Xenolects

[Nathan Leahy]

I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.

(My view) They are ugly. The only ones I'm aware of are Irish (I did
it, the Munster dialect is way nicer, while the Connemara dialect
which has more influence is _ugly_) IIRC standard Breton is also a
xenolect.

Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

[NimDrauG]

Post by Nathan Leahy
I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.
(My view) They are ugly. The only ones I'm aware of are Irish (I did
it, the Munster dialect is way nicer, while the Connemara dialect
which has more influence is _ugly_) IIRC standard Breton is also a
xenolect.
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Standart Frisian is made up of two major dialects spoken in Fryslân.
(Friesland in the Netherlands)

Almost every native Frisian can hear exactly where someone else has grown up
by listen to their local dialect, which are numerous.
But a Standardfrisan speaker just sounds very fake and weird.
Standard Frisian is shifting steadily towards Dutch while the archaic
features are kept in most dialects.

Alas, Standard Frisian is promoted by the media en education.
Children don't speak dialect anymore but a hideous sociolect in the cities
and undereducated Frisian on the countryside mixed up with too much Dutch.

Well, The dutch government will have it by their sneaky way, I guess ....

NimDrauG.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by Nathan Leahy
I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.
(My view) They are ugly. The only ones I'm aware of are Irish (I did
it, the Munster dialect is way nicer, while the Connemara dialect
which has more influence is _ugly_) IIRC standard Breton is also a
xenolect.
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Indonesian. (Could there be a Dutch-based parallel with Frisian?)

The conlang Interlingua.

Where is this an "official" definition?

[Richard Herring]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Nathan Leahy
I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.
(My view) They are ugly. The only ones I'm aware of are Irish (I did
it, the Munster dialect is way nicer, while the Connemara dialect
which has more influence is _ugly_) IIRC standard Breton is also a
xenolect.
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Indonesian. (Could there be a Dutch-based parallel with Frisian?)

Does either form of Norwegian count?

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by Richard Herring

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Nathan Leahy
I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.
(My view) They are ugly. The only ones I'm aware of are Irish (I did
it, the Munster dialect is way nicer, while the Connemara dialect
which has more influence is _ugly_) IIRC standard Breton is also a
xenolect.
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Indonesian. (Could there be a Dutch-based parallel with Frisian?)

Does either form of Norwegian count?

But they didn't compromise, they ended up with two slightly different
standards?

[Torsten Poulin]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Richard Herring
Does either form of Norwegian count?

But they didn't compromise, they ended up with two slightly different
standards?

One of which was based on a whole host of dialects from day one.
The other one started life as written Danish.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:13:29 +0000 Richard Herring

Post by Richard Herring

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Nathan Leahy
I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.

[...]

Post by Richard Herring

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Indonesian. (Could there be a Dutch-based parallel with Frisian?)

Does either form of Norwegian count?

Nynorsk certainly does.

Brian

[A.N. Onymous]

Post by Brian M. Scott
On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:13:29 +0000 Richard Herring

Post by Richard Herring

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Nathan Leahy
I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.

[...]

Post by Richard Herring

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Indonesian. (Could there be a Dutch-based parallel with Frisian?)

Does either form of Norwegian count?

Nynorsk certainly does.

Otoh, bokmaal does (probably) not count.

Bokmal is derived from written Danish.

Which leads to the question:
"Norwegian" is supposed to be a "West Scandinavian" language. Danish is
supposed to be an
"East Scandinavian" language. Should not Nynorsk be counted as "West", while
Bokmaal is
"East". Or did Bokmaal by a magic trasition 1905 became "West Scandinavian"?

A Nikoalaievitj

Post by Brian M. Scott
Brian

[Torsten Poulin]

Post by A.N. Onymous
Bokmal is derived from written Danish.
"Norwegian" is supposed to be a "West Scandinavian" language.
Danish is supposed to be an "East Scandinavian" language.
Should not Nynorsk be counted as "West", while Bokmaal is
"East". Or did Bokmaal by a magic trasition 1905 became "West
Scandinavian"?

There are many reasons not to distinguish between East and West
Scandinavian. Depending on what features you are looking at,
you would have to draw the boundary in different places. It
probably makes more sense to distinguish between insular (or
North Atlantic, if you like) and continental Scandinavian, but it
still wouldn't be an entirely satisfactory solution.

