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96-825: Northumbrian was a dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria . Together with Mercian , Kentish and West Saxon , it forms one of the sub-categories of Old English devised and employed by modern scholars. The dialect was spoken from the Humber , now within England , to the Firth of Forth , now within Scotland . In the Danelaw after the Viking invasions , Northumbrian may have been influenced by

192-453: A dialect of a language defined in this way. In these terms, Danish and Norwegian , though mutually intelligible to a large degree, are considered separate languages. In the framework of Heinz Kloss , these are described as languages by ausbau (development) rather than by abstand (separation). In other situations, a closely related group of varieties possess considerable (though incomplete) mutual intelligibility, but none dominates

288-508: A dialect cluster is defined as a central variety together with a collection of varieties whose speakers can understand the central variety at a specified threshold level (usually between 70% and 85%) or higher. It is not required that peripheral varieties be understood by speakers of the central variety or of other peripheral varieties. A minimal set of central varieties providing coverage of a dialect continuum may be selected algorithmically from intelligibility data. In many societies, however,

384-513: A "dialect", as it is the dominant language in a particular state, be it in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. The term "dialect" used this way implies a political connotation, being mostly used to refer to low-prestige languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from the national language), languages lacking institutional support, or those perceived as "unsuitable for writing". The designation "dialect"

480-518: A "dialect", including standardized ones . A second usage, which refers to colloquial settings, typically diglossic , in a few countries like Italy , such as dialetto , patois in France , much of East Central Europe, and the Philippines , may carry a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of an autochthonous non-national language to

576-644: A Sicilian-speaking person would have a greater degree of mutual intelligibility with a speaker of the more closely related Neapolitan language, but far less mutual intelligibility with a person speaking Sicilian Gallo-Italic, a language that developed in isolated Lombard emigrant communities on the same island as the Sicilian language. Today, the majority of Italian nationals are able to speak Italian, though many Italians still speak their regional language regularly or as their primary day-to-day language, especially at home with family or when communicating with Italians from

672-465: A Yiddish speaker would consult a Yiddish dictionary rather than a German dictionary in such a case, and is classified as its own language. Within this framework, W. A. Stewart defined a language as an autonomous variety in addition to all the varieties that are heteronomous with respect to it, noting that an essentially equivalent definition had been stated by Charles A. Ferguson and John J. Gumperz in 1960. A heteronomous variety may be considered

768-456: A central variety together with all those varieties whose speakers understand the central variety at a specified threshold level or higher. If the threshold level is high, usually between 70% and 85%, the cluster is designated as a language . Another occasionally used criterion for discriminating dialects from languages is the sociolinguistic notion of linguistic authority . According to this definition, two varieties are considered dialects of

864-569: A changing market". The Southern edition was published in five volumes between 1978 and 2000. According to Horrall, a new edition of the Cursor Mundi was needed because the transcriptions in Morris' Northern version "were accompanied by a sketchy, inaccurate critical apparatus which is now out of date". In particular, Morris and his collaborators had considered the southern manuscripts ( H , T , L , B ) to be "hopelessly corrupt" copies of

960-412: A dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect associated with a particular social class is called a sociolect ; one associated with a particular ethnic group is an ethnolect ; and a geographical or regional dialect is a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). Any variety of a given language can be classified as

1056-533: A distinct language from Arabic and not merely a dialect thereof. During the civil war , Christians often used Lebanese Arabic officially, and sporadically used the Latin script to write Lebanese, thus further distinguishing it from Arabic. All Lebanese laws are written in the standard literary form of Arabic, though parliamentary debate may be conducted in Lebanese Arabic. In Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco,

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1152-402: A given language can be classified as "a dialect", including any standardized varieties . In this case, the distinction between the "standard language" (i.e. the "standard" dialect of a particular language) and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In

1248-415: A language with a writing system will operate at different degrees of distance from the standardized written form. Some dialects of a language are not mutually intelligible in spoken form, leading to debate as to whether they are regiolects or separate languages. A standard dialect , also known as a "standardized language", is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include any or all of

1344-466: A matter of dispute. Macedonian , which is largely mutually intelligible with Bulgarian and certain dialects of Serbo-Croatian ( Torlakian ), is considered by Bulgarian linguists to be a Bulgarian dialect, while in North Macedonia , it is regarded as a language in its own right. Before the establishment of a literary standard of Macedonian in 1944, in most sources in and out of Bulgaria before

