Talk:Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache

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In case Decius still wishes to revert, I've decided to add something here in case a real debate should develop, with people who actually know anything about linguistics.

"An Ausbausprache (also called an ausbau language) is a language which has a standard spelling, a standard grammar and a relatively wide and clear vocabulary (and is thus almost identical with a standard language). Two language forms that allow easy mutual communication can nevertheless be regarded as two different languages if they are each an Ausbausprache according to this definition."

So, to fit the definition...

Does it have a standard spelling? Romanian -- yes. Moldovan -- yes. Does it have a standard grammar? Romanian -- yes. Moldovan -- yes. Does it have a relatively wide and clear vocabulary? Romanian -- yes. Moldovan -- yes.

If you have anything to say to this rather than what you said before about me having to give a citation for Romanian and Moldovan being Ausbau languages (there's no citation for Bokmål and Danish, or Dari and Farsi, or any of the other examples, yet they are there because it's just common sense -- they match the definition perfectly), or that you don't give a "flying fuck" (your words) about whether my linguistic evidence is legitimate or not and demand obnoxiously that I provide a source for an example, when you refused to provide one yourself earlier, I would be happy to discuss this in more detail. However, as far as I can tell, you don't know anything about linguistics, and object to them being labelled as "languages" in even the most discrete way for nationalist reasons rather than linguistic reasons. --Node 05:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, whatever I know about linguistics, at least I don't spell ridiculous as rediculous (repeat offense on your part proves that it's not a typo). I'll get back to this later. Decius 05:56, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
A misspelling. How exactly is the significant to the topic at hand? Your English is certainly not perfect. --Node 06:59, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
And also don't forget that you are the one representing a fringe view here, not me. The Ethnologue report and the majority of linguists around the world do not refer to Moldovan as a language. In sight of this fact, my linguistic experience (though I'm sure you suck at linguistics) is not relevant here. ---Decius 06:06, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
These are the things which make our discussions hostile: "though I'm sure you suck at linguistics". Your linguistic experience IS relevant, because I've pretty much proven that you don't have the knowledge to argue against what I've said, except to tell me it's a fringe view. Do you have any better response? Or do you have no idea what any of it means?? --Node 06:59, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I'd prefer to review more references than just a Wikipedia article before I begin my argument. And on that note I once again encourage you to find more references for your edits, which support the aforementioned fringe view. Decius 07:07, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] American English vs. British English

Ok node, can you tell us again why American English is not ausubau? It also "fits the definition", as you say, so what makes their situation different from the Romanian/Moldovan one? --Gutza 16:17, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

"tell us again" means I've already told you. Go read it again. I don't want to waste my time. --Node 11:56, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, so then this quotation from your comments is supposed to be your demonstration?

I do not believe that there is an American language separate from English. Some people have in the past and still do today advocate for using different terms for English in America ("American language") and English elsewhere ("English language"). I do not hate the American language, or even the concept of a separate term or separate language. If somebody wanted to say Californians speak "Californian" instead of "English", I would think the idea was absurd, but I most certainly wouldn't go around beating people back and hating "Californian" like you hate "Moldovan". (Node on Talk:Moldovan language)

So you're advocating Californian=American English=British English=English, but Moldovan is ausbau. Care to explain? A citation would be best -- I searched the net high and low looking for anyone to say that, but found no reference, nowhere. --Gutza 12:59, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

