Re: A language by any other name
On 28 Sep 2001, David N. Welton wrote:
> David Starner <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org> writes:
> > Huh? From what I've read, Italian, Spanish and Portugese are so
> > close that you can speak Spanish or Italian to Portugese speakers
> > and be understood without much problem.
> Sort of, but not really - not without speaking quite slowly. Reading
> is a different matter - it's possible to read Spanish if you speak
> Italian. Portuguse is a bit more difficult, but still legible.
:) I think it requires a certain education level for a speaker/reader of one
of these languages to be able to understand the others... In my experience,
Spanish and Italian speakers can understand each other /with some difficulty/
if they speak slowly. :)
> > Why is Spain's Spanish the original "real" version? It's just one of
> > a series of dialects deviating from the first Latin dialect spoken
> > in Spain that was different enough from Latin to be a distinct
> > language. What makes one dialect of medieval Spanish more
> > "original", more "real" than the next?
> A lot of people in Latin America seem to refer to Spanish as Castillan
> - I'm not sure why.
More commonly, you'll find this term used in Spain itself; the language we
speak of as 'Spanish' is not the only language indigenous to Spain, and as
Spain has four officially recognized languages, referring to Castillian as
'Spanish' is both a misnomer and a slight to the regions where other languages
are spoken.
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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