# Dialects and the language continuum



## francisgranada

Hi,

Is there a significant correlation between the diversity of the regional variants/dialects of a language and the language continuum?

An example to make clearer what I mean:

The Hungarian speaking area (including territories now belonging to Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, etc.) is much larger than the Slovak speaking area, however the differences among regional variants/dialects of Hungarian are relatively small while the diversity of the Slovak dialects is quite high (especially East vs. West - we could even speak about different Slavic languages). The difference between the situation of Hungarian and Slovak (from the point of view of my question) is the fact that the Slovak speaking area is neighboring whit the Czech (Moravian), Polish and Ruthenian/Ukranian, i.e. with other Slavic languages, while the Hungarian is isolated from other Finno-Ugric languages.

So my question is, how the diversity of the regional languages/dialects depends on the presence of other neighboring languages of the same group, or if this diversity is rather given by cultural/political/historical/etc. factors (as the existance of a common State, written documents, national identity ...)

Thanks in advance


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## irinet

Hi,
_"The Hungarian speaking area (including territories *now* belonging to Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, etc.)..."_
_
What exactly do you mean by that?_


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## Hulalessar

I think that in the main diversity depends on how long a group of speakers have been around in a given area and how much they interact with each other. The amount of interaction will depend on the size of the area and ease of communication. There is no dialect continuum between Hungarian and Finnish because it is a long way to walk from Finnish speaking areas to Hungarian speaking areas and both languages have had centuries to drift apart.


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## francisgranada

Hulalessar said:


> ... There is no dialect continuum between Hungarian and Finnish because it is a long way to walk from Finnish speaking areas to Hungarian speaking areas and both languages have had centuries to drift apart.


Of course. 





Hulalessar said:


> ... I think that in the main diversity depends on how long a group of speakers have been around in a given area and how much they interact with each other...


So, if I have understood you correctly, you think that rather the cultural/political/etc ... factors are dominant: e.g.  in case of Italy, a typical example of a very high diversity of regional languages (often mutually not understandable - even if spoken in a not extremely large area, but having different history). Or, on the other hand, if I am not mistaken, the Russian language does not present a very high diversity - even if spoken in an enormous territory - because of historical factors ...


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## Dib

francisgranada said:


> Hi,
> Is there a significant correlation between the diversity of the regional variants/dialects of a language and the language continuum?



What you are defining as "language continuum" is what linguists would normally call a "dialect continuum" with multiple "standard languages" (Ausbausprachen). Dialect diversity is obviously a prerequisite for such a situation to evolve. So, there must be a strong correlation.

However, it may happen that such a dialect continuum may give rise to only one standard language as well. I think, Chinese is a pretty close but extreme example, where strong cultural and political tradition have essentially kept the identity of a single language community intact, even though the the "dialects" have strongly diversified (Even Cantonese, the culturally second strongest "dialect", is usually written - if written - mixed with Mandarine.). Tibetan is also a similar case. From Ladakh to Bhutan, the peripheral Tibetic "dialects" have only recently started to assert themselves as separate languages (thus bringing the picture closer to the Slavic situation). Before that, they all got their education in Classical Tibetan (which in Ladakh would be called Choskat, and in Bhutan Chöke, but written exactly alike) only, and thus considered themselves speaking Tibetan.

The relative uniformity of Hungarian (as I gather it from your post) is probably a result of the historical "diversity bottleneck" of a relatively small (and hence linguistically uniform) founder population in central Europe, who got only about 1000 years to diversify, that too mostly over a plain well connected by the Danube river system.

The Russian situation is quite instructive. The Old East Slavic language diversified into a dialect continuum, which has come to produce separate standard languages of Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian (and Rusyn). Many of the traditional dialects, especially in Russia, have died out due to standardization, etc. (Cf. France), which led to the "uniformity of Russian". But most importantly, most of what is now considered "Russian territory" was traditionally non-Slavic (including St. Petersburg, Kazan, Volgograd, etc.). Russian language spread to all these places (and everywhere beyond) only in the past 400-500 years (similar to English in the Americas). No wonder, Russian is so uniform.


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## Hulalessar

francisgranada said:


> So, if I have understood you correctly, you think that rather the cultural/political/etc ... factors are dominant: e.g.  in case of Italy, a typical example of a very high diversity of regional languages (often mutually not understandable - even if spoken in a not extremely large area, but having different history). Or, on the other hand, if I am not mistaken, the Russian language does not present a very high diversity - even if spoken in an enormous territory - because of historical factors ...



