Tomasz Kamusella University of St Andrews Scotland, UK

1. Ludwig Boltzmann Institut, Innsbruck NeulateinischeStudien Conference Latin, National Identity and the Language Question in Central Europe Panel: Language and Identity I; Thur, Dec 13, 2012, 9:00-10:45 The History of the Normative Opposition of ‘Language versus Dialect:’From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe's Ethnolinguistic Nation-States Tomasz Kamusella University of St Andrews Scotland, UK

2. Received Believes in the West: Languages and Dialects • Belief 1: there are languages and dialects • Belief 2: dialects are qualitatively different from languages • Belief 3: dialects belong to appropriate languages • Secondary belief A: different peoples / nations speak & write different languages • Secondary belief B: groups speaking dialects are parts of peoples / nations that speak and write languages

3. Received Believes and Linguists • Desire for making linguistics into a natural science • Leonard Bloomfield. 1926. A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language. Language. Vol 2. • Bloomfield’s proposition: Languages are mutually unintelligible, dialects (of a language) are mutually comprehensible • Problem 1: Dialects of Arabic or Chinese are often mutually incomprehensible • Problem 2: The languages of Moldovan & Romanian or Bulgarian & Macedonian are almost exactly the same, and thus fully mutually comprehensible • Problem 3: Asymmetrical in/comprehensibility in Spanish/Portuguese or among Scandinavia’s Germanic languages • Ergo, no linguistic definition of the language vs dialect opposition • Hence, its origin and functioning must lie in extralinguistic factors, that is, human decisions and choices, in the vagaries of human culture and its changes

4. Ancient Greek: Glossa • 8th c BCE: the organ (muscle) of the ‘tongue’ • 5th c BCE: a language or dialect (that is, a lect) • 3rd c BCE: peoples speaking different languages, ergo a people = a language

5. Ancient Greek: DialektosWriting andGlossa • Early 4th c BCE: Dialektos - ‘discourse’ or ‘conversation,’ especially in the context of learned discussions conducted among philosophers and scholars (thence the philosophical term ‘dialectics’) • Mid-4th c BCE: Dialektos - ‘speech,’ ‘language,’ and ‘common language’ • 2nd c BCE: Dialektos - ‘a language of a country,’ thus becoming quite synonymous with Glossa in the meaning of ‘a people living in a country’ • Late 1st c BCE: Dialektos denotes ‘a spoken language,’ as opposed to ‘a written language,’ • that is, Glossa meaning ‘written language’ • Emergence of the opposition DialektosvsGlossa = oralvswritten

6. Latin-Greek Bilingualism • Early 2nd c BCE: Lingua ‘the organ of tongue’ and ‘the particular mode of speech in a given country or region.’ (These meanings corresponded closely to those of the Greek glossa) • (Late 2nd c BCE glossa was marginalized in Latin as a term for ‘a collection of unfamiliar words’ (that is, a ‘glossary’). And the neologism glossema was coined for ‘an unusual word requiring explanation’) • 30s of 1st c BCE the Greek loanword dialectos was attested in Latin for ‘a dialect, a form of speech [hence, unwritten]’ (Glare 1982, 536) • Hence, the Greek distinction between ‘spoken language’ (dialektos) and ‘written language’ (glossa) was adopted in Latin as: DialectosvsLingua. • 1st – 2nd cc CE: the Greek opposition dialektosvsglossa was consolidated in the Greek texts of the time that frequently were translated into Latin fortifying the Latin opposition DialectosvsLingua

7. In the Christian West • Translatioimperii and ‘Translatio lingua’ ? > Transmission of concepts from the bilingual, Latin-Greek Antiquity to the Christian West > 1st c CE: the Greek original of the New Testament; late 2nd c CE: Latin translation of the New Testament; early 5th c CE: the consolidation of the new world view in the Vulgate, or canonical Latin translation of the Bible. • M(edieval) Latin: the rise of the term Natio- ‘people,’ ‘race’ (today, we’d say ‘ethnic group’),‘set of people,’ ‘the people of a country, or state’ ‘a region of a country, occupied by a people.’ • M Latin: the decline of the term Gens, which was a near-synonym of Natio • M Latin: Lingua - a close association with Natio/ Gens, following the former word’s 2nd c BCE meaning ‘the particular mode of speech in a given country or region,’ in turn, a reflection of the 3rd BCE meaning of the Greek word Glossa for ‘a people living in a country’ • M Latin: Dialectos disappeared and replaced with the neologism Linguagium for ‘an unwritten form of speech’ • Oppostion between written and unwritten lects also mapped by opposing Latin to ‘Vulgar Latin’ (LatinumVulgare) or ‘Countryside Latin’ (Lingua RomanaRustica)

8. The Counter/Reformation: From Vernaculars to Written Languages • Translating the Vulgate into vernaculars: recreating the Western Christian cultural package in a plethora of initially unwritten forms of speech, thus made into languages in their own right • Vernaculars opposed to Latin (Greek) • Early 17th c: English ‘Vernacular’ (from Latin Vernaculus for ‘domestic,’ ‘native,’ ‘indigenous’) for the ‘speech of the people of a particular country or district;’ later ‘a written language developed on the basis of this speech’ • Likewise, the ancient opposition between ‘spoken lect’ and ‘written lect’ revived (DialektosvsGlossa; DialectosvsLingua) • The term Linguagium disappears • 1570s: In English (directly from classical Latin or via French) the term ‘Dialect’ is revived for denoting ‘a subordinate form of a language, a manner of speech peculiar to a group of people’

9. From the Territorial State to the Nation • 15th-17th c religious wars, compromise > eiusregiocuiusreligio, hence one polity – one religion, the political principle of religious homogeneity • The population of a polity are generically referred to as a Natio > Italian nazione (1294) , German Nation (14th c), Slavic narod (14th c) Spanish nación (1444), Polish nacja (1558), English nation (1600, 14th c in form nacioun), Portuguese naçao (1691; 14th c in forms naçõ, nasçião), Russian natsiia (1705) • 18th c, new theory (Nationalism): each nation (‘group of people,’ however defined) should live in its own state (that is, nation-state) not shared with any other nation or controlled by a nation-state of another nation • Turn of the 19th c: Herder, Hegel, Napoleonic Wars, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of ethnolinguistic nationalism > language = nation = state (eiusregiocuius lingua)

10. The normative Politicization of the Dialect vsLanguage Opposition • Language– writtenlect, defined as the national language of a nation, and official in a (nation-)state • Dialect – oral (unwritten) lect, typically subsumed under the ‘umbrella’ of an extant recognized national / official language • 19th c – mid-20th c: Spread of full literacy and ethnolinguistic nationalism across Europe • Often, when a dialect gets written it is not recognized as a language, because it would necessitate the creation of a new state for the speakers of this dialect-turned-language, hence construed as a nation

11. Humans: Main Extralinguistic Force • Dilemma: How to keep the number of the nation-states low and not to fall foul of the requirements of ethnolinguistic nationalism? • Some tried solutions • written or not dialect remain dialects (Low German in Germany), • or autonomous regions / separate states created for the speakers of such dialects-turned-languages (Croatia), • or in multilingual aspiring nation-states amalgam languages are postulated/created (German, Serbocroatoslovenian, Czechoslovak), • or the same language goes by two different names to serve appropriately separate nation-states (Moldovan/Romanian, Bulgarian/Macedonian), • or languages are created/proclaimed for separate states that share the same language (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian)