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99-505: They speak a dialect of Sri Lankan Tamil that is used in the region. During religious festivals, people who enter a trance or spirit possession sometimes use a mixed language that contains words from the Vedda language . Most Vedar are Hindu Saivites and worship a plethora of folk deities , as well as the main Hindu deities such as Murugan , Pillaiyar and Amman . They also maintain

198-453: 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

297-508: 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,

396-476: A vernacular language. The more common usage of 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

495-513: 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"

594-644: 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

693-465: 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

792-456: 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

891-533: 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,

990-402: 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

1089-556: A given language can be classified as 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

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1188-415: 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

1287-466: 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

1386-506: A non-Vedar married into a Vedar family, he or she was assimilated as part of the Vedar village. Almost all Vedar families had an ancestor who was Tamil or a family member who was married to a Tamil from a neighboring village. Some Vedar have gradually lost most aspects of their aboriginal identity and culture and no longer identify themselves as Vedar. During the 1980s and 1990s, most Vedar families were displaced from their native villages due to

1485-787: 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 ;

1584-478: 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"

1683-522: A period of time to assume Sinhalese or Tamil identity based on the area of residence. If considered a subdivision of Veddas, then they are by far the largest sub-group amongst the Vedda people. Residents of Eastern Province consider those who maintain a primitive life style, or are partly dependent on hunting and gathering, as Vedar without any connotations of ethnic origins. Vedar are not designated as an indigenous community of Sri Lanka. They are placed within

1782-438: 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

1881-553: A separate group any more. Local legends attribute the origins of some Hindu temples in the eastern province to the presence of Vedar. Important Hindu temples in villages such as Kokkadichcholai and Mandur have such Vedar creation legends. But Vedar are no longer associated with either the ownership or maintenance of these regionally important temples. Interior Veddas have clans called Waruge or Variga that were named after trees, animals or places of origin. Seligman speculated that these clans were territorial, thus hunting territory

1980-662: 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. Tirukovil Thirukkovil or Tirukovil

2079-430: 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

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2178-399: 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

2277-441: 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

2376-582: 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

2475-649: 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,

2574-595: A two-fold division of the Vedars based on the Kuti or matrilineal descent system popular in the East coast. These Kutis were supposed to have descended from former local chiefs called Vanniyar , who had ruled feudal divisions called Vannimai . But these clan divisions and related rules of endogamy were not totally followed by all Vedar, and there no practical prohibitions from marrying from each Kuti. As with local Tamils,

2673-488: A village called Pallanchenai, and in the Trincomalee District , between the towns of Muttur and Foul Point. Native chronicles such as Nadu Kadu Paraveni Kalvettu mention the socio-economic status of the Vedar as that of primitive hunter gatherers. The chronicles also mention that the chiefs amongst them received gifts such as clothes from settlers and state that the Vedar in turn provided meat and honey to

2772-481: A weapon, such a lance known as a Vel , installed in their middle, a construction similar to the Kirikoroha function of the interior Veddas as well. Male family members dance throughout the night and as part of the ceremony some become possessed by spirits, sometimes those of their recently diseased family members. This pattern is similar in nature to the ancestor-worshipping patterns of the interior Veddas. Most of

2871-497: Is a Tamil 14th to 16th-century original text. The chronicle documents the presence of a people who practiced hunting and gathering for survival, exercising jurisdiction over vast jungle tracts close to the Akkaraipattu township. It names a number of Vedar chiefs, such as Kadariyan and Puliyan. These Vedars were not just hunter-gatherers, but were also accepted as the rightful owners of the forest lands. Emerson (1858) documented

2970-546: Is a combination of Devil-dancing called Sandangu ("ceremony" in Tamil) and orthodox Hindu Agamic rituals. The devil-dancing is unique to Vedar, but the aspect of spirit possession as a part of devil dancing is not unique to Vedar. Locals Tamils also experience spirit procession and trance states during religious festivals. During devil-dancing ceremonies, related family groups congregate in family-owned worship centers and build platforms known as Pandals . These Pandals may have

3069-533: Is a town in the Ampara District of Sri Lanka , situated along the eastern coast of the island. It is 30 km (19 mi) north of Pottuvil and 35 km (22 mi) south of Kalmunai . In Tamil the name translates to God's-temple. It was affected by 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami . It was previously located with the Batticaloa District but now falls within the Ampara District . It

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3168-503: 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

3267-429: 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 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

3366-504: 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

3465-498: Is based on legends of foreigners coming over by ships and landing along the coast where the Vedar usually lived. They are propitiated to ward off evils and hard times. Kumara Deivam was also noted amongst the primitive Sinhalese village of Gonagolla in the Ampara District known as Kumara Devio. Jon Dart in the 1980s found that these deities were no longer worshipped, but were replaced by the Periyasami cult . The worship pattern

