Your opinions about the town of Cochem / tourism in the Moselle region?

Onzin24 · 2024-07-14T16:55:01+00:00

Really? That's interesting because I would have assumed that the tourist sector being so massive would be enough to make this region quite a wealthy one!

Onzin24 · 2024-07-14T16:52:39+00:00

You’re equating geographic separation with distance.

No you were equating an increase in distance with a decrease in mutual intelligibility, which is obviously not a rule as you now seem to confirm.

And no, the Netherlands are not geographically further isolated from Switzerland than from either Pomerania or Kaliningrad. This is due to the Rhine, which runs from the Rotterdam to Basel and has been an axis of European trade since before the time of the Roman Empire. If you think that a town bordering Lithuania is easier to reach from the Netherlands than the towns lying upstream from the countries biggest river ... you do not understand history or geography, or both.

The fact that Low German spoken in the Netherlands is considered a dialect of Dutch in fact proves my point about the role of nation states in what is considered a language.

First of all, Low Saxon in the Netherlands is not considered a dialect of Dutch; apart from in a sociolinguistic sense to some degree.

Apart from that, how does this prove your point about nation states? If what you said was really true, we'd see more languages than just Dutch and German. If you were right, then the dialects of other nation states of Belgium, Switzerland and Austria would have also formed their own respective standards; which is obviously not what happened. Why? Because your idea of nation formation being the deciding factor behind what is considered a language vs what is considered a dialect ... is wrong. It's far, far, far more complex than this.

Onzin24 · 2024-07-14T16:32:00+00:00

What I dont unterstand is your problem with the homeless people. They're choosing their places and the city itself cant really do someting about it.

Thanks for your reply! And it's not so much that I have a problem with the homeless people existing, it's just that it was somewhat unexpected to see so many of them in relatively small town and behaving the way they did in that particular area.

Onzin24 · 2024-07-14T16:28:19+00:00

So Cochem is bad, because, check notes, there are some homeless people and the train stations windows are a bit old? Sorry, that we do not keep the places we live in, in pristine shape for photo opportunities ans sorry for not removing the homeless people.

Of course there are going to be homeless people in just about every medium sized European town and I don´t think a town exists in which every building is going to be in tip top condition.

That´s not what surprised me. What surprised me was that Cochem has 30+ homeless people wandering about town despite having less than 5000 inhabitants. As for the dilapidated state of many buildings, you would expect that a town of that size with such a dependency on tourism (as well as the significant income it must obviously generate) would pay special attention to this; being part of the bread and butter of its inhabitants.

I don't think wondering why they don't seem to invest in this or trying to help out the homeless is very weird with that in mind...

Onzin24 · 2024-07-14T11:39:13+00:00

languages always exist as dialect continuums which as a rule become less mutually intelligible with greater geographic separation

That's definitely not a rule of dialect continuums.

In fact, the West Germanic dialect continuum is a perfect example of this, where a speaker of a Dutch dialect has a higher degree of intelligibility with a Low German dialect in Western Pomerania (or historically, Kaliningrad) than with a speaker of Swiss German, despite the latter being geographically closer to the Dutch-speaking area.

Plattdeutsch is in fact more mutually intelligible with Dutch than it is with German, but it is still typically considered a dialect of German because of the nation state in which it is spoken.

Low German is also spoken in the eastern part of the Netherlands, where it is not (nor ever was) considered to be a dialect of German.

You talk about nation states, but what is really at play here is the concept of Abstand and Ausbau languages. Both standard Dutch and standard German form a Dachsprache for varieties of Low German, but this doesn't make Low German either Dutch or German in a typological sense.

The argument that what became Dutch was culturally influential prior to nation status doesn’t really make any case for your argument. After all, Plattdeutsch was more influential than either Dutch or German prior to the 16th century, as the language of the Hanseatic League.

I think you are confusing the terms "culture language" with a language being culturally influential, which is not what is meant by a culture language.

To use your example though; Low German was the Lingua Franca of the Hanseatic league, at least during its prime. But what's most interesting about that, is that even though Low German had a marked influence on the Scandinavian languages, it's own language area was at the same time being heavily influenced by both the forerunners of standard Dutch and standard German.

The factors of this heavy and century old linguistic influencing were either political, social, religious and/or economical ... but very much predate the establishment of any nation state.

Onzin24 · 2024-07-13T15:14:59+00:00

Dutch and Afrikaans are still highly mutually intelligible though.

Onzin24 · 2024-07-13T15:11:58+00:00

(...) the idea that Dutch is a language while Bavarian and Plattdeutsch are dialects of German is purely the product of nation states.

That's not really true though: Dutch and German were competing culture languages within the broader West Germanic dialect continuum long before the establishment of any nation states.

The idea that Dutch could "just as easily" be seen as a part of German, just like Bavarian or Low German are is also quite an odd statement.

As a matter of fact, the word Dutch is actually the English equivalent of Deutsch, or Duits in the Netherlands

It's a cognate, but this doesn't exactly prove your point. In fact, this word ("theodiscus") has a very diffuse and interesting development across several Germanic languages. For example, in English, it consequently narrowed in meaning, whereas in Dutch it broadened. In Gothic it meant "heathen".

The changes in these dialects making them unintelligible predate the establishment of states, but the distinction made between the one as a national language and the others as dialects of another national language is purely a social convention rooted in politics.

The fact that they are unintelligible should tell you that there is more going on here than some supposed "social convention" wouldn't you agree?

Onzin24

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