1440-787: A number of different families follow the last two major groups: the Gallo-Romance languages ( French , Occitan and its Vivaro-Alpine dialect , Franco-Provençal ); the Rhaeto-Romance languages ( Friulian and Ladin ); the Ibero-Romance languages ( Sardinia 's Algherese ); the Germanic Cimbrian , Southern Bavarian , Walser German and the Mòcheno language ; the Albanian Arbëresh language ;

1536-478: A particular dialect, often the sociolect of the elite class, comes to be identified as the "standard" or "proper" version of a language by those seeking to make a social distinction and is contrasted with other varieties. As a result of this, in some contexts, the term "dialect" refers specifically to varieties with low social status . In this secondary sense of "dialect", language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages : The status of "language"

1632-438: A separate and parallel way and may thus better fit various parties' criteria for a separate language. Despite this, these "dialects" may often be historically cognate and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may even, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter. In this sense, unlike in the first usage, the national language would not itself be considered

1728-678: A separate language, because Literary Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Qur'an . Although, especially since the 1960s, the Darijas are occupying an increasing use and influence in the cultural life of these countries. Examples of cultural elements where Darijas' use became dominant include: theatre, film, music, television, advertisement, social media, folk-tale books and companies' names. Cursor Mundi The Cursor Mundi (or ‘ Over-runner of

1824-430: A sequence of varieties, where each mutually intelligible with the next, but may not be mutually intelligible with distant varieties. Others have argued that mutual intelligibility occurs in varying degrees, and the potential difficulty in distinguishing between intelligibility and prior familiarity with the other variety. However, recent research suggests that there is some empirical evidence in favor of using some form of

1920-399: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives, and the term "dialect" is sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. The term

2016-441: A similar way, the definitions of the terms "language" and "dialect" may overlap and are often subject to debate, with the differentiation between the two classifications often grounded in arbitrary or sociopolitical motives. The term "dialect" is however sometimes restricted to mean "non-standard variety", particularly in non-specialist settings and non-English linguistic traditions. Conversely, some dialectologists have reserved

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2112-582: A socio-cultural approach, is possible. This is illustrated by the frequency with which the army-navy aphorism is cited. By the definition most commonly used by linguists, any linguistic variety can be considered a "dialect" of some language—"everybody speaks a dialect". According to that interpretation, the criteria above merely serve to distinguish whether two varieties are dialects of the same language or dialects of different languages. The terms "language" and "dialect" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although they are often perceived to be. Thus there

2208-649: A speaker of purely Eastern Lombard , a language in Northern Italy 's Lombardy region that includes the Bergamasque dialect , would have severely limited mutual intelligibility with a purely Italian speaker and would be nearly completely unintelligible to a Sicilian -speaking individual. Due to Eastern Lombard's status as a Gallo-Italic language, an Eastern Lombard speaker may, in fact, have more mutual intelligibility with an Occitan, Catalan , or French speaker than with an Italian or Sicilian speaker. Meanwhile,

2304-403: A work intended for oral-didactic performance. In consideration of one particular segment of the poem (lines 12713–17082), it is virtually impossible to complete an exhaustive survey of the poet's source materials. However, several works may be cited with certainty regarding their influence upon it. The Cursor Mundi poem consists of almost 30,000 lines. The short verse form is generally that of

2400-503: Is also used popularly to refer to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. John Lyons writes that "Many linguists [...] subsume differences of accent under differences of dialect." In general, accent refers to variations in pronunciation, while dialect also encompasses specific variations in grammar and vocabulary . There are three geographical zones in which Arabic

2496-504: Is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity . A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect . A dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed an ethnolect . A geographical/regional dialect may be termed a regiolect (alternative terms include 'regionalect', 'geolect', and 'topolect' ). According to this definition, any variety of

2592-521: Is given throughout the work to the history of the Cross . This may be because St. Helena , the mother of Constantine , was reputed to have been of British birth and was exceptionally popular in England. The Cursor Mundi occupies a unique place, because of its length, its scope, and its author's broad and eclectic knowledge of the traditions of exegesis in his time. As explained by the author, because

2688-542: Is heavily based on the Florentine dialect of Tuscan . The Tuscan-based language that would eventually become modern Italian had been used in poetry and literature since at least the 12th century , and it first spread outside the Tuscan linguistic borders through the works of the so-called tre corone ("three crowns"): Dante Alighieri , Petrarch , and Giovanni Boccaccio . Florentine thus gradually rose to prominence as

