

From Russian for Dummies:

You may be surprised to find out that English and Russian are very distant relatives. They both come from the same ancestor - Sanskrit - and both belong to the same family of Indo-European languages.

Yeah. And I guess Hebrew and Arabic derive from Phoenician. And, of course, Afrikaans must derive from Old Norse.

Neh. None of those examples is as good as "English and Russian both come from Sanskrit".
Russian by Dummies. Hehehe.

[Mecislau]

From a grammar of Cypriot Greek, on why Cypriot Greek has a larger array of fricatives than Standard Greek:

All languages formed in warm climates contain a large collection of vowels in their words and fricative consonants which is a strong characteristic of Greek Cypriot. The reason behind this is that such languages aid in the better ventilation of the body (exhaling warmer air and inhaling colder from the outside) in response to the warmer climate.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

From a grammar of Cypriot Greek, on why Cypriot Greek has a larger array of fricatives than Standard Greek:

All languages formed in warm climates contain a large collection of vowels in their words and fricative consonants which is a strong characteristic of Greek Cypriot. The reason behind this is that such languages aid in the better ventilation of the body (exhaling warmer air and inhaling colder from the outside) in response to the warmer climate.

Oh boy. Poor Polynesians, they must be suffering.

[MisterBernie]

From a grammar of Cypriot Greek, on why Cypriot Greek has a larger array of fricatives than Standard Greek:

All languages formed in warm climates contain a large collection of vowels in their words and fricative consonants which is a strong characteristic of Greek Cypriot. The reason behind this is that such languages aid in the better ventilation of the body (exhaling warmer air and inhaling colder from the outside) in response to the warmer climate.

This mixture of linguistics fail and biology fail is so beautiful I could cry.

[Astraios]

From a grammar of Cypriot Greek, on why Cypriot Greek has a larger array of fricatives than Standard Greek:

All languages formed in warm climates contain a large collection of vowels in their words and fricative consonants which is a strong characteristic of Greek Cypriot. The reason behind this is that such languages aid in the better ventilation of the body (exhaling warmer air and inhaling colder from the outside) in response to the warmer climate.

Oh boy. Poor Polynesians, they must be suffering.

What about Aboriginal Australians? Even hotter than Polynesia and even fewer fricatives.

[Drydic]

From a grammar of Cypriot Greek, on why Cypriot Greek has a larger array of fricatives than Standard Greek:

All languages formed in warm climates contain a large collection of vowels in their words and fricative consonants which is a strong characteristic of Greek Cypriot. The reason behind this is that such languages aid in the better ventilation of the body (exhaling warmer air and inhaling colder from the outside) in response to the warmer climate.

I'm not sure which is worse, the linguistic/biology fail or the fact that they fail to realize that Cyprus' climate is (almost) identical to Greece's.

[MisterBernie]

I'm not sure which is worse, the linguistic/biology fail or the fact that they fail to realize that Cyprus' climate is (almost) identical to Greece's.

It's one beautiful, unique¹ flower of fail.

¹ Oh, if only 'twere unique. But I've read too many language discussion pages on Wikipedia in the past couple of days. So... so heartbreakingly, saddeningly stupid.

[alice]

Is it time we started to assign ratings to this kind of nonsense? If so what measure should we use - ducklings? webbed feet? beaks?

[Drydic]

Is it time we started to assign ratings to this kind of nonsense? If so what measure should we use - ducklings? webbed feet? beaks?

Conniptions.