Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.taiwan,soc.culture.singapore
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!sun4nl!mcv
From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Dialect or Language?difference=???
Message-ID: <CzpKx5.GI7@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <3ak537$gds@grivel.une.edu.au> <3atgla$890@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 07:03:05 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <3atgla$890@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU>,
Hung J Lu <hlu@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU> wrote:
> (Could some Catalan speakers give their
>comments here? I have an eery feeling that with the liberation
>of Catalan, the present generation finally received the deserved relief,
>but the future generations may not be as interested in preserving
>the language and would opt more towards integration with Castilian. 
>The two languages are too similar... sometimes the best way to
>eliminate a dialect is by allowing it to be used...)

Catalan is not more similar to Castilian than Portuguese, I'd say.
What makes a difference is the fact that Catalan speakers are
practically all bilingual, and that a large proportion of the
population of Catalonia are "immigrants" from other (Castilian-
speaking) parts of Spain.  
It's hard to say what will happen in the future... Undoubtedly,
the constant influx of Castilian loanwords into Catalan will
continue, as it has for hundreds of years, but in itself that
doesn't mean much.  When I read 17th century Dutch texts,
I'm amazed at the amount of French loanwords in the language.
Most of them are not used anymore.  Nowadays, most Dutch people
are bilingual in Dutch and English, and there is a constant
influx of English loanwords.  The purists are worried, but I
don't think Dutch is in any danger of being replaced by English
in the Netherlands.

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