2784-502: Is lucid and easy. The Cursor Mundi is more or less completely unknown outside of medievalist and lexicographical circles. Yet, the poem is one of the texts that provides the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) with over 1,000 new words, i.e. words that were unknown before they appeared for the first time in the Cursor Mundi . The poem has also provided over 11,000 quotations for the published Dictionary, making it

2880-486: Is most prevalent. Italy is in fact home to a vast array of separate languages , most of which lack mutual intelligibility with one another and have their own local varieties; twelve of them ( Albanian , Catalan , German , Greek , Slovene , Croatian , French , Franco-Provençal , Friulian , Ladin , Occitan and Sardinian ) underwent Italianization to a varying degree (ranging from the currently endangered state displayed by Sardinian and southern Italian Greek to

2976-613: Is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development. Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects and classical Latin. An opposite example is Chinese , whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages in China, despite their mutual unintelligibility. National boundaries sometimes make

Northumbrian Old English - Misplaced Pages Continue

3072-778: Is nothing contradictory in the statement "the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German ". There are various terms that linguists may use to avoid taking a position on whether the speech of a community is an independent language in its own right or a dialect of another language. Perhaps the most common is " variety "; " lect " is another. A more general term is " languoid ", which does not distinguish between dialects, languages, and groups of languages, whether genealogically related or not. The colloquial meaning of dialect can be understood by example, e.g. in Italy (see dialetto ), France (see patois ) and

3168-454: Is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of mutual intelligibility : two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety has sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other dialect; otherwise, they are said to be different languages. However, this definition has often been criticized, especially in the case of a dialect continuum (or dialect chain), which contains

3264-531: Is one of the Late Medieval texts that provides the OED with over 1,000 new words, i.e. words that were unknown before they appeared for the first time in the poem. Examples of the words include: anyway, anywhere, backward, blister, brimstone, chastise, chess, virginity, weakness, wickedness, willing, written, yonder, and zealot. It has also provided over 11,000 quotations for the published Dictionary, making it

3360-405: Is only used for the traditional regional varieties. That allows them to be distinguished from the regional varieties of modern standard German. The German dialects show a wide spectrum of variation. Some of them are not mutually intelligible. German dialectology traditionally names the major dialect groups after Germanic tribes from which they were assumed to have descended. The extent to which

3456-518: Is said to be autonomous. In contrast, speakers in the Netherlands of Low Saxon varieties similar to Westphalian would instead consult a dictionary of Standard Dutch , and hence is categorized as a dialect of Dutch instead. Similarly, although Yiddish is classified by linguists as a language in the High German group of languages and has some degree of mutual intelligibility with German,

3552-641: Is spoken (Jastrow 2002). Zone I is categorized as the area in which Arabic was spoken before the rise of Islam. It is the Arabian Peninsula, excluding the areas where southern Arabian was spoken. Zone II is categorized as the areas to which Arabic speaking peoples moved as a result of the conquests of Islam. Included in Zone II are the Levant , Egypt , North Africa , Iraq , and some parts of Iran . The Egyptian, Sudanese, and Levantine dialects (including

3648-496: Is supported by the Académie Française institution. A nonstandard dialect also has a complete grammar and vocabulary, but is usually not the beneficiary of institutional support. The distinction between the "standard" dialect and the " nonstandard " (vernacular) dialects of the same language is often arbitrary and based on social, political, cultural, or historical considerations or prevalence and prominence. In

3744-481: The Historia Scholastica . It was translated and compiled gradually and incrementally from such sources, perhaps over a single writer's lifetime. Over the course of the 200-year period during which it was successively recopied, the text was adjusted to suit the changing circumstances in which it was being disseminated and read, losing many of the original features that mark the earliest extant texts as

3840-587: The Centro-Southern and Centro-Northern dialects. Though mostly mutually unintelligible, the exact degree to which all the Italian languages are mutually unintelligible varies, often correlating with geographical distance or geographical barriers between the languages; some regional Italian languages that are closer in geographical proximity to each other or closer to each other on the dialect continuum are more or less mutually intelligible. For instance,

3936-572: The Darijas translated as literally meaning Dialect in Arabic (spoken North African languages) are sometimes considered more different from other Arabic dialects. Officially, North African countries prefer to give preference to the Literary Arabic and conduct much of their political and religious life in it (adherence to Islam ), and refrain from declaring each country's specific variety to be