"American and British English are different in their official forms, as well. Are they ausbau languages? john k 20:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
They could be considered as such, yes, however 1) American English is not the official language of any country to my knowledge, rather it exists as an unofficial standard; 2) No country names "____ English" as its official language, similarly no country names its official language "Taiwanese Chinese" or "Colombian Spanish", but rather they will say "Chinese" and "Spanish", while in Moldova, the official language as named by the constitution is "Moldoveneasca", this is the official name of the official language, and 1/3rd of Romanian speakers in Moldova claim that as their mother tongue. This is, as I noted previously, similar to the case of Dari and Farsi in Afghanistan and Iran. --Node 21:11, 3 August 2005 (UTC)"
...so basically, American and British English could be considered separate languages under these criteria, but they are not because 1) There is no officially standardised American English, there only exists a widespread consensus because the US doesn't have something like "Academie Française" so whether or not American English can be considered an Ausbausprache on its own is debatable; 2) "American English" is not the official language of any country. 3) "American English" and "British English" imply a unity because they both use the same language name, but with preceding adjectives. 4) The terminology "American" to refer to the speech of the US, while becoming more and more common, is still not used even by perhaps 1%. Only a tiny group claims "American" as their language on census forms. This is not to say that American English and British English cannot be considered ausbau languages, but rather that they fit the criteria differently because in American English there is no authoritative standard grammar or spelling. --Node 21:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, so basically you're saying "if they want to call it a different language, then let them?" Is this your view of things? For instance if people living in Bucharest decided they wanted to create the Bucharest Academy and name their language Bucharestian, would you be ok with an article on Bucharestian which would only note that "Bucharestian is considered by most people to be the same as Romanian" -- and then go on academically and note the "differences" between the "ausbau" Bucharestian and Romanian? Because they qualify, you know! And I mean now, today, not in a sci-fi future, or assuming a fantasy past. Would you accept that as a valid, NPOV encyclopedic article? --Gutza 21:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I've advocated that all along, as you would know if you'd been following the talk on mo.wiki. If there was really a standard Bucharestian language called by a different name than Romanian, I see no problem with an article as you mention, and I would certainly except it as a vald NPOV encyclopedic article. --Node 05:43, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful. Ok, by extension, I expect that if each of the 41 Romanian counties set up a regulating body for the language, and declare they each speak a different one (Albean, Aradean, Argesean, and so on), you'd also create straight-faced articles for each of them, wouldn't you? But how would you react to a similar, but politically loaded claim -- for instance, if the Romanian Government had the audacity to set up a Transylvan Academy, and that academy would regulate the Hungarian language spoken my the respective minority in Transylvania, claiming that ethnic Magyars in Transylvania speak Transylvan instead of Magyar? Would you still write the same kind of straight-faced article, just noting the differences between Magyar and "Transylvan"? --Gutza 13:42, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and another related question, when you say "Does it have a relatively wide and clear vocabulary?" -- what's that supposed to mean? That the two languages share a relatively wide and clear vocabulary, or that each of them consists of many words? --Gutza 18:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand why that's in there, as there's not really such a thing as a "relatively wide and clear vocabulary". That is, a language won't be usable at all if it doesn't have a "wide and clear vocabulary". But what it means is that each of them consists of words for many things relating to many topics, and that the words have clear meanings. --Node 11:56, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please Clarify Definition

Quotation from the article:

"An Ausbausprache (also called an ausbau language) is a language which has a standard spelling, a standard grammar and a relatively wide and clear vocabulary (and is thus almost identical with a standard language). Two language forms that allow easy mutual communication can nevertheless be regarded as two different languages if they are each an Ausbausprache according to this definition."