[António Pedro Marques]

Which leads to the question: "Norwegian" is supposed to be a "West
Scandinavian" language. Danish is supposed to be an "East
Scandinavian" language. Should not Nynorsk be counted as "West",
while Bokmaal is "East". Or did Bokmaal by a magic trasition 1905
became "West Scandinavian"?

No, the answer is that it can be conceived that what in a broader
context is a big divide, in any particular case may be not so important.
For instance, north italian dialects are WR, while the southern are ER,
and Sicilly even begs the question whether it's a transition to SR. Yet,
given the umbrella of the Italian language (which itself is mostly ER),
all are 'italian'. This is not to deny that for instance the northern
dialects can be considered to form a separate language; however, the
reasons for that are not the WR-ER divide but the strong lexical and
sometimes morpho-syntactical distance between dialect and standard that
can be seen in all of Italy (including the south).

[Christian Weisgerber]

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Standard German.

[Nathan Leahy]

Post by Christian Weisgerber

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Standard German.

??? I thought Hochdeutsch was for all intents and purposes Prussian,
with some other North German bits. IIRC Austrian/Bavarian was
unintelligible with Hochdeutsch up until at least the early 1900s

[António Pedro Marques]

Post by Nathan Leahy
??? I thought Hochdeutsch was for all intents and purposes Prussian,
with some other North German bits. IIRC Austrian/Bavarian was
unintelligible with Hochdeutsch up until at least the early 1900s

No.

[Michael Farris]

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

There are elements of this in a number of Slavic languages. Standard
Polish is pretty clearly not based on any one dialect, though I don't
think it was planned as a xenolect.

I've been told that standard Slovenian is cobbled together from
various dialects, but I know it well enough to say for sure.

Standard written Vietnamese seems to be a compromise between the
phonemic systems of general northern and southern speech. I don't know
if this was planned or is a historical accident.

-michael farris

[Yusuf B Gursey]

In sci.lang Nathan Leahy <***@yahoo.com> wrote in <***@posting.google.com>:
: I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
: explain before I ask my question.
: Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
: constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
: number of dialects hacked together.

: (My view) They are ugly. The only ones I'm aware of are Irish (I did
: it, the Munster dialect is way nicer, while the Connemara dialect
: which has more influence is _ugly_) IIRC standard Breton is also a
: xenolect.

: Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
: achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
: designed and used as an official language?

classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
grammarians.

[Nathan Leahy]

(snip)

Post by Yusuf B Gursey
: Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
: achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
: designed and used as an official language?
classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
grammarians.

Er... Didn't they just take the Qur-an, say the grammar here is
perfect, pure, and correct and apply that. This implies to me that it
was just Mohammed's dialect. IIRC there are even inconsistencies in
use in the text and the perfection meant that all forms had to be
equally accepted

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by Nathan Leahy
(snip)

Post by Yusuf B Gursey
: Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
: achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
: designed and used as an official language?
classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
grammarians.

Er... Didn't they just take the Qur-an, say the grammar here is
perfect, pure, and correct and apply that. This implies to me that it
was just Mohammed's dialect. IIRC there are even inconsistencies in
use in the text and the perfection meant that all forms had to be
equally accepted

Except that the consonantal text represents one dialect (which had lost
glottal stop and various word-final inflections) and the vocalization
another, more retentive dialect. So all the descriptions, from the
forerunners of Sibawayhi on, have to account for the compromises.

[Yusuf B Gursey]

In sci.lang Peter T. Daniels <***@worldnet.att.net> wrote in <***@worldnet.att.net>:
: Nathan Leahy wrote:
:>
:> Yusuf B Gursey <***@TheWorld.com> wrote in message news:<buhqq0$8lv$***@pcls4.std.com>...
:> > In sci.lang Nathan Leahy <***@yahoo.com> wrote in <***@posting.google.com>:
:> (snip)
:> > : Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
:> > : achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
:> > : designed and used as an official language?
:> >
:> > classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
:> > grammarians.
:>
:> Er... Didn't they just take the Qur-an, say the grammar here is
:> perfect, pure, and correct and apply that. This implies to me that it
:> was just Mohammed's dialect. IIRC there are even inconsistencies in
:> use in the text and the perfection meant that all forms had to be
:> equally accepted

