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From: rharmsen@knoware.nl (Ruud Harmsen)
Subject: Re: Chinese dialects
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Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 20:15:38 GMT
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In article <3lslo6$red@agate.berkeley.edu> patchew@uclink2.berkeley.edu (Patrick Chew) writes:
>........ Since we are on the 
>track of your denying mutual intelligibility as a criterion as language 
>status, why don't we look at the Scandinavian languages, eg: Norwegian 
>(bokmaal and nynorsk), Swedish, Danish, Icelandic (not to mention 
>Faroese, etc).  These languages have varying degrees of mutual 
>intelligibility, written and spoken - spoken, Norwegian and Swedish have 
>a fairly high mutual intelligibility, while written, bokmaal Norwegian 
>and Danish have a lager percentage of intelligibility - yet, they are all 
>separate _languages_. 
Right. German, Dutch and Afrikaans are more or less mutually understandable., 
but not the same language. I can even understand (or at least read) quite some 
Swedish without having learnt it, based on knowledge of Dutch, German and 
English. Likewise, I can read Itialian, based on knowing some French, Spanish 
and Portuguese. It just doesn't prove anything.

And couldn't written Latin have been to spoken French and Spanish, what 
written Chinese is to spoken Chinese languages, if only historic developments 
had been a little different? 
And classical Arabic vs. spoken Egyptian, Morrocan, etc. etc.

Does the fact that Japanese can read Chinese newspapers (I have been told) 
mean Japanese and Chinese are the same language? There aren't even akin!

Compare it to colours: there is an unlimited number of colours in the 
spectrum, and an unlimited number of mixtures of them. Yet we have words 
(some, or many) to describe colours.