What is meant by "standard spelling", "standard grammar" and respectively "a relatively wide and clear vocabulary" in this context? This is an all-inclusive definition, i.e. Birmingham English would qualify as an Ausbausprache, separated even from British English (Birmingham English has a standard spelling, standard grammar and a relatively wide and clear vocabulary -- true, all identical with British English, but the conditions according to the definition are satisfied). Same for my English, or your English, or my family's English, and so on ad nauseaum. This is certainly not what linguists had in mind when they defined these terms, so the definition, as it stands in the article, is certainly flawed. --Gutza 23:51, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Birmingham English does not have a standard spelling. You're referring to formal written British English, as used in Birmingham, rather than written Birmingham dialect (unless you're talking about Birmingham, Alabama, in which case it's formal written American English instead). "Moldovan", on the other hand, does have standards, which are regulated by an institution separate from that which regulates standard written "Romanian".
Incidentally, in books about language issues in Moldova, the trend seems to be to use the term "Daco-Romanian language" to refer to Romanian and Moldovan together, and to describe Moldovan as a "Daco-Romanian dialect" rather than a "Romanian dialect" because this has less of an implication of nation-state, and more one of ethnicity, historical affinities, or ancestry. --Node 05:43, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Look, I don't have any claims on the Moldovan nation-state, stop implying I would. I'd be quite all right with the Moldovan government claiming the official language was Daco-Romanian, because I also speak about ethnic continuity, I never raised the issue of Rep Moldova's legitimacy as a state. Apart from those, I don't think it's worth continuing this thread at this point, I'm much more interested what you think about the potential situation I described in the previous section. --Gutza 13:50, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Gutza, I never said you personally claimed anything. I was just noting that using the words "Romanian dialect" to describe Moldovan, is to use loaded words, and most the the literature says "Daco-Romanian dialect" (or occasionally "Daco-Romanian language") instead.--Node 04:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Realized that I didn't clarify why I didn't remove the dispute notice: I do not believe that it can be scientifically acceptable for anybody to create a regulating body for a language, assign that body the task to write up a "standard spelling" and "standard grammar" identical to the existing language, and name it differently. While you personally can hold a libertarian view that anybody can call any language by any name they wish, I still have very serious doubts on whether this is actually how linguistics works (i.e. "What did they decide to call it? Californian? Great, Californian is a new language then, which happens to be identical to English -- and while we're at it, let's also invent this cool new term, ausbau, for such situations where people invent languages!"), it sounds way too dubious. --Gutza 00:26, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Gutza, while some linguists may not agree with this point of view, I think in sociolinguistics the idea is widespread that what is a language and what is not is 100% arbitrary, and depends mostly on social factors. Essentially, if somebody decides their language is different, then it's a different language. What other criteria would you propose to use? Currently, there are no widely agreed-upon criteria for the determination of what is a language and what is not. If you want to write up some criteria and try to get the linguistics community (or at least sociolinguistics) to accept your criteria and new definition, feel free. The primary usage of the term "ausbausprache" or "ausbau language" (not just "ausbau") is to refer to the varities with standard spellings and grammars themselves, NOT to a duality; thus Japanese is an Ausbausprache, Italian, French, German, and Russian are all Ausbausprachen as well, or at least their standard forms are (Milanese dialect of Italian is hardly an Ausbausprache, same with Koelsch German, Muscovian Russian, or Parisian French). However, as is noted on the page, if there are two very similar Ausbausprache, they may still be considered separate laguages. --Node 04:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, then I'm ok with removing the dispute notice once you rewrite the definition for ausbau languages to include the necessity for differences in spellings and/or grammar. As far as I can tell, Moldovan doesn't qualify as Ausbausprache in this context -- the difference in ortography from current Romanian should not qualify, because it would imply that Romanians used to speak Moldovan until the change in regulations by the Academy in the 1990's, which wouldn't make sense. Are there any other spelling and/or grammar differences between standard Romanian and "standard Moldovan"? --Gutza 10:14, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Gutza, it remains that the definition does not include that these languages need to have different spelling and grammar. What makes a language an Ausbau language is that it has an official spelling and grammar. It may be identical or near-identical to that of another language, yet it is still an Ausbau language. --Node 23:28, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Also, Gutza, as a non-linguist how can you possibly know "what linguists had in mind when they defined the term"? --Node 09:50, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't. That's why I asked. Don't cease every opportunity to insult and imply things about me, I never insulted you, and I tried to be quite candid about this entire thing, in spite of your claims of nationalistic rage on my part. --Gutza 13:50, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 'factual accuracy' and 'relevant discusion'

I read the 'discussion' above and it has nothing to do with the content of the article as such, which is based on broadly accepted scientific terms. The Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache concepts have been developed by sociolinguists, I don't see why there should be a problem of 'factual accuracy'. The concept of Ausbausprache refers to the construction of a 'national language' from hitherto 'dialects' in order to reinforce national identity. The question is not if this new 'national language' has a 'scientific legitimity' to exist as a separate language or not: it exists, it has his grammatical rules, syntax, vocabulary, written texts. So, I remove the 'factual accuracy banner' that could lead uninformed readers to think Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, Dachsprache don't have a scientific legitimacy. --Pylambert 18:24, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I never intended to contest the legitimacy of the concepts, I was contesting the data in the article, which I hoped I made clear in the comments. As a matter of fact it's quite perplexing to me that by "accuracy dispute" anyone could possibly infer "legitimacy dispute". An accuracy dispute essentially means that someone is disputing the representation of real-world objects (all-inclusive "objects") within Wikipedia, not that the real-world object's own existence and/or legitimacy is disputed (we don't have dispute notices on Scientology, although its legitimacy is potentially disputable, because contributors believe that it's properly represented in Wikipedia).
Back on topic, your changes do help, but there still is one last confusing point left: "An Ausbausprache [...] is a language [...] with [...] a relatively wide and clear vocabulary". A language without a relatively wide and clear vocabulary would be pretty much useless, that sounds like "kids inventing languages" to me. In other words, I expect that any language or dialect has "a relatively wide and clear vocabulary", because otherwise it would be dysfunctional. However, it may well be that the current meaning is the proper one, as to distinguish the very "kids inventing languages" from "proper" languages, and exclude kids' invented languages from the Ausbau languages category. But it could also mean that the Ausbau language needs a relatively wide and clear distinct vocabulary from the standard language to be considered an Ausbausprache.
Thank you for your changes! --Gutza 23:16, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Kids' invented languages such as Nicaraguan Sign Language? Ejrrjs | What? 23:29, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Interesting. Would a similar language, but with slightly distinct signs which hypothetically evolved (or was exported) in Honduras be considered an Ausbau language or not? How would that fit the definition? --Gutza 23:34, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
As long as it serves nation-building purposes I think it would. For example, there are both a Spanish Sign Language (Confederación estatal de personal sordas) and a Catalan Sign Language (ca:Llengua de signes catalana) User:Ejrrjs says What? 00:14, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources for "Dachsprache"