3564-542: 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

3663-422: Is mixed with many Tamil words, as people no longer know the language. There is evidence at some point in the past that the people were bilingual in Vedda language and Tamil, but that is no longer the case. Native chronicles have documented the presence of Vedar or Vedar-like people throughout the island from the beginning of the historic period. Vedar presence in the present Eastern province has been noted during

3762-486: 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

3861-613: 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

3960-778: 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

4059-454: 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

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4158-405: 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

4257-437: Is recognised for its traditional Tamil culture and temples. There is a Murugan temple: Shri Sithira Velayutha Suvamy Kovil . The schools include, Thambiluvil National College, Thirukkovil MMTMV and Vinayagapuram Maha Vidyalayam Thirukkovil was severely affected by the tsunami of 26 December 2004 . Because of the tsunami, many people lost their relatives and properties including houses, livestock and paddy fields. The population

4356-518: 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,

4455-641: 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

4554-496: 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

4653-587: 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,

4752-572: 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

4851-603: 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

4950-724: The Kandyan Kingdom period (1469 to 1815). Tennent noted that Vedars were found chiefly from Eravur to Venloos Bay. The 1946 Sri Lankan census returned 44 Vedar villages. The largest concentration of villages was close to the Vaharai peninsula; predominantly Vedar villages there included Ammenthnaveli, Kandaladi, Komatalamadu, Palchennai, Puliyankandadi, Oddumadu, Thaddumunai, Uriyankadu, and Vammivattavan. Vedar are also found further south, in Panichankerni, Mankerni and Kayankerni. There are also Vedars close to Kalkudah , in

5049-609: 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

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5148-422: 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

5247-475: The Sri Lankan Tamil dialect peculiar to the region, known as Batticaloa Tamil dialect, in their day to day conversations. Vedar children also study in that language in schools. During Sadangu ceremonies, those who are possessed by spirits speak in a mixed language that they call Vedar Sinkalam (Vedar Sinhala") or Vedar Bhasai which is the Vedda language of the interior Vedas. This Vedar Sinkalam

5346-568: The ancestor worship tradition of the interior Veddas. Clan divisions, if they still exist, do not play an important role in choosing of marriage partners or place of domicile. Most identify themselves as a caste among the Tamils as opposed to a separate ethnic group. Their economic conditions have been impacted by the Sri Lankan civil war . Western observers such as James Emerson Tennent (1858) and Charles Gabriel Seligman (1911) have termed

5445-420: 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

5544-678: 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

5643-481: 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

5742-514: The Sadangu locations are temporary ones without related permanent structures over them, but some have been turned into temples. In the village of Palchennai, one of these temporary structures has become a temple now identified with Hindu high god Vishnu . Vedars also participate in Tamil folk dramas called Kuttus that depict scenes from Hindu epics such as Mahabharatha and Ramayana . Vedar use

5841-595: 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

5940-555: The Sri Lankan caste system. Vedar sometimes refer to themselves as "Veda Vellalar", thus claiming a high caste ranking (the Vellalar are given the highest ritual position within the caste structure of Sri Lankan Tamils in many regions). They also claim to marry into the higher castes of the neighboring region, such as Karaiyar . But some higher ranked castes did not consider Vedar quite their equals, although still placing them above

6039-403: The Sri Lankan civil war was also noted, due to the proximity of the Vedar's native villages to the theaters of operations of both rebel LTTE and government forces.(See Vaharai bombing ) Dialect A dialect is a variety of languages spoken by a particular group of people. It can also refer to a language subordinate in status to a dominant language, and is sometimes used to mean

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6138-558: 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

6237-540: The Waruge divisions of the Vedar, most of them did not remember their clan origins. Of those who remembered, most self-identified as Ura Waruge. Others mentioned clans such as Ogatam, Kavatam, Umatam, Aembalaneduwe and Aembale. They also had memories of other clans such as Morana and Unapana. By the 1980s the Vedar had no knowledge of any word Waruge , although they vaguely used the Tamil term Vamisam (family origin) to indicate some division amongst them. Some had come up with

6336-704: 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

6435-470: 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

6534-454: 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

6633-594: 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

6732-417: The distance the more distantly are the villagers related to each other. Related lineages also maintain places of worship that are the private property of the family group. Vedar are nominally Hindus; they were known to wear the marks of Saivite Hinduism such as Vibuthi ("sacred ash") on their forehead even in the 19th century. According to local legends, Vedars are considered to be the builders of most of

6831-440: 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

6930-606: 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

7029-546: The effects of the Sri Lankan civil war and were placed in refugee camps along with other Tamil refugees. Ancestors of Vedar migrated to Sri Lanka via the Indian sub continent during the pre-historic period. A number of Mesolithic sites have been excavated containing human remains dated to 35,000 BCE. Anthropologists consider these skeletal remains to belong to a group ancestral to some of the surviving Vedar groups. Sri Lanka has also yielded Megalithic burial sites, one of which