The Romance languages of Italy are a classic case of the highest diversity being present in the area of origin. The same may be said of the varieties of English spoken on the island of Great Britain. If you travel 100 miles from any one point in Great Britain to another you will hear more varities of English than if you travel from the Arctic Circle to the Rio Grande.


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## ahvalj

I think the degree of dialectal differentiation of a language depends on a number of reasons, and even more so on the details of the interplay of these reasons. Perhaps, one can identify a number of basic scenarios (say, 20), but I have never seen it done.

A couple of non-trivial examples from the past threads. Greek was very dialectally diverse in the Antiquity, but then the spread of Koine wiped out most dialectal differences, and the new differentiation began literally from the very beginning (the only surviving pre-Koine dialect, or rather a language now, is Tsakonian). The same must have occurred in Scandinavia, as no modern dialectal isogloss is older than the second half of the first millennium, which is especially striking at the seashore of south-western Norway: at some point the dialectal differences, that had developed around each isolated fjord, disappeared, and the new differentiation began from a common point. Yet, unlike the Roman Empire, Scandinavia of the viking period had no state to impose the common language: that somehow occurred in a natural way.

Russian is peculiar in that it apparently is less disposed towards dialectal differentiation than many other languages. English in the Pacific states of the USA is not older than Russian in the Pacific regions of Russia, yet the former has developed into a clearly distinct variant, while Russian in the Far East is exactly the same as in the European Russia: I don't hear any difference in the speech of people from Vladivostok other than some slight provincial flavor in some individuals. The core Russian territory is also linguistically rather homogeneous, in stark contrast with e. g. Ukraine, especially Western Ukraine. This weak dialectal differentiation was already mentioned in the literature of the middle 18th century and, as far as I know, there is no good linguistic explanation for this. What can be said is that before the arrival of the radio and cinema in the 1930's, the state definitely had no tools to impose the common speech across Russia. My own theory is that it is somehow rooted in the national psychology, as Russians in general have very little inclination to secession: e. g. there were never any really serious attempts towards autonomy of any ethnically Russian part of the country, i. e. the Russian national psychology is rather centripetal, and the differences, including in the language, are often perceived as undesirable and inferior.


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## Ben Jamin

francisgranada said:


> Of course. So, if I have understood you correctly, you think that rather the cultural/political/etc ... factors are dominant: e.g.  in case of Italy, a typical example of a very high diversity of regional languages (often mutually not understandable - even if spoken in a not extremely large area, but having different history). Or, on the other hand, if I am not mistaken, the Russian language does not present a very high diversity - even if spoken in an enormous territory - because of historical factors ...


The diversity of languages and dialects of Italy is mostly due to the long vitality of substract languages (Celtic, Greek, Albanian, Italic, Etruscan, Venetic) under the Roman domination. The secondary factor was the political fragmentation after the fall of the Western Empire, and foreign influence from the new, external rulers.
Greek is said to be spoken in Naples until at least the year 1000.


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## Nino83

There are many factors.
1) Time.
The Italian regional Romance languages are the direct continuation of the Vulgar Latin, i.e they started diverging approximately during the V century, so there is something like 1600 years of difference.
Until 1533 Russia extended from Kharkov to Saint Petersburg to the Urals, and that area was a plain. It was just an unified nation (Empire).
2) Geography.
The Russian territory is flat, it's a plain. Italy is thin and long, divided by the _Appennini_.
3) Politics.
Until 1861 Italy as a nation didn't exist.
4) Internal migrations. When Russia extended to the Pacific, a large amout of Russian people transferred in these areas, they are the majority in Siberia (91%), Yakutsk (the capital of Yakutia or Sakha Republic) and Vladivostok (92% in Primorsky Krai).

In other words, the majority of people in Moscow and Vladivostok are Russians who had a common language in 1533 AD.
In Italy, until 1861 there were different states and until the post WWII period, there haven't been many internal migrations and, after the WWII, migrations hasn't been from the center to the perifery (like the Russian or the North American ones), but from the south to the north.

The Hungarian territory is tiny and flat while the Slovak one is full of mountains.


