[Corpora-List] Can corpora help to distinguish a dialect and a language?

[Assaf Urieli]

You took the words right out of my mouth Angus. Anybody who wants a scan
of the text containing the original quote from Max Weinreich (for those 
of you who can read Yiddish!) may contact me.

The context is - Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich was giving a lecture
about problems in the history of the Yiddish language, when a
high-school teacher asked him "What is the difference between a dialect
and a language?" Max Weinreich tried to give an intellectual answer, but
the teacher interrupted him, "All of this I know already, but I'll give
you a better definition: a language is a dialect with an army and a
navy." (a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot)

Rgds,
Assaf Urieli

Angus Grieve-Smith wrote:
> On 2/13/2010 4:35 PM, Yuri Tambovtsev wrote:
>> Dear Corpora colleagues, how can corpora help to differentiate between 
>> a dialect and a language? Looking forward to hearing from you directly 
>> to yutamb at mail.ru <mailto:yutamb at mail.ru>  Yours sincerely as ever 
>> Yuri Tambovtsev
>>
>     They can't, because they can't detect whether the variety in 
> question has an army or a navy.
> 
> -- 
> 				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
> 				grvsmth at panix.com
> 
> 
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