Dialects

2014-09-05 — 2014-09-05

Wherein the Politics and Practicality of Adopting Local Speech Are Examined, and the Exigencies of Speaking Swiss German in Multilingual Switzerland Are Presented as a Concrete Test Case for Social Navigation.

language

On the politics and practicality of speaking like a local.

See, e.g. Swiss German.

I love the Max Weiner quote, “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” Singularly appropriate since he said it about Yiddish, which went on to be absorbed by Hebrew in the process of acquiring its army. I also like it as someone who lives in Switzerland, which has a whole lot of army and yet pretends to speak the language of its neighbours. Better buy a warship to sail about on Lake Constance is all I’m sayin’.