Northumbrian Old English - Misplaced Pages Continue

4032-603: The Hellenic Griko language and Calabrian Greek ; the Serbo-Croatian Slavomolisano dialect ; and the various Slovene languages , including the Gail Valley dialect and Istrian dialect . The language indigenous to Sardinia , while being Romance in nature, is considered to be a specific linguistic family of its own, separate from the other Neo-Latin groups; it is often subdivided into

4128-553: The Lord's Prayer is taken from the late 10th-century gloss of the Lindisfarne Gospels : Fader ūsær, ðū arð in heofnu m . Sīe ġehālgad noma ðīn. Tōcymeð rīċ ðīn. Sīe willo ðīn, suǣ is in heofne ⁊ in eorðo. Hlāf ūserne of er wistlīċ sel ūs tōdæġ ⁊ f or ġef ūs sċylda ūsra, suǣ u oe f or ġefon sċyldgum ūsum, ⁊ ne inlǣd ūsih in costunge, ah ġefriġ ūsich fro m yfle. Dialect The more common usage of

4224-609: The Middle Ages . However, all these languages evolved from Vulgar Latin in parallel with Italian, long prior to the popular diffusion of the latter throughout what is now Italy . During the Risorgimento , Italian still existed mainly as a literary language, and only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak Italian. Proponents of Italian nationalism , like the Lombard Alessandro Manzoni , stressed

4320-738: The Norse language . Some of the earliest surviving Old English texts were written in Northumbrian, such Cædmon's Hymn (7th century) and Bede's Death Song (8th century). Other works, including the bulk of Cædmon's poetry, have been lost . Other examples of this dialect are the Runes on the Ruthwell Cross from the Dream of the Rood . Also in Northumbrian are the 9th-century Leiden Riddle and

4416-422: The Philippines , carries a pejorative undertone and underlines the politically and socially subordinated status of a non-national language to the country's single official language. In other words, these "dialects" are not actual dialects in the same sense as in the first usage, as they do not derive from the politically dominant language and are therefore not one of its varieties , but instead they evolved in

4512-420: The conscription of Italian men from all throughout Italy during World War I is credited with having facilitated the diffusion of Italian among the less educated conscripted soldiers, as these men, who had been speaking various regional languages up until then, found themselves forced to communicate with each other in a common tongue while serving in the Italian military. With the popular spread of Italian out of

4608-678: The volgare of the literate and upper class in Italy, and it spread throughout the peninsula and Sicily as the lingua franca among the Italian educated class as well as Italian travelling merchants. The economic prowess and cultural and artistic importance of Tuscany in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance further encouraged the diffusion of the Florentine-Tuscan Italian throughout Italy and among

4704-784: The Bible”. In addition to the four main manuscripts, the Northern edition cites most, but not all, of the other manuscripts listed above. It also cites Cotton Galba E 9 , but this is not included in the manuscripts listed the Southern edition. The Northern edition of the Cursor Mundi was the only one available until publication of the Southern Version of the Cursor Mundi almost a century later. The Southern edition has been described as "an attempt to tailor an older text to

4800-481: The Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (Central America) by descendants of Jamaican people. The position that Costa Rican linguists support depends upon which university they represent. Another example is Scanian , which even, for a time, had its own ISO code. An important criterion for categorizing varieties of language is linguistic distance . For a variety to be considered a dialect, the linguistic distance between

4896-457: The Creation to Doomsday. A number of manuscripts of the poem are extant, but none of them is the original composition attributed to an unknown author from the north of England. According to the philologist James Murray , the poem originated near Durham , about 1275–1300. The author of the Cursor Mundi brings all his events under seven periods or “Seven ages of the world”: Special prominence

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4992-533: The English); the language north of the divide later became known as Scottis or Scots . The anonymous author of the Northumbrian Cursor Mundi claimed southern English texts needed to be translated into northern dialects for people to fully understand what they were reading. Ralph Higden in 1364 described Northumbrian as incredibly difficult for southern natives to understand, believing

5088-595: The Second World War, the South Slavic dialect continuum covering the area of today's North Macedonia were referred to as Bulgarian dialects . Sociolinguists agree that the question of whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis. In Lebanon , a part of the Christian population considers "Lebanese" to be in some sense

