"A language is a dialect with an army and navy", sometimes called the Weinreich witticism, is a quip about the arbitrariness of the distinction between a

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

and a

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

. 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, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

scholar Max Weinreich, 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, 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 (, , short for ) 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. Estab ...

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). The sociolinguist 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 Paul Jules Antoine Meillet (; 11 November 1866 – 21 September 1936) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. He began his studies at the Sorbonne University, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal, the Swiss l ...

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. In earl ...

(1854–1934) at a meeting of the

Académie Française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

; Laponce referred to the adage as "" ('Lyautey's law').

Randolph Quirk Charles Randolph Quirk, Baron Quirk (12 July 1920 – 20 December 2017) was a British linguist and politician. He was the Quain Professor of English language and literature at University College London from 1968 to 1981. He sat as a crossbe ...

adapted the definition to "A language is a dialect with an army and a flag".

Antecedents

In 1589, George Puttenham had made a similar comment about the political nature of the definition of a language as opposed to a language variety: "After a speech is fully fashioned to the common understanding, and accepted by consent of a whole country and nation, it is called a language".George Puttenham, ''The Art of English Poesie'', English Reprints, ed. Edward Arber, London, 1869
p. 156
as quoted in

Weinreich

Other mentions

Antecedents

See also

References

Further reading