Dialect continuum

[[File:Kamarupic dialect continuum.svg|thumb|right|300px|The Kamarupic dialect continuum that stretches along parts of Nepal, Bangladesh and India]]
{{languagenav}}
{{cquote|Dialects are all there is: the ‘[[language]]’ part is just [[politics]].|||John McWhorter<ref>[http://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/the-power-of-babel-dialects-are-all-there-is/ The Power of Babel, Dialects Are All There Is.]</ref>}}
A '''dialect continuum''' is a group of related dialects spoken in a contiguous area. In dialect continua, contrary to the popular notion of languages with sharply defined boundaries, the spoken vernacular changes gradually as one gets geographically further away from a given starting point, with there being no definite point at which one "language" ends and another begins.

==Dialect continua and "languages"==
{{Ctransquote|{{wpl|A language is a dialect with an army and navy}}.|Yiddish|אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט|||Max Weinreich}}
With the emergence of the ideology of ethnolinguistic [[nationalism]], according to which a state must have only one official language, the new [[nation-state]]s began to classify forms of speech within their borders more or less closely related to the official language as being merely "dialects" of it, even when these dialects may have formerly been considered separate languages.<ref>[http://inside-poland.com/t/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/KamusellaWeltCorrctdFeb2012_2.pdf "The Silesian Language in the Early 21<sup>st</sup> Century: A Speech Community on the Rollercoaster of Politics",] Tomasz Kamusella, pages 12-14.</ref><ref>''Introduction to Sociolinguistics'', Peter Trudgill, page 144.</ref> Such classifications may also play a part in [[Irredentism|territorial bickering]], as a nation-state may claim dialects not only inside but outside of its own borders as "actually" being dialects of its official language. This is the case, for instance, with many [[Bulgaria]]ns' insistence that [[Macedonia]]n is a Bulgarian dialect; this is not merely a linguistic claim, but also a political (irredentist) one, in that its purpose is to provide a justification for Macedonia being incorporated into the Bulgarian state.<ref>''Dialectology'', J.K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill, page 7.</ref>{{efn|Bulgarian nationalists will often claim that (Standard) Macedonian is an artificial mixture of various dialects that was created in the 20<sup>th</sup> century and therefore not a real language. Of course, by the same logic, Bulgarian is not a real language either, since Standard Bulgarian is itself an artificial mix of dialects that was created in the 19<sup>th</sup> century.<ref>[http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_bulgarian.pdf A Concise Bulgarian Grammar], page 5.</ref>}} Since, of course, the vernaculars in dialect continua form a gradient and do not have clearly defined boundaries, arguments such as those proferred by Bulgarians and Macedonians are generally political, and have more to do with issues of identity than any actual objective linguistic criteria. While some dialect continua, such as the South Slavic continuum in the Balkans, have become politically fragmented into many "languages",<ref>[http://www.sociostudies.org/journal/files/jogs/2011_1/language_in_central_europes_history_and_politics_from_the_rule.pdf Language in Central Europe's History and Politics: From the Rule of ''Cuius Regio, Eius Religio'' to the National Principle of ''cuius regio, eius lingua''?], Tomasz Kamusella, page 50</ref> others no less diverse, such as Arabic and Chinese, are considered by their speakers to consist entirely of "dialects" belonging to only a single "language".<ref>''The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe'', Tomasz Kamusella, pages 27, 33.</ref><ref>''Creating Languages in Central Europe During the Last Millennium'', Tomasz Kamusella, page 14.</ref> As linguist Victor Friedman notes:

{{cquote|From the point of view of language as a means of communication, the vast majority of South Slavic dialects form a single continuum from northern [[Yugoslavia]] and adjacent parts of neighboring countries all the way into northern [[Greece]] and to the Black Sea coast of [[Bulgaria]] in the south and east, respectively. At any given point along this continuum speakers can understand speakers from contiguous points. As the distance between points increases, however, so do dialectal differences, albeit not at a steady rate. Isoglosses tend to cluster in some regions and fan out in others. Nonetheless, there does not exist a single location where one can draw a line between mutually unintelligible dialects. The definition of “language” under such circumstances is made on the basis of other criteria, e. g. ethnic or religious self-identification, geographical or political boundaries selected for extra-linguistic reasons as definitive, etc.<ref>Victor Friedman, "[http://home.uchicago.edu/~vfriedm/Articles/003Friedman75.pdf Macedonian Language and Nationalism During the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries]", page 160.</ref>}}

Often nation-states, in their attempt to [[Ethnic cleansing|create a linguistically homogeneous population]], pursue policies to stamp out dialect continua and unrelated languages and replace them with a standard language<ref>[http://www.lchr.org/a/37/52/minor.html Nation-States vis-a-vis Ethnocultural Minorities: Oppression and Assimiliation], Dimostenis Yağcıoğlu.</ref>, such as in the ''{{wpl|vergonha}}'' in [[France]], in which the French government tried to eradicate Occitan and other forms of Romance languages on the basis that they are [[Linguistic discrimination|merely incorrect forms of French.]]

==Further reading==
*Chambers, J.K., and Trudgill, Peter. ''Dialectology'', 2000. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
*Kamusella, Tomasz, ''Creating Languages in Central Europe During the Last Millennium'', 2015. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot.
*Kamusella, Tomasz, ''The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe'', 2009. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
*Trudgill, Peter. ''Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society'', 2000. Penguin Books.

==See also==
*[[Yugoslavia]]
*[[Macedonia]]
*[[Nationalist pseudohistory]]
*[[Nationalism in history textbooks]]

==External links==
*[http://web.archive.org/web/20041025040851/http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=6812 Norwegian as a Normal Language], Peter Trudgill
*[http://www.uni-giessen.de/faculties/gcsc/gcsc/about-the-gcsc/video-blog/entries/2014/linguistic-nationalism-and-the-politics-of-dialects2019-the-case-of-slovakia Linguistic Nationalism and the Politics of ‘Dialects’ – The Case of Slovakia]
*[https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/ikos/EXFAC03-AAS/h05/larestoff/linguistics/Chapter%207.(H05).pdf Language and variation]
*[https://www.academia.edu/4227448/Is_modern_fusha_a_standard_language Is modern fusha a 'standard language'?]
*[http://researchfellowships.americancouncils.org/sites/researchfellowships.americancouncils.org/files/Greber_final_report.pdf Proper Language, Proper Citizen:Standard Practice and Linguistic Identity in Primary Education], Amanda Greber

==Notes==
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==References==
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[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Nationalism]]

Categories: Language, Nationalism