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## apmoy70

ahvalj said:


> I think the degree of dialectal differentiation of a language depends on a number of reasons, and even more so on the details of the interplay of these reasons. Perhaps, one can identify a number of basic scenarios (say, 20), but I have never seen it done.
> 
> A couple of non-trivial examples from the past threads. Greek was very dialectally diverse in the Antiquity, but then the spread of Koine wiped out most dialectal differences, and the new differentiation began literally from the very beginning (the only surviving pre-Koine dialect, or rather a language now, is Tsakonian)..


Also Greece comprise a mountainous mainland and hundreds of inhabited islands and islets, some closer to Asia Minor than the mainland, each with its own unique colour and culture, the Greek-Cypriot "dialect" is in reality a language, as is Tsakonian (cut off from the rest of the Peloponnese by the Parnon mountain range) or Pontian-Greek (far away from the Greek centre and cut off from any immediate contact with Greek speaking areas). Even Cretan is different enough from Standard Greek (I remember I was standing before two elderly Cretan men about twenty or so years ago in the ferry bound to Crete, who conversed in their dialect, I was able to understand maybe 40-50% of what they were saying)


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## Dymn

Basque has a high dialectal variation in a territory with less than 10,000 km2 and it's completely surrounded by Romance languages. I don't think the neighboring languages are a main factor in explaining dialectal diversity. To me, it depends on the historical presence of a state which can promote a national standard, the time of divergence, and physical geography.


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## Ben Jamin

Don't forget the influence of substrate langauges on different dialects.


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## francisgranada

Ben Jamin said:


> The diversity of languages and dialects of Italy is mostly due to the long vitality of substract languages (Celtic, Greek, Albanian, Italic, Etruscan, Venetic) under the Roman domination ...


Ok, but  can we really (or significantly) explain the differences among e.g. the Piedmontese, Neapolitan and Sicilian on the basis of these substrate languages? ... 





Diamant7 said:


> Basque has a high dialectal variation in a territory with less than 10,000 km2 and it's completely surrounded by Romance languages ...


Are the differences - in you opinion - so high that we could speak of different languages of the same group? In case of (hypothetical) ignorance of the standard Basque and Spanish, could we speak about  problems/difficulties in mutual understanding of speakers of different Basque dialects?


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## Dymn

francisgranada said:


> Are the differences - in you opinion - so high that we could speak of different languages of the same group? In case of (hypothetical) ignorance of the standard Basque and Spanish, could we speak about problems/difficulties in mutual understanding of speakers of different Basque dialects?


I'm not sure, but I think the internal differences are bigger than those of English for example, and there could be significant comprehension problems between speakers of different dialects, but not to the point of considering them different languages.


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> can we really (or significantly) explain the differences among e.g. the Piedmontese, Neapolitan and Sicilian on the basis of these substrate languages?


We know very little about the Continental Celtic languages.
Anyway the phonetic and syntactic evolution of Piedmontese, Lombard and other Gallo-Italian languages is very similar to the French one.
Phonetic: diphthongization of both open-mid and close-mid vowels in open syllables, the opening of close-mid vowels in closed syllables, the close vowel chain (u > y, o > u), the loss of the final unstressed vowels and, often, of the final syllables, the merger of _ci, tj_ with _s_, of _-ci-_ with _-s-_ [z], the change _-cl-_ > _-j-_ (auric(u)la > oreille).
Syntactic: mandatory subject pronouns.
The same for Sicilian (spoken in Sicily, part of Calabria, Salento) with Greek.
Phonetic: merger between close-mid vowels and close vowels (é > i, ó > u).
Syntactic: use of finite verbs instead of the infinitive in subordinate clauses introduced by a preposition (_pensa di venire domani_ vs. _pensa chi dumani veni_, _andò a Londra per studiare_ vs._ annau a Londra mi studìa_). 

As for the Neapolitan language, they share metaphonesis with _dialetti mediani_, while the reduction of the final unstressed vowels to a schwa seems to be a more recent phenomenon.


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> ... The Hungarian territory is tiny and flat while the Slovak one is full of mountains.


Yes, but the Hungarian is spoken also in _Transylvania_, i.e. in a mountainous territory or in a territory "behind the mountains" (_Transylvania _< "trans silvam", medieval Latin calque of the Hungarian _Erdőelve_;_ Erdély_ in modern Hungarian). It's also true that the Transylvanian dialects of Hungarian have their specific features and tend to be a bit archaic, but they are perfectly understandable and the differences from the common Hungarian are practically negligeable.

