Talk:German dialects

Article Checklist for "German dialects"

Workgroup category or categories	Linguistics Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	John Stephenson 03:38, 25 April 2007 (CDT) Pat Palmer 14:30, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

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Notice of intended major revision

Since this article appears to have been brought from Wikipedia (and still exists over in Wikipedia with much the same content), would anyone object if I attempt a complete rewrite (i.e., start over)?

My German sandbox page is a very rough draft (not proofed and needed much more) of what I have in mind for the rewrite. Some of the existing article's sections could become different articles in their own right if we don't want to lose that information.

One beef I have about it as it stands is that its too much like a linguistics textbook. One can go out and buy those. I think we should try to give the big picture here, and then refer people to other places for the gory details.

What do you all think? May I tackle this article? Will anyone be offended if I archive what's here and, well, start over?Pat Palmer 13:05, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I think that you should use {{speedydelete}} in this article. - Versuri 13:20, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I decided to go for it. Just started the rewritten article and am trying to get it correctly "cleaned" and categorized.Pat Palmer 14:49, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

German as Dutch

The paragraph about the origins of Dutch seems to be saying that Dutch is basically German. This is likely to be a rather controversial statement, and I'm not sure it's linguistically valid: one could just as easily argue that German is Dutch. Perhaps needs a rethink. John Stephenson 05:02, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

This appears to be something of a controversy; I have already heard from one other person (who is Dutch) objecting to the article, so I will reword it. Just to clarify in advance, however, I intend to claim (and defend if necessary) that from the viewpoint of comparative historical linguistics, there is no distinction in the dialect continuum between the regional Germanic dialects which now lie in the country of Germany and those which lie in the westerns reaches of The Netherlands. This is in fact corroborated at the following website: http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/publicaties/taalgeschiedenis/en/ from a university. Please click on section 6 "19th and 20th century" for subsection "Dialects" and scroll down to the fourth from last paragraph, which states: "The demarcation between Dutch and German dialects is made on the basis of the standard language spoken in the region concerned. Venlo dialect is regarded as Dutch because the inhabitants of Venlo use Dutch in school and in "official" situations; the language of Krefeld on the other hand is treated as a German dialect because High German is the overarching standard language there." Historically from a linguistics viewpoint, the dialects of Dutch-speaking regions are within the same dialect continuumas the various regional Germanic dialects which lie across the river in Germany. The Dutch dialects, however, are in a continuum with the various regions inside Germany; these are called "West Germanic". English is theoretically in the same continuum, but it diverged considerably more from the dialects now within Germany than those in Dutch territory did. This is just a linguistic phenomenon, and not a political one, and I will try to rewrite that part of the article shortly.Pat Palmer 13:33, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I've changed it; I think this makes the article much better, and I really appreciate the feedback.Pat Palmer 13:33, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Dutch = German? NO WAY

This not only is not true as can be seen by the differences in grammatic rules, but also from a historical point of view. German and Dutch have a common ancestor: Mittel Deutsch or Dietsch (guess where Dutch came from) but apart from that the languages developed in totally different ways - mainkly because Germany didn't exist other than as a collection of earlships and kingdoms contrary to the netherlands where a more centralized government, or trade center in the 15th and 16th century, became important. By far more important than the 'peasants' that called themselves germanes. To state Dutch is a German dialect means you know little about the gammar of both languages - since they are rather different. It however is correct to state they have a common ancestor but developed differently. Robert Tito |  Talk  09:13, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Relative ease of learning German

While a consensus exists on the view that similar languages are broadly easier to learn - because there's less to be done - I am not at all sure about some of the material in this passage and the previous one about active word-building, specifically the idea that German kids can learn quicker through compounding. For example, how would they *know* that Handschuh means glove, and not hand-shoe (a shoe that for some reason you put on your hand). Consider that you may be using your adult knowledge of the world to reject this interpretation, because children don't necessarily know that shoes are not for hands. (To digress: do native German speakers take the view that there is no fundamental difference between shoes and gloves, because they both contain Schuh?) Is there any research on this? John Stephenson 05:23, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I did think about where my information came from. First, I taught German to English speakers for about 4 years, so some of what I wrote is based on my own experience of learning German as an adult and then teaching it to quite a few people later. Second, I recall reading about some studies on this somewhere, but that was some years ago, and I don't remember where. I will try to look into sources when I can. I think it might have been more a cognitive science source than a linguistics one. I only have university library access for a few more weeks (due to a course I'm teaching later this summer) but I will try to follow through. I appreciate your comments. Please don't remove the material just yet; let me see if I can dig up any useful sources.Pat Palmer 09:44, 7 May 2007 (CDT)