: Except that the consonantal text represents one dialect (which had lost
: glottal stop and various word-final inflections) and the vocalization

loss of word-final inflections is debated. some point to a freer syntax
and passages that would be that would be too ambiguous without
case-endings as evidence of their presence.

there are some features such in the sequence ta (pronominal) + ta
(formative) + verb stem rendered (in the Qur'an) as ta + verb stem, which
did not become part of the standard.

i.e. tatafa33alu > tafa33alu (not accpetabl for general use)e, but
occassionally found in the Qu'ran


: another, more retentive dialect. So all the descriptions, from the
: forerunners of Sibawayhi on, have to account for the compromises.

[Yusuf B Gursey]

In sci.lang Nathan Leahy <***@yahoo.com> wrote in <***@posting.google.com>:
: Yusuf B Gursey <***@TheWorld.com> wrote in message news:<buhqq0$8lv$***@pcls4.std.com>...
:> In sci.lang Nathan Leahy <***@yahoo.com> wrote in <***@posting.google.com>:
: (snip)
:> : Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
:> : achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
:> : designed and used as an official language?
:>
:> classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
:> grammarians.

: Er... Didn't they just take the Qur-an, say the grammar here is
: perfect, pure, and correct and apply that. This implies to me that it

that is a later dogma. there were some who advocated adopting just
whatever is in the Qur'an, but these lost.

: was just Mohammed's dialect. IIRC there are even inconsistencies in

the usually accepted reconstruction among modern linguists was that the
Qur'an was attempted to have been recited in a general norm, but there
are "slippages" into the local dialect.

later, soemtime after the Qur'an, a more formal and codified standard was
established that took some elements of the Qur'an but not all.

: use in the text and the perfection meant that all forms had to be
: equally accepted

it wasn't, at least for general use.

[Yusuf B Gursey]

In sci.lang Nathan Leahy <***@yahoo.com> wrote in <***@posting.google.com>:
: Yusuf B Gursey <***@TheWorld.com> wrote in message news:<buhqq0$8lv$***@pcls4.std.com>...

:>
:> classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
:> grammarians.

: Er... Didn't they just take the Qur-an, say the grammar here is
: perfect, pure, and correct and apply that. This implies to me that it
: was just Mohammed's dialect. IIRC there are even inconsistencies in
: use in the text and the perfection meant that all forms had to be
: equally accepted

the standard set by the grammarians never fully matches the dialects they
describe (incl. the Qur'an), but contains various features found
individually in most.

[Jacques Guy]

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

The language of Hog Harbour (Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu). It was
defined by Presbyterian missionaries ca 1900, who never got
beyond baby-talk, and then actively taught it to children
as the proper way of speaking. The language has eleven vowels,
which they confused. Some of their printed matter used
diacritics, some italics, adding to the confusion.

As a result, for instance, the word for 'my child' is
now /walDiG/ because they spelt it "walthic". That
is quite impossible; the correct word is /walDyG/
which you still hear in pagan villages, and from
very old people. The word for "my" is indifferently
/hAG/ or /hOG/ when it should be /höG/. Because,
again, they spelt it sometimes "hac" (with
italics "a"), sometimes "hoc" (with a diaeresis
under the "o").

They also taught children to speak their own
(the missionaries') baby-talk. For instance,
the village chief, Pehov, who was in his sixties,
told me how, as children, they were taught to
say /i tmjan/ instead of /i nGjan/ "go!"
(2nd p. sg. irrealis). /nGjan/ is the 2nd
sg. irrealis of /jan/ "to go", /tmjan/ is the
indefinite realis of /jan/, corresponding
to German "man geht", French "on va". So,
Pehov, and the children his age, were taught
to say "du man geht" instead of "geh". It is
a wonder any of the language survived.