5184-558: The Syrian dialect) are well documented, and widely spoken and studied. Zone III comprises the areas in which Arabic is spoken outside of the continuous Arabic Language area. Spoken dialects of the Arabic language share the same writing system and share Modern Standard Arabic as their common prestige dialect used in writing. When talking about the German language, the term German dialects

5280-697: The Venerable Bede ( c.  700 AD ) and the Leiden Riddle . The language is also attested in the Lindisfarne Gospels c.  970 AD , in modern Scotland as a carved runic text, the Dream of the Rood , and on the Ruthwell Cross , c.  750 AD . Old Northumbria was later conquered by the Danes (867–883 AD) and from this day forth the language became influenced with Old Norse . The area now in Southern Scotland, which

5376-704: The West-Germanic language group. Some language siblings are closer to each other in terms of linguistic distance than to other linguistic siblings. French and Spanish, siblings in the Romance Branch of the Indo-European group, are closer to each other than they are to any of the languages of the West-Germanic group. When languages are close in terms of linguistic distance, they resemble one another, hence why dialects are not considered linguistically distant to their parent language. One criterion, which

5472-534: The World ’) is an early 14th-century religious poem written in Northumbrian Middle English that presents an extensive retelling of the history of Christianity from the creation to the doomsday . The poem is long, composed of almost 30,000 lines, but shows considerable artistic skill. In spite of the immense mass of material with which it deals, it is well proportioned, and the narrative

5568-477: The book overruns almost all the course of the world's history, it was to be called ‘cursur o werld’ i.e. over-runner of the world, hence Cursor Mundi . The Cursor Mundi is not signed, and no author's name is given anywhere in the text. However, the author does reveal that he is a “pastor” and, according to the Rev. Morris (1892), was evidently a cleric “as modest as he was learned”. Heinrich Hupe's theory, that his name

5664-1634: The closely related Cumbrian dialect is promoted by the Lakeland Dialect Society. The following witnesses to the language have added punctuation, diacritics for long vowels and palatalization, and italics representing expanded abbreviations and missing or illegible text. Nū sċylun herġ a n ‖ hefaenrīċaes uard, metudæs maecti ‖ end his mōdġidanc, uerc uuldurfadur, ‖ suē hē uundra ġihuaes, ēċi dryctin ‖ ōr āstelidæ. Hē ae rist sċōp ‖ aelda barnum heben til hrōfe, ‖ hāleġ sċepen d . Thā middunġeard, ‖ moncynnæs uard, ēċi dryctin ‖ æfter tīadæ, fīrum foldu, ‖ frēa allmectiġ. Fore thē m n ei dfaerae ‖ n ae niġ uuiurthit thoncsnottura, ‖ than him tharf sīe tō ymbhyċġġannae ‖ ae r his hiniongae huaet his gāstae ‖ gōdaes aeththa yflaes aefter dēothdaeġe ‖ d oe mid uueorthae. Mec se uēta uong, ‖ uundrum frēoriġ, ob his innaðae ‖ ae rest cændæ. Ni uaat iċ mec biuorthæ ‖ uullan flīusu m , hēru m ðerh hēhcraeft, ‖ hyġiðonc um mīn . Uundnae mē ni bīað ueflæ, ‖ ni iċ uarp hafæ, ni ðerih ðrēatun ġiðraec ‖ ðrēt mē hlimmith, ne mē hrūtendu ‖ hrīsil sċelfath, ni mec ōuana ‖ aam sċeal cnyssa. Uyrmas mec ni āuēfun ‖ uyrdi craeftum, ðā ði ġeolu gōdueb ‖ ġeatu m fraetuath. Uil mec huethrae su ae ðēh ‖ uīdæ ofaer eorðu hātan mith heliðum ‖ hyhtliċ ġiuǣd e ; ni an oe ġu n ō iċ mē aeriġfaerae ‖ eġsan brōgu m , ðēh ði n umen sīæ ‖ nīudlicae ob cocrum. Transcription notes: ġ = ᚷ; g = ᚸ; ħ = ᛇ; c = ᚳ; k = ᛣ/ᛤ; e͜a = ᛠ; ŋ = ᛝ. Many aspects of this transcription are subject to debate, due to

5760-470: The country's official language(s). Dialects in this sense do not derive from a dominant language, are therefore not one of its varieties , but they evolved in a separate and parallel way. While they may be historically cognate with and share genetic roots in the same subfamily as the dominant national language and may, to a varying degree, share some mutual intelligibility with the latter, "dialects" under this second definition are separate languages from