Could someone please provide a source where the term Dachsprache was introduced? Only the terms Ausbausprache and Abstandsprache were coined by the sociolinguist Heinz Kloss. If there will be no source, I will request this page to be moved to Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache. The term Dachsprache is not mentioned by either of the weblinks, nor does it occur in the Metzler Lexikon Sprache ISBN 3-476-01519-X, one of the major German linguistics dictionaries. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 10:28, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

It is mentioned in the German wikipedia, as you seem to understand German you should ask them at the discussion page of de:Dachsprache. All these terms are anyway used in sociolinguistics, a subdivision of sociology, not in linguistics.
There are few scientific occurrences of the term attested on the Net, but this is not a criterion, there should be a word-search in sociolinguistics scientific magazines:

[edit] "Serbocroatian" - Dachsprache or Ausbausprache of Croatian and Serbian

Is Serbo-Croatian actually a "Dachsprache" or an "Ausbausprache" of the Croatian and Serbian language? It would be perplex to assume that Croatian and Serbian are "Ausbausprachen" of the Serbo-Croatian language. Serbo-Croatian is actually a "Dachsprache" of the Croatian and Serbian language, as the name already says, if I assume right. From the mid 19th century there have been attempts about moving these two languages closer to each other. Systematic linguistic policies have been used to achieve this goal, supported by political and linguistic unification tendencies. The Croatian standard e.g. already existed before the creation of a so-called "Serbocroatian" language. Please provide an answer and change existing definition. --Neoneo13 23:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

From what the relevant wikipedia articles say, there seems to be little doubt that currently the Croatian language and the Serbian language are to be considered independent Ausbausprachen (though very definitly not Abstandsprachen). I have to admit that I'm only familiar with the concepts of Ausbausprache and Abstandsprache (see my above question to the respect), whereas I'm not so certain about Dachsprache (basically, I fail to see the difference between the concepts of Ausbausprache and of Dachsprache), but from what I understand, the Serbo-Croatian language was indeed intended to be a Dachsprache for all of Yugoslavia. However, the attempt has failed, and Serbo-Croatian is widely believed not to exist any more, if it ever has. Croatian and Serbian are closely related languages, but not the same language in terms of Ausbausprache. ― j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 10:11, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Amen to that. I'd say that the Serbocroatian/Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian situation is the classic example of the framework, so much that the article seems like written to describe it exactly. Duja 20:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page name

Should this page be split out into Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache? I know they are all related, but the title is definately odd in Wikipedia terms. - FrancisTyers 00:09, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I support it. While it's ok to have all the stuff on one place, it's goddam difficult to link to, and the title is plain ugly. I'd prefer having three separate articles, even with the same intro word for word. Autonomous language should also find its place somewhere in this category. Duja 20:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure - it seems to me that the concepts can better be explained together, so any split-up article would contain a hell of a lot of duplication. As for linking, I think all the three terms currently have redirects, and redirects are cheap, so you can simply say "[[Ausbausprache]]" (Ausbausprache) anywhere in an article; there's no need for a clumsy piped "[[Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache|Ausbausprache]]" (Ausbausprache) or anything like that (although that too does work). Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:43, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I've heard the concepts in general being referred to as Ausbau linguistics, perhaps this could be the name for the page. I think Ausbau is the most frequently reference term (at least in the Abstand/Ausbau pair). - FrancisTyers 08:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
"Ausbau linguistics" would be okay, although it doesn't seem all that common as a collocation (actually has 0 google hits). "Ausbau sociolinguistics" is a label used by Trudgill in two or three articles, and as such it has some currency. I'm not aware that others (including Kloss himself) ever coined a name for the approach as such. I agree that "ausbau" is the more prominent member of the pair - it's just the more interesting from the sociolinguistic perspective, I guess. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:51, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, you're right Ausbau sociolinguistics, obviously not got my brain on this morning... :) - FrancisTyers 09:19, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
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