On the other hand, the so called _Goral _dialects are spoken mainly in the ambient of the _Tatra _mountains, in both (i.e. Polish and Slovak) sides of the mountains. They represent a continuum, even if they are considered rather Polish than Slovak dialects (by the majority of linguists, as far as I know). Finally, the continuum between the _Catalan _and the _Occitan _languages of France is also evident, in spite of the Pyrenees in between ....

(Do not misunderstand me, I don't deny the existence of the geographical factor, I am only discussing it's relevance ...)


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## Nino83

You're right about dialects in Transylvania. I know very little (i.e nothing) about the history of the Hungarian language, so I'm not able to answer this question. 


francisgranada said:


> Finally, the continuum between the _Catalan _and the _Occitan _languages of France is also evident, in spite of the Pyrenees in between ....


Yes, but the trade was done through the sea and ports. For example, it is well known that the modern Venetian language is more similar to the language spoken in Venice than that spoken in Verona, Vicenza or Belluno, that lost, during the renaissance, almost all final unstressed vowels but they were reintroduced because of the Venice variety. The contemporary Venice variety has more vowels than that spoken during the XV century, and it was influenced by the lingua franca that was spoken by commerciants and businessmen in the Italian ports.  
Maybe there is a similar explanation for the Catalan and Occitan languages.


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## Dymn

francisgranada said:


> Finally, the continuum between the _Catalan _and the _Occitan _languages of France is also evident, in spite of the Pyrenees in between ....


What do you mean by that? There's a clear border between Catalan and Occitan linguistic areas, although there's a small valley (Capcir) whose vernacular could be considered a "transition dialect".

Both the Pyrenees and the belonging to a different nation (since 1213) have acted as a barrier between Catalan and Occitan.


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## francisgranada

Diamant7 said:


> What do you mean by that?  ...


For example this (taken from the article *Català*):

*Característiques
Família lingüística*
Indoeuropea
Itàlica
Romànica
Itàlica Occidental
Gal·loibèrica
*Occitanoromànica*

(Plus, my very limited personal experiences).


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## Dymn

Occitan is the closer language to Catalan, but I don't know whether it's a good example of a language continuum. Plus there's also Aragonese which exhibits many Catalan-Occitan traits, and there's the Benasqués dialect which is halfway between Aragonese and Catalan.

In my opinion all non-Balkan Romance varietes could be considered a huge dialect continuum, although with the spread of national standard languages this is fading. Iberia is also different from France and Italy in this aspect because the southern lects (e.g. Portuguese, Andalusian Spanish, Valencian) are relatively modern extensions of the northern varieties (Galician, Castilian, Catalan) that emerged during the Reconquista. So one would expect less variety and clearer linguistic borders than in France and Italy.


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## Hulalessar

Catalan and Occitan have an immediate common ancestor.  Catalan developed in an area which is now partly in France and partly in Spain where, at least towards the eastern end, the Pyrenees are not the barrier they are further to the west. Communications between what is now the Spanish province of Gerona and the French département of Pyrénees-Orientales were good even in classical antiquity. The present day boundary between Catalan and Occitan is not marked by mountains.

The close relationship between Catalan and Occitan does rather highlight that the categories "Ibero-Romance" and "Gallo-Romance" are geopolitical, especially if Catalan is included in the former and Occitan in the latter. Today, in the areas where both Castillian and Catalan are spoken, there is no dialect continuum between the two. They developed in different areas, one on the Atlantic and the other on the Mediterranean. Both expanded until they met, in the process squeezing out Aragonese and Mozarabic.

There is a saying that all Romance languages are alike apart from French - to which some may want to add Portuguese and/or Romanian. Even so, within France there is (or perhaps more accurately, was) a dialect continuum between the langues d'oïl and the langues d'oc.

To expand on what I said above, in genetics there is a hypothesis that centres of diversity are also centres of origin. I think that that is also generally true for languages and is the main factor, at least at certain periods - diversity can go into reverse if some variety exercises political, economic or cultural prestige.


