Ludwig Boltzmann Institut, Innsbruck
Neulateinische Studien
Conference
Latin, National Identity and the Language Question in Central Europe
Panel: Language and Identity I; Thur, Dec 13, 2012, 9:00-10:45
The History of the Normative Opposition
of ‘Language versus Dialect:’
From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe's Ethnolinguistic Nation-States
Tomasz Kamusella
University of St Andrews
Scotland, UK
Received Believes in the West:
Languages and Dialects
• Belief 1: there are languages and dialects
• Belief 2: dialects are qualitatively different
from languages
• Belief 3: dialects belong to appropriate
languages
• Secondary belief A: different peoples / nations
speak & write different languages
• Secondary belief B: groups speaking dialects
are parts of peoples / nations that speak and
write languages
Received Believes and Linguists
• Desire for making linguistics into a natural science
• Leonard Bloomfield. 1926. A Set of Postulates for the Science of
Language. Language. Vol 2.
• Bloomfield’s proposition: Languages are mutually unintelligible,
dialects (of a language) are mutually comprehensible
• Problem 1: Dialects of Arabic or Chinese are often mutually
incomprehensible
• Problem 2: The languages of Moldovan & Romanian or Bulgarian &
Macedonian are almost exactly the same, and thus fully mutually
comprehensible
• Problem 3: Asymmetrical in/comprehensibility in
Spanish/Portuguese or among Scandinavia’s Germanic languages
• Ergo, no linguistic definition of the language vs dialect opposition
• Hence, its origin and functioning must lie in extralinguistic factors,
that is, human decisions and choices, in the vagaries of human
culture and its changes
Ancient Greek: Glossa
• 8th c BCE: the organ (muscle) of the
‘tongue’
• 5th c BCE: a language or dialect (that
is, a lect)
• 3rd c BCE: peoples speaking different
languages, ergo a people = a
language
Ancient Greek: Dialektos Writing and
Glossa
• Early 4th c BCE: Dialektos - ‘discourse’ or ‘conversation,’
especially in the context of learned discussions conducted
among philosophers and scholars (thence the philosophical
term ‘dialectics’)
• Mid-4th c BCE: Dialektos - ‘speech,’ ‘language,’ and
‘common language’
• 2nd c BCE: Dialektos - ‘a language of a country,’ thus
becoming quite synonymous with Glossa in the meaning of
‘a people living in a country’
• Late 1st c BCE: Dialektos denotes ‘a spoken language,’ as
opposed to ‘a written language,’
• that is, Glossa meaning ‘written language’
• Emergence of the opposition Dialektos vs Glossa = oral vs
written
Latin-Greek Bilingualism
• Early 2nd c BCE: Lingua ‘the organ of tongue’ and ‘the particular
mode of speech in a given country or region.’ (These meanings
corresponded closely to those of the Greek glossa)
• (Late 2nd c BCE glossa was marginalized in Latin as a term for ‘a
collection of unfamiliar words’ (that is, a ‘glossary’). And the
neologism glossema was coined for ‘an unusual word requiring
explanation’)
• 30s of 1st c BCE the Greek loanword dialectos was attested in Latin
for ‘a dialect, a form of speech [hence, unwritten]’ (Glare 1982, 536)
• Hence, the Greek distinction between ‘spoken language’ (dialektos)
and ‘written language’ (glossa) was adopted in Latin as: Dialectos vs
Lingua.
• 1st – 2nd cc CE: the Greek opposition dialektos vs glossa was
consolidated in the Greek texts of the time that frequently were
translated into Latin fortifying the Latin opposition Dialectos vs
Lingua
•
•
•
•
•
•
In
the
Christian
West
Translatio imperii and ‘Translatio lingua’ ? > Transmission of concepts
from the bilingual, Latin-Greek Antiquity to the Christian West > 1st c CE:
the Greek original of the New Testament; late 2nd c CE: Latin translation of
the New Testament; early 5th c CE: the consolidation of the new world
view in the Vulgate, or canonical Latin translation of the Bible.
