"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" is a
quip about the arbitrariness of the
distinction between a
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
and a
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
.
It points out the influence that social and political conditions can have over a community's perception of the status of a language or dialect. The facetious adage was popularized by the sociolinguist and
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
scholar
Max Weinreich
Max Weinreich ( yi, מאַקס ווײַנרײַך ''Maks Vaynraych''; russian: Мейер Лазаревич Вайнрайх, ''Meyer Lazarevich Vaynraykh''; 22 April 1894, Goldingen, Russian Empire – 29 January 1969, New York City) was a Russ ...
, who heard it from a member of the audience at one of his lectures in the 1940s.
Weinreich
This statement is usually attributed to
Max Weinreich
Max Weinreich ( yi, מאַקס ווײַנרײַך ''Maks Vaynraych''; russian: Мейер Лазаревич Вайнрайх, ''Meyer Lazarevich Vaynraykh''; 22 April 1894, Goldingen, Russian Empire – 29 January 1969, New York City) was a Russ ...
, a specialist in Yiddish linguistics, who expressed it in Yiddish:
The earliest known published source is Weinreich's article ''Der YIVO un di problemen fun undzer tsayt'' ( "The YIVO Faces the Post-War World"; literally "The YIVO and the problems of our time"), originally presented as a speech on 5 January 1945 at the annual
YIVO
YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word '' ...
conference. Weinreich did not give an English version.
In the article, Weinreich presents this statement as a remark of an auditor at a lecture series given between 13 December 1943 and 12 June 1944:
In his lecture, he discusses not just linguistic, but also broader, notions of "
''yidishkeyt''" ( – lit.
Jewishness
Jewish peoplehood (Hebrew: עמיות יהודית, ''Amiut Yehudit'') is the conception of the awareness of the underlying unity that makes an individual a part of the Jewish people.
The concept of peoplehood has a double meaning. The first is d ...
).
The
sociolinguist
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
and Yiddish scholar
Joshua Fishman
Joshua Fishman (Yiddish: שיקל פֿישמאַן — Shikl Fishman; July 18, 1926 – March 1, 2015) was an American linguist who specialized in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity.
...
suggested that he might have been the auditor at the Weinreich lecture. However, Fishman was assuming that the exchange took place at a conference in 1967, more than twenty years later than the YIVO lecture (1945) and in any case does not fit Weinreich's description above.
Other mentions
Some scholars believe that
Antoine Meillet had earlier said that a language is a dialect with an army, but there is no contemporary documentation of this.
Jean Laponce noted in 2004 that the phrase had been attributed in "" (essentially anecdote) to
Hubert Lyautey
Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey (17 November 1854 – 27 July 1934) was a French Army general and colonial administrator. After serving in Indochina and Madagascar, he became the first French Resident-General in Morocco from 1912 to 1925. Early in ...
(1854–1934) at a meeting of the
Académie Française
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
; Laponce referred to the adage as "" ('Lyautey's law').
Randolph Quirk
Charles Randolph Quirk, Baron Quirk, CBE, FBA (12 July 1920 – 20 December 2017) was a British linguist and life peer. He was the Quain Professor of English language and literature at University College London from 1968 to 1981. He sat as ...
adapted the definition to "A language is a dialect with an army and a flag".
[Thomas Burns McArthur, ''The English languages'', p.205]
See also
*
Abstand and ausbau languages
In sociolinguistics, an abstand language is a language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others, while an ausbau language is a standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties. Heinz Kloss i ...
*
Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
*
Language secessionism
Language secessionism (also known as linguistic secessionism or linguistic separatism) is an attitude supporting the separation of a language variety from the language to which it has hitherto been considered to belong, in order to make this var ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
* Alexander Maxwell (2018). When Theory is a Joke: The Weinreich Witticism in Linguistics (pp 263–292). ''Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft''. Vol 28, No 2.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Language Is a Dialect with an Army and Navy
Dialectology
Adages
Sociolinguistics
Yiddish words and phrases
Quotations from literature
1940s neologisms
Political quotes
de:Eine Sprache ist ein Dialekt mit einer Armee und einer Marine