Name: 方言和語言的界限在哪裡？-- 《語言學101》 (Where's the line between a dialect and a language? -- Linguistics 101)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:43:16.000Z
Duration: 2 min 40 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

You already know that the word "language" refers to our ability to communicate with

情態副詞

speech. But we saw that what exactly that ability is, turned out to be quite a quagmire.

So now let's turn to the other thing we mean by "language" - you know, the specific languages

we speak with their own words, their own grammar and their own pronunciation.

I mean, English is a language, right? And this is English! But so is this.

And back in time, this was English. Even further back, but we call this English, too.

Wait, I get it. This is Old English, and this one is Middle English, and this is Modern English.

So are these three languages or three different stages of the same language?

But I know, history's always messier than we want it to be. So let's just stick to the

present. Here are some basic words in English. And these are the same words in a totally

different dialect of English. They're two dialects because, if the same language gets

spoken in different ways by different groups of people, we call those different dialects.

Moving on, let's translate those words into Norwegian (the Norwegian language). And here's how we would write

those same words in Swedish (the Swedish language). So, Swedish and Norwegian are different languages,

but British and Scottish are different dialects of the same language?

Where's the line between a dialect and a language anyway? Is it just arbitrary or conventional?

Maybe in the end it really is buttoned up by a phrase Max Weinreich passed along. During a lecture

series he gave in the 1940s, a member of his audience made the witty remark, "a language is a dialect

with an army and a navy." If that's so, it's about politics and power just as much as it's

Language vs. languages, languages vs. dialects... oh, what a mess I've dragged you into! And

with that, I welcome you to my YouTube channel. Subscribe if you want to learn more, because

from the looks of it we've seriously got some stuff to sort out together.