M(edieval) Latin: the rise of the term Natio - ‘people,’ ‘race’ (today, we’d
say ‘ethnic group’), ‘set of people,’ ‘the people of a country, or state’ ‘a
region of a country, occupied by a people.’
M Latin: the decline of the term Gens, which was a near-synonym of
Natio
M Latin: Lingua - a close association with Natio / Gens, following the
former word’s 2nd c BCE meaning ‘the particular mode of speech in a
given country or region,’ in turn, a reflection of the 3rd BCE meaning of the
Greek word Glossa for ‘a people living in a country’
M Latin: Dialectos disappeared and replaced with the neologism
Linguagium for ‘an unwritten form of speech’
Oppostion between written and unwritten lects also mapped by opposing
Latin to ‘Vulgar Latin’ (Latinum Vulgare) or ‘Countryside Latin’ (Lingua
Romana Rustica)
The Counter/Reformation: From
Vernaculars to Written Languages
• Translating the Vulgate into vernaculars: recreating the Western
Christian cultural package in a plethora of initially unwritten forms
of speech, thus made into languages in their own right
• Vernaculars opposed to Latin (Greek)
• Early 17th c: English ‘Vernacular’ (from Latin Vernaculus for
‘domestic,’ ‘native,’ ‘indigenous’) for the ‘speech of the people of a
particular country or district;’ later ‘a written language developed
on the basis of this speech’
• Likewise, the ancient opposition between ‘spoken lect’ and
‘written lect’ revived (Dialektos vs Glossa; Dialectos vs Lingua)
• The term Linguagium disappears
• 1570s: In English (directly from classical Latin or via French) the
term ‘Dialect’ is revived for denoting ‘a subordinate form of a
language, a manner of speech peculiar to a group of people’
From the Territorial State to the Nation
• 15th-17th c religious wars, compromise > eius regio cuius religio,
hence one polity – one religion, the political principle of religious
homogeneity
• The population of a polity are generically referred to as a Natio >
Italian nazione (1294) , German Nation (14th c), Slavic narod (14th c)
Spanish nación (1444), Polish nacja (1558), English nation (1600,
14th c in form nacioun), Portuguese naçao (1691; 14th c in forms
naçõ, nasçião), Russian natsiia (1705)
• 18th c, new theory (Nationalism): each nation (‘group of people,’
however defined) should live in its own state (that is, nation-state)
not shared with any other nation or controlled by a nation-state of
another nation
• Turn of the 19th c: Herder, Hegel, Napoleonic Wars, the dissolution
of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of ethnolinguistic nationalism >
language = nation = state (eius regio cuius lingua)
The normative Politicization of the
Dialect vs Language Opposition
• Language – written lect, defined as the national language
of a nation, and official in a (nation-)state
• Dialect – oral (unwritten) lect, typically subsumed under
the ‘umbrella’ of an extant recognized national / official
language
• 19th c – mid-20th c: Spread of full literacy and
ethnolinguistic nationalism across Europe
• Often, when a dialect gets written it is not recognized as
a language, because it would necessitate the creation of
a new state for the speakers of this dialect-turnedlanguage, hence construed as a nation
Humans: Main Extralinguistic Force
Dilemma: How to keep the number of the nation-states low and
not to fall foul of the requirements of ethnolinguistic nationalism?
Some tried solutions
• written or not dialect remain dialects (Low German in Germany),
• or autonomous regions / separate states created for the
speakers of such dialects-turned-languages (Croatia),
• or in multilingual aspiring nation-states amalgam languages are
postulated/created (German, Serbocroatoslovenian,
Czechoslovak),
• or the same language goes by two different names to serve
appropriately separate nation-states (Moldovan/Romanian,
Bulgarian/Macedonian),
• or languages are created/proclaimed for separate states that
share the same language (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin,
Serbian)