Re: [Lingo] British English

[Niels Kobschaetzki <n.kobschaetzki@example.com>]

On Sunday, 6 February 2011 at 16:16, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

Niels Kobschaetzki writes:

> When you learn Japanese,

I assume you mean "in school"....

All my statements related to learning language in school (in a country where said language is not the native language)

> you usually learn the standard language as well and that is
> considered the dialect spoken in Tokyo.

Actually, the orthography and standard grammar is defined by
Monbu(kagaku)sho, and the standard spoken dialect is defined by the
semi-official NHK Dictionary of Japanese Accent.

But the origin is afaik the dialect spoken in Tokyo.

In Germany orthography is defined by some committee, too. The dialect that is spoken nowadays which is considered the standard language is supposedly a mixture of dialects in middle and souther Germany which Luther used to write his translation (I learn something new every day - didn't know that it is actually a purely written language which is now a spoken language, too). In northern Germany it was learned like a foreign language (the dialects there resemble Dutch). Nowadays this artifical mixture is the standard language.

> Never heard of anyone who learned Kanzai-ben when s/he started to
> learn Japanese. 

<snip Ninten-Dudes>

Well, as mentioned above I meant by "learn" - learning in school. If you learn a language in the country where it's spoken you usually learn rather fast the dialect in my experience.

 

> You always learn one dialect which is considered the standard
> language for the country.

That's not really true in the U.S., and I wonder about Spain (though I
don't know in detail about its regional languages, I know they exist)
and China. And I have to wonder how you apply that at all to
countries like Canada, Belgium, and Switzerland.

I spoke about learning foreign languages, not native languages. There is no standard in US-education for the spanish they learn? 

Btw. in China all children learn mandarine in school as far as I know as required by the government.

One TLUGer (sorry, can't remember who…it was in 2004, the only time I had the change to go to a Tech-meeting) who is from a part in Switzerland where they speak German told me that in school they learn the German standard language for their written language (as used in Germany) even so it differs in so far that Germany-German has iirc two more temporal tense (Future I and II). Iirc it is the same in Austria (only that they have in the spoken language all temporal tenses).

Niels