5856-454: The default everyday language in virtually every situation, whereas standard German is only spoken in education, partially in media, and with foreigners not possessing knowledge of Swiss German. Most Swiss German speakers perceive standard German to be a foreign language. The Low German and Low Franconian varieties spoken in Germany are often counted among the German dialects. This reflects

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5952-594: The dialects are spoken varies according to a number of factors: In Northern Germany, dialects are less common than in the South. In cities, dialects are less common than in the countryside. In a public environment, dialects are less common than in a familiar environment. The situation in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is different from the rest of the German-speaking countries. The Swiss German dialects are

6048-440: The distinction between "language" and "dialect" an issue of political importance. A group speaking a separate "language" may be seen as having a greater claim to being a separate "people", and thus to be more deserving of its own independent state, while a group speaking a "dialect" may be seen as a sub-group, part of a bigger people, which must content itself with regional autonomy. The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published

6144-606: The educated and powerful, though local and regional languages remained the main languages of the common people. Aside from the Italo-Dalmatian languages , the second most widespread family in Italy is the Gallo-Italic group , spanning throughout much of Northern Italy 's languages and dialects (such as Piedmontese , Emilian-Romagnol , Ligurian , Lombard , Venetian , Sicily's and Basilicata's Gallo-Italic in southern Italy , etc.). Finally, other languages from

6240-428: The eight-syllabled couplet , but when writing of the passion and death of Christ, the poet uses alternately rhyming lines of eight and six syllables. The discourse between Christ and man, which follows the account of the crucifixion, consists largely of six-lined mono-rhymed stanzas. A total of nine complete or fragmentary manuscripts of the poem are extant although none of them is the original composition attributed to

6336-461: The expression, A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot ( "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט" : " A language is a dialect with an army and navy ") in YIVO Bleter 25.1, 1945, p. 13. The significance of the political factors in any attempt at answering the question "what is a language?" is great enough to cast doubt on whether any strictly linguistic definition, without

6432-401: The first linguistic definition of the term, as they are in fact derived from Italian, with some degree of influence from the local or regional native languages and accents. The most widely spoken languages of Italy, which are not to be confused with regional Italian, fall within a family of which even Italian is part, the Italo-Dalmatian group . This wide category includes: Modern Italian

6528-423: The following: government recognition or designation; formal presentation in schooling as the "correct" form of a language; informal monitoring of everyday usage ; published grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks that set forth a normative spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature (be it prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.) that uses it. An example of a standardized language is the French language which

6624-501: The four manuscripts ( C , F , G and T ) together meant “quadrupling the value of the text, not only as a subject for linguistic study, but also as an instance of how scribes dealt with their early originals”. Also, because the manuscripts are presented side by side (i.e. four columns across two pages, allowing a line-by-line comparison), “the four texts give an opportunity for comparison of form and word such as no other existing English book affords, except perhaps some editions of parts of

6720-630: The highly weathered condition of the original inscription. Side 1: Ġeredæ hinæ God almeħttiġ ‖ þā hē walde on galgu ġistiga, modiġ f ore ... ‖ men b ug... ... ic riicnæ kyniŋc, he͜afunæs hlāfard ‖ hælda ic ni darstæ b ismæradu n uŋket men ba æt g ad re ‖ i c wæs m iþ b l odi bistemi d ... Side 2: Krist wæs on rōdi, hweþræ þēr fūsæ ‖ fe͜arran kwōmu æþþilæ til ānum ‖ ic þæt al bih eald . Sā r ic wæs mi þ sorgum ġidrœ̄fd ‖ h n ag... Miþ strēlum ġiwundad aleġdun hīæ hinæ limwœ̄riġnæ ‖ gistoddu n h im æt his lī cæs hea f du m, bih e͜a l du n hī æ þē r ... The following version of

6816-413: The importance of establishing a uniform national language in order to better create an Italian national identity . With the unification of Italy in the 1860s, Italian became the official national language of the new Italian state, while the other ones came to be institutionally regarded as "dialects" subordinate to Italian, and negatively associated with a lack of education. In the early 20th century,

6912-544: The intellectual circles, because of the mass-media and the establishment of public education , Italians from all regions were increasingly exposed to Italian. While dialect levelling has increased the number of Italian speakers and decreased the number of speakers of other languages native to Italy, Italians in different regions have developed variations of standard Italian specific to their region. These variations of standard Italian, known as " regional Italian ", would thus more appropriately be called dialects in accordance with