7128-461: 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

7227-401: 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

7326-475: 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

7425-527: The forests. By the time Seligman visited them in 1911, he considered the Vedar subdivision to be economically better off than the rest of the Indigenous population of the interior. He attributed this to the assimilation of Tamil economic and cultural values by the Vedar clans, as well as to absorption of non-Vedar Tamils into Vedar families by intermarriage. Studies done in the 1980s by the anthropologist Jon Dart, indicated that Vedar in general were poorer than

7524-413: 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,

7623-544: 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

7722-590: 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

7821-558: The lower castes. Members of the Karaiyar caste sometimes downplayed their connections to Vedar as there was stigma attached to such unions. Field studies have indicated that mixed marriages across all caste groups of the eastern littoral was possible with Vedar. Vedar themselves claimed that they would not marry into lower Tamil castes such as Ambattar (barbers), Vannar (washerman) and Pallar (agricultural workers), but field studies indicated that such unions did sometimes take place. Once

7920-405: 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 )

8019-585: 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

8118-459: 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 ,

8217-411: The preferred marriage pattern is based on cross cousin preference. Parallel cousins are considered brothers and sisters and are ineligible as partners. As most marriages take place between first and second cousins, clan endogamy even it is present is of no value. Within a village, most of the residents are related and this carries on over to villages that are three to five miles away as well. The longer

8316-511: The presence of Vedar north of Eravur who subsisted by fishing or helping the traditional fisherfolk, as well by cutting wood for Muslim traders. He speculated that there were then at least 400 to 500 individuals in the group. He also recorded that it was the British colonial officers, as well as Wesleyan missionaries who provided land for them to start cultivating yams and other vegetables. Neville (1890) and Seligman (1911) also documented

8415-665: The presence of a subdivision of Vedar called Kovil Vanam ("Temple precincts" in Tamil) within the southern edges of the Batticalo District ; their name suggests they had originally lived in the jungles close to the Kataragama temple in the Hambantota District in the Southern Province . By the early 1900s these Vedar had mingled with the local Tamils and Sinhalese and were not encountered as

8514-596: The regional Hindu temples associated with Hindu high god Murugan . Although Vedars frequent regionally important Hindu temples and shrines associated with high Hindu deities such as Murugan, Pillaiyar and Siva , they propitiate local deities of folk Hinduism , who are sometimes unique to Veddars. Most of the folk deities are also commonly propitiated by other local Tamils such as Vairavar , Virapathirar , Kali and Narasingan . Seligman (1911) encountered two unique deities, Kapalpei (“Ship spirit”) and Kumara Deivam (“Young god”) who are peculiar to Vedar. The cult of Kappalpei

8613-562: The rest of the Tamil and Muslim communities of the Eastern Province, which Dart attributed to their physical isolation in remote villages, as well as prevailing cultural norms that prevented them from fully integrating within the society. His studies did indicate that some Vedar had successfully integrated in Eastern society, with worldly possessions that did not much differ from those of their non-Vedar neighbors. The marked impact of

8712-731: 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

8811-486: 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

8910-476: 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

9009-813: 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

9108-562: The settler population, indicating a system of barter trade between the groups. Vedar also seem to have provided manual labor to clear forest lands, in exchange for an annual portion of the food crops harvested. When Tennent visited the east coast in 1858, the Vedar were living in houses that were made of mud and thatch. They were moved seasonally from place to place dependent on the availability of fish and other game. They were surviving primarily as fishermen, as well as wage laborers working for timber merchants, cutting and transporting timber from

9207-608: The social group Coast Veddahs, Coast Verdas or East Coast Veddas. Anthropologists have considered them to be at least partly descended from the Veddas of the interior of the island who had migrated at some unknown period in the past to the east coast, intermarrying with the local Tamils. Interior Veddas clans themselves have a number of divisions, each claiming either Sinhalese, Tamil, mixed, or pure Vedda lineages. Vedda identity also depends on whether these clans are hunter-gatherers or settled agriculturalists. Settled Veddas have tended over

9306-474: 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

9405-584: 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

9504-621: 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

9603-502: 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

9702-561: Was divided amongst the clan, not to be violated by members of other clans. These clans were: Among these, the Morana and Unapana clans claimed superior status to Namudana, Ambilo and Ura clans. Seligman reported that Morana and Unapana clans considered the other three as their servile groups, a classification strongly denied by the others. This also led to so-called servile groups denying such clan association when questioned and claiming Morana or Unapana clan origins. When Seligman inquired about

9801-399: Was excavated close to a present Vedar settlement, Kathiraveli . The precise time in which some of the Vedar lineage founders migrated to the east coast of Sri Lanka is unknown. The earliest written reference to Vedar is a Tamil chronicle, Nadukadu paraveni kalvettu , which is maintained amongst the custodians of a prominent Hindu temple in the town of Tirukovil in the Ampara District . It

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