Talk:German dialects

Article Checklist for "German dialects"

Workgroup category or categories	Linguistics Workgroup [Editors asked to check categories]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Pat Palmer 14:30, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

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Notice of intended major revision

Since this article appears to have been brought from Wikipedia (and still exists over in Wikipedia with much the same content), would anyone object if I attempt a complete rewrite (i.e., start over)?

My German sandbox page is a very rough draft (not proofed and needed much more) of what I have in mind for the rewrite. Some of the existing article's sections could become different articles in their own right if we don't want to lose that information.

One beef I have about it as it stands is that its too much like a linguistics textbook. One can go out and buy those. I think we should try to give the big picture here, and then refer people to other places for the gory details.

What do you all think? May I tackle this article? Will anyone be offended if I archive what's here and, well, start over?Pat Palmer 13:05, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I think that you should use {{speedydelete}} in this article. - Versuri 13:20, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I decided to go for it. Just started the rewritten article and am trying to get it correctly "cleaned" and categorized.Pat Palmer 14:49, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

German as Dutch

The paragraph about the origins of Dutch seems to be saying that Dutch is basically German. This is likely to be a rather controversial statement, and I'm not sure it's linguistically valid: one could just as easily argue that German is Dutch. Perhaps needs a rethink. John Stephenson 05:02, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

This appears to be something of a controversy; I have already heard from one other person (who is Dutch) objecting to the article, so I will reword it. Just to clarify in advance, however, I intend to claim (and defend if necessary) that from the viewpoint of comparative historical linguistics, there is no distinction in the dialect continuum between the regional Germanic dialects which now lie in the country of Germany and those which lie in the westerns reaches of The Netherlands. This is in fact corroborated at the following website: http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/publicaties/taalgeschiedenis/en/ from a Dutch univerity. Please click on section 6 "19th and 20th century" for subsection "Dialects" and scroll down to the fourth from last paragraph, which states: "The demarcation between Dutch and German dialects is made on the basis of the standard language spoken in the region concerned. Venlo dialect is regarded as Dutch because the inhabitants of Venlo use Dutch in school and in "official" situations; the language of Krefeld on the other hand is treated as a German dialect because High German is the overarching standard language there." It is apparent that the linguists at this university who posted this page do understand that, historical from a linguistics viewpoint, the dialects of Dutch-speaking regions are within the same dialect continuumas the various regional Germanic dialects which lie across the river in Germany. Incidentally, the same cannot be said of Danish; for various reasons not necessarily understood, it has diverged and is now classified in the same subfamily of Germanic languages as the other Scandinavian languages (or so I seem to recall). The Dutch dialects, however, are in a continuum with the various regions inside Germany. This is just a linguistic phenomenon, and not a political one, and I will try to rewrite that part of the article shortly.