7008-590: The intelligibility criterion to distinguish between languages and dialects, though mutuality may not be as relevant as initially thought. The requirement for mutuality is abandoned by the Language Survey Reference Guide of SIL International , publishers of the Ethnologue and the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard for language codes . They define a dialect cluster as

7104-658: The late 10th century gloss of the Lindisfarne Gospels . Today, the Scots language (including Ulster Scots ) is descended from the Northumbrian dialect, as are modern Northumbrian , Cumbrian and Yorkshire (particularly in the North/East Ridings and northern West Riding) as well as the North Lancashire dialect. Historical linguists recognise four distinct dialects of Old English : Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon. The Northumbrian dialect

7200-453: The main language of Scotland's Lowlands (excluding Galloway , which still spoke Gaelic). Despite this, Northumbrian began to lose its significance in England by the 16th century. Northumbrian dialectical terms, accents, and manners of speaking were considered incorrect and inelegant to those in power, who were seated in the south of England. As England began to centralise its power in London and

7296-405: The modern situation where they are roofed by standard German. This is different from the situation in the Middle Ages when Low German had strong tendencies towards an ausbau language . The Frisian languages spoken in Germany and the Netherlands are excluded from the German dialects. Italy is an often quoted example of a country where the second definition of the word "dialect" ( dialetto )

7392-585: The national language) of limited geographic distribution, languages lacking institutional support, or even those considered to be "unsuitable for writing". Occasionally, in a third usage, dialect refers to the unwritten or non-codified languages of developing countries or isolated areas, where the term " vernacular language " would be preferred by linguists. Features that distinguish dialects from each other can be found in lexicon ( vocabulary ) and grammar ( morphology , syntax ) as well as in pronunciation ( phonology , including prosody ). In instances where

7488-419: The original ( C ) poem. Horrall disagreed with Morris' assumptions and argued that someone in the south central Midlands came across a copy of the Cursor Mundi similar to the extant G manuscript. This copy was systematically revised and "as a result, southern England acquired not a corrupt copy of a northern poem, but a new poem, substantially changed in language and scope from its original". The Cursor Mundi

7584-459: The others. To describe this situation, the editors of the Handbook of African Languages introduced the term dialect cluster as a classificatory unit at the same level as a language. A similar situation, but with a greater degree of mutual unintelligibility, has been termed a language cluster . In the Language Survey Reference Guide issued by SIL International , who produce Ethnologue ,

7680-453: The reason for this to be the "strange men an nations that speaketh stronglie" (i.e. the Scots) the region bordered. John of Trevisa spoke about nearby "strange men an aliens" in discussing northern English's alleged outlandishness, and in c.  1440 Osbern Bokenam wrote about Scots' influence on northern English in his Mappula Angliae . By the 14th century, Lowland Scots became

7776-731: The salient distinctions are only or mostly to be observed in pronunciation, the more specific term accent may be used instead of dialect . Differences that are largely concentrated in lexicon may be classified as creoles . When lexical differences are mostly concentrated in the specialized vocabulary of a profession or other organization, they are jargons . Differences in vocabulary that are deliberately cultivated to exclude outsiders or to serve as shibboleths are known as cryptolects or cant, and include slangs and argots . The particular speech patterns used by an individual are referred to as that person's idiolect . Languages are classified as dialects based on linguistic distance . The dialects of

7872-486: The same language if (under at least some circumstances) they would defer to the same authority regarding some questions about their language. For instance, to learn the name of a new invention, or an obscure foreign species of plant, speakers of Westphalian and East Franconian German might each consult a German dictionary or ask a German-speaking expert in the subject. Thus these varieties are said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, Standard German , which

7968-476: The same language. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction between dialect and language is therefore subjective and depends upon the user's preferred frame of reference. For example, there has been discussion about whether or not the Limón Creole English should be considered "a kind" of English or a different language. This creole is spoken in

8064-813: The same town or region. The classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent. Serbo-Croatian illustrates this point. Serbo-Croatian has two major formal variants ( Serbian and Croatian ). Both are based on the Shtokavian dialect and therefore mutually intelligible with differences found mostly in their respective local vocabularies and minor grammatical differences. Certain dialects of Serbia ( Torlakian ) and Croatia ( Kajkavian and Chakavian ), however, are not mutually intelligible even though they are usually subsumed under Serbo-Croatian. How these dialects should be classified in relation to Shtokavian remains