[benlizross]

Post by Jacques Guy

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

The language of Hog Harbour (Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu). It was
defined by Presbyterian missionaries ca 1900, who never got
beyond baby-talk, and then actively taught it to children
as the proper way of speaking. The language has eleven vowels,
which they confused. Some of their printed matter used
diacritics, some italics, adding to the confusion.
As a result, for instance, the word for 'my child' is
now /walDiG/ because they spelt it "walthic". That
is quite impossible; the correct word is /walDyG/
which you still hear in pagan villages, and from
very old people. The word for "my" is indifferently
/hAG/ or /hOG/ when it should be /höG/. Because,
again, they spelt it sometimes "hac" (with
italics "a"), sometimes "hoc" (with a diaeresis
under the "o").
They also taught children to speak their own
(the missionaries') baby-talk. For instance,
the village chief, Pehov, who was in his sixties,
told me how, as children, they were taught to
say /i tmjan/ instead of /i nGjan/ "go!"
(2nd p. sg. irrealis). /nGjan/ is the 2nd
sg. irrealis of /jan/ "to go", /tmjan/ is the
indefinite realis of /jan/, corresponding
to German "man geht", French "on va". So,
Pehov, and the children his age, were taught
to say "du man geht" instead of "geh". It is
a wonder any of the language survived.

What, they actually came around to their houses and tried to teach
people to speak the language that way? That's truly weird.

Ross Clark

[Jim Heckman]

On 18-Jan-2004, ***@yahoo.com (Nathan Leahy) wrote
in message <***@posting.google.com>:

[...]

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

It could be argued that's what happened with Finnish, to a
certain extent. The standardizers in the 19th century took some
vocabulary from Western dialects and some from Eastern. I
believe they also split the difference on some of the
grammatical morphology. In the 100+ years since, the standard
has taken on a life of its own and is increasingly replacing the
dialects even as a first language, especially in urbanized
areas.

[Helmut Richter]

Post by Jim Heckman

Post by Nathan Leahy
Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

It could be argued that's what happened with Finnish, to a
certain extent.

As I am living in a country with a "xenolect" in this sense (German),
and I find the process quite natural that the common language of a
larger region crystallises out from the material of multiple dialects
spoken there.

But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

Helmut Richter

[unknown]

20 Jan 2004 08:16:38 GMT: Helmut Richter

Post by Helmut Richter
But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

Seems to be. I hear that a lot too, with young Turks and Moroccans
here in the Netherlands.
Most often it is more like 80% Dutch and 20% their own language, with
fewer switches. The Dutch they speak is often with a strong accent,
but it is very rapid, very apt, very rich in expression and
vocabulary. Clearly they learned the language at a very early age.

[Fred Mailhot]

On 1/20/04 12:16 AM, "Helmut Richter" <***@mail.lrz-muenchen.de> wrote:

[snip]

Post by Helmut Richter
(Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)
Helmut Richter

I suspect that code-switching/mixing is prevalent in any country/region
where kids are exposed to more than one language...here in Montreal it's
quite common. Not limited to kids, either, I still do it all the time, if
I'm speaking w/ someone who I know is at least as biligual as I am...



F.

[Jim Heckman]

On 20-Jan-2004, Helmut Richter <***@mail.lrz-muenchen.de> wrote
in message <***@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>:

[...]

Post by Helmut Richter
But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

To the examples given by other posters, I'll just add that here
in Los Angeles, currently one of the most cosmopolitan urban
areas in the world, such code-switching is extremely common. Of
course, by far the most frequent case is between English and
Spanish, but I've personally witnessed it among
2nd-generation-American speakers of many other languages,
including, off the top of my head, Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese,
Tagalog, Arabic and Armenian.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by Jim Heckman
[...]

Post by Helmut Richter
But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

To the examples given by other posters, I'll just add that here
in Los Angeles, currently one of the most cosmopolitan urban
areas in the world, such code-switching is extremely common. Of
course, by far the most frequent case is between English and
Spanish, but I've personally witnessed it among
2nd-generation-American speakers of many other languages,
including, off the top of my head, Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese,
Tagalog, Arabic and Armenian.

A CLS paper long ago showed that code-switching doesn't happen until two
people have (somehow) established that their competence in the languages
involved is mutually equivalent.

[Nathan Leahy]

Helmut Richter <***@mail.lrz-muenchen.de> wrote in message news:<***@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>...
(snip)

Post by Helmut Richter
But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)
Helmut Richter

IIRC Kanak Sprak? Are there any English resources describing it, it's
similarities and differences to German, and it's social context?