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## ahvalj

About the substrate influence. I do think that Gallo-Romance shows some traits parallel to those in Brittonic (W -> Gu/Gh) but on the other hand the Catalan-Occitan speech with its similarities and vague boundary arose on three completely different substrates from three unrelated language families: Iberian in the case of Catalan (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Iberia_300BC-en.svg) and Aquitanian (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Aquitani_tribes_map-fr.svg) and Gaulish in the case of Occitan. Plus, let's not forget that each of these languages may have had its own substrate: for example the original Celts of the Hallstatt culture (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Hallstatt_LaTene.png — amateur anthropologists discussing modern people with similar skulls here: Hallstatt Nordid Examples) are very different from the modern population of France and both are pretty different from the modern population of the British isles, so what is actually "Celtic" in this context?


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## Hulalessar

Very little is known about Iberian, Aquitanian and Gaulish and the extent to which they may be substrates to any Romance language is highly speculative.

Julius Caesar remarked that they spoke better Latin in Gaul than in Rome. Is it not often the case that foreigners in fact speak languages they have learned more correctly than natives ? Certainly today for example most Scandinavians articulate English very clearly. Is there a discernible Scandinavian substrate to the English they speak?


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## ahvalj

My mentioning of these languages had the purpose of illustrating the case when three completely unrelated idioms spoken in a certain area gave way to a single (Occitan–Catalan) dialect continuum.

By the way, Faroese (http://netvarp.kringvarp.fo:443/uvhm.m3u) spoken by descendants of Scandinavian fathers and Gaelic mothers, sounds completely non-Germanic to me.


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## Ben Jamin

ahvalj said:


> By the way, Faroese (http://netvarp.kringvarp.fo:443/uvhm.m3u) spoken by descendants of Scandinavian fathers and Gaelic mothers, sounds completely non-Germanic to me.


What features of that language give you such impression?
What do you think about Icelandic?


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## ahvalj

Ben Jamin said:


> What features of that language give you such impression?
> What do you think about Icelandic?


Of course, some Germanic and international words are recognizable when listening to Faroese, but I mean the overall sound: articulation (lack of the Romance and Germanic tenseness), intonations (very smooth, unlike in the rest of Western Europe), lack of aspiration, ʨ and ʥ, neuter vowels. I've thought that the language sounds like the one from an alternative history: European but without any clear connections.

Icelandic sounds more of this world and the Germanic phonetic element is much clearer there.


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## Hulalessar

ahvalj said:


> By the way, Faroese (http://netvarp.kringvarp.fo:443/uvhm.m3u) spoken by descendants of Scandinavian fathers and Gaelic mothers, sounds completely non-Germanic to me.



Seems to me to have a something of a North Germanic ring to it.


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## Ben Jamin

Hulalessar said:


> Seems to me to have a something of a North Germanic ring to it.


I have listened to some other videos with Faroese, and knowing Norwegian lets me understand many words, if spoken slowly. The pace of the speech is breathtaking (news broadcast), more like Spanish than a Scandinavian language. The prosody reminds most of Icelandic, but many sounds are quite different. It reminds also a little of Turkish, both in prosody and in sounds, but also some English sounding consonants can be tracked (especially 'L').
My conclusion is that even in the same language family (Germanic) we can find a tremendous diversity of phonetic features, not to mention the whole Indo-European family.


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## ahvalj

ahvalj said:


> English in the Pacific states of the USA … has developed into a clearly distinct variant


I agree with the comment I received in a personal message that this is an exaggeration. Perhaps I should have written "Australian English".


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## franknagy

[QUOTE="ahvalj, post: 16514577, member: 509616"the Russian national psychology is rather centripetal[/QUOTE]
I think that the reason of the lack of Russian dialects is rather political than psychological. The Russian state has been centralized since Ivan III.
The czars have been exiled massed to the Eastern edge of the Russian Empire. Another factor is the Great Plain and steppe all over Eurasia easy to trespass.


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## ahvalj

franknagy said:


> ahvalj said:
> 
> 
> 
> I think that the reason of the lack of Russian dialects is rather political than psychological. The Russian state has been centralized since Ivan III.
> The czars have been exiled massed to the Eastern edge of the Russian Empire. Another factor is the Great Plain and steppe all over Eurasia easy to trespass.
> 
> 
> 
> This centralization meant that there were no independent political players contesting czar's decrees, but in no practical way could it influence the speech of people living in the area larger than entire Western Europe. The vast majority of the Russian subjects in the 15–19th centuries simply never heard people from Moscow / Saint Petersburg to start speaking as they did.
> 
> I am not aware of any _mass_ exiles. Russia wasn't Assyria.
Click to expand...


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