8160-822: The second most heavily quoted work in OED1/2 after the Bible and the fifth most quoted source altogether. The first modern edition of the Cursor Mundi was published in six volumes by the Reverend Richard Morris between 1874 and 1892 in the Early English Text Society series. The Cursor Mundi (or ‘ Over-runner of the World ’) is an early 14th-century religious poem written in Northumbrian Middle English that presents an extensive retelling of Christian history from

8256-546: The south of England, texts in the midland and southern dialects became the de facto standard. A great number of letters, poems and newspaper articles were written in Northumbrian and Cumbrian dialects throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; however, their use is declining in favour of Standard English. The modern Northumbrian dialect is currently promoted by organisations such as the Northumbrian Language Society and Northumbrian Words Project. Similarly,

8352-474: The standard or national language. Under this definition, the standard or national language would not itself be considered a dialect, as it is the dominant language in terms of linguistic prestige , social or political (e.g. official ) status, predominance or prevalence, or all of the above. Dialect used this way implies a political connotation, often being used to refer to non-standardized "low-prestige" languages (regardless of their actual degree of distance from

8448-584: The term "dialect" for forms that they believed (sometimes wrongly) to be purer forms of the older languages, as in how early dialectologists of English did not consider the Brummie of Birmingham or the Scouse of Liverpool to be real dialects, as they had arisen fairly recently in time and partly as a result of influences from Irish migrants. There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of

8544-479: The term in English refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible , especially if geographically close to one another in a dialect continuum . The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but

8640-621: The two varieties must be low. Linguistic distance between spoken or written forms of language increases as the differences between the forms are characterized. For example, two languages with completely different syntactical structures would have a high linguistic distance, while a language with very few differences from another may be considered a dialect or a sibling of that language. Linguistic distance may be used to determine language families and language siblings. For example, languages with little linguistic distance, like Dutch and German , are considered siblings. Dutch and German are siblings in

8736-590: The unknown poet: The first modern edition of the Cursor Mundi was published in six volumes by the Reverend Richard Morris between 1874 and 1892 under the auspices of the Early English Text Society series. Morris and his associates transcribed five manuscripts, four of which represent Northern or North Midland dialects, hence becoming known as the 'Northern' edition. Different segments of the poem were presented in volumes 1 to 5, with additional materials in volume 6. According to Morris, publishing

8832-502: The vigorous promotion of Germanic Tyrolean ), but have been officially recognized as minority languages ( minoranze linguistiche storiche ), in light of their distinctive historical development. Yet, most of the regional languages spoken across the peninsula are often colloquially referred to in non-linguistic circles as Italian dialetti , since most of them, including the prestigious Neapolitan , Sicilian and Venetian , have adopted vulgar Tuscan as their reference language since

8928-541: Was John of Lindebergh, which place he identifies with Limber Magna in Lincolnshire, is based on a misreading of an insertion in one of the manuscripts by the scribe who copied it. The Cursor Mundi was founded on the works of late 12th-century Latin writers who wrote various pseudo-histories made up of hagiographic, legendary, and biblical material. It borrows heavily from pre-existing Latin and French biblical versions with additional material drawn primarily from

9024-520: Was originally a part of the Kingdom of Northumbria , was invaded by Kenneth III of Scotland and became part of Scots territory. Despite the king being a Scottish Gaelic speaker, he allowed the region to keep its Northumbrian Language. However, the region became divided from Northumbria following the Battle of Carham (with the northern half of the territory under Scottish rule and the southern part under

9120-532: Was significantly different from the dialects spoken by other Kingdoms, especially that of West-Saxon (the primary dialect). Modern Standard English, on the other hand, has its origins in the Mercian dialect. The Angles brought their language ( Englisc ) to Northumbria in the 6th century AD, where it reached the modern-day Scottish Lowlands . This form of Northumbrian Old English was first recorded in poetry ; e.g. Cædmon's Hymn c.  658-680 ), writings of

9216-639: Was spoken in the Kingdom of Northumbria from the Humber to the River Mersey (mersey meaning border river) in northern England to the Firth of Forth in the Scottish Lowlands . Today, Modern Scots , Northumbrian , Cumbrian and North/East Riding dialects originate purely from Northumbrian, as well as forming the substrate of the since Mercian-influenced West Riding and Lancashire dialects. It

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