I will show you that video of a man singing in the Yola language once again to see if you can figure out WTH he is talking about.
There you go. Do you have any idea WTH he is singing about, for God’s name? Of course you don’t. So how in the heck is that a dialect of English? It’s only a dialect of English if you can basically understand the person.
If you can’t understand them, they aren’t speaking English -they’re speaking a foreign language.
That’s as clear as air.
Here is a section of text written in the Yola language from 1836:
MAI’T BE PLESANT TO TH’ECCELLENCIE, – Wee, Vassalès o’ ‘His Most Gracious majesty’, Wilyame ee Vourthe, an, az wee verilie chote, na coshe and loyale dwellerès na Baronie Forthe, crave na dicke luckie acte t’uck neicher th’ Eccellencie, an na plaine grabe o’ oure yola talke, wi vengem o’ core t’gie ours zense o’ y gradès whilke be ee-dighte wi yer name; and whilke we canna zei, albeit o’ ‘Governere’, ‘Statesman’, an alike.
Yn ercha and aul o’ while yt beeth wi gleezom o’ core th’ oure eyen dwytheth apan ye Vigere o’dicke Zouvereine, Wilyame ee Vourthe, unnere fose fatherlie zwae oure diaez be ee-spant, az avare ye trad dicke londe yer name waz ee-kent var ee vriene o’ livertie, an He fo brake ye neckares o’ zlaves. Mang ourzels – var wee dwytheth an Irelonde az ure genreale haim – y’ast, bie ractzom o’honde, ee-delt t’ouz ye laas ee-mate var ercha vassale, ne’er dwythen na dicke waie nar dicka.
Wee dwyth ye ane fose dais be gien var ee guidevare o’ye londe ye zwae, – t’avance pace an livertie, an, wi’oute vlynch, ee garde o’ generale reights an poplare vartue. Ye pace – yea, we mai zei, ye vast pace whilke bee ee-stent owr ye londe zince th’ast ee-cam, proo’th, y’at wee alane needeth ye giftes o’generale rights, az be displayth bie ee factes o’thie goveremente. Ye state na dicke daie o’ye londe, na whilke be nar fash nar moile, albeit ‘constitutional agitation’, ye wake o’hopes ee-blighte, stampe na yer zwae be rare an lightzom.
Yer name var zetch avancet avare ye, e’en a dicke var hye, arent whilke ye brine o’zea an dye craggès o’noghanes cazed nae balke. Na oure gladès ana whilke we dellt wi’ mattoke, an zing t’oure caulès wi plou, wee hert ee zough o’ye colure o’ pace na name o’ Mulgrave.
Wi Irishmen ower generale houpes be ee-boud – az Irishmen, an az dwellerès na cosh an loyale o’ Baronie Forthe, w’oul daie an ercha daie, our meines an oure gurles, praie var long an happie zins, shorne o’lournagh an ee-vilt wi benisons, an yersel and oure gude Zovereine, till ee zin o’oure daies be var aye be ee-go to’glade.
For God’s sake, what in the Lord’s name is he going on about anyway? If that’s written in English, how come I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about because I don’t know what the words he is using mean? If you can’t understand someone’s lexicon, they are not speaking your language. Period. No debate on that.
As linguists, we definitely do not like the idea that there are dialects of a Language X that many Language X speakers can’t make heads or tails of. That doesn’t make sense. If Language X can’t understand Dialect Y of Language X then that means that that “dialect” is no longer a dialect of Language X; in fact, it is a separate language altogether. Call it Language Y then.
By the same token, we really don’t like the idea that you can have speakers of two separate languages that more or less understand each other. Forget that. If speakers of Language X and Language Y can pretty much understand each other, then they are not speaking separate languages. They are speaking a dialect of a single language.
There are all sorts of ideas of where you draw the dividing line at dialect vs. language, but I would put it as 90%.
Below 90% = two different languages.
90%+ = dialects of a single tongue.
This seems to be where Ethnologue chops them up, and I think they do a good job.
Between 80-90%, you have two very closely related languages; so closely related in fact, that speakers often think they are both speaking the same language. For instance, Swedish has 87% intelligibility of Norwegian, which is pretty good. Norwegian comedians sometimes appear on Swedish TV speaking Norwegian with no subtitles.
At around 80%, things start to get a lot dicier. At 80% intelligibility, you can have conversations about day to day quotidian things, but you cannot have conversations about difficult or complex topics. That is, you can talk about the weather and whatnot, but you can’t talk about the political issues of the day in any sort of depth.
Here is the talk page where they decided that Yola wasn’t a language after all, but instead was merely a “dialect of English.” The page was then moved from Yola Language to Forth and Bargy Dialect. Apparently, what they called the Forth and Bargy dialect of Hibernian English was spoken in the area of Forth and Bargy, Ireland perhaps until recently. Books about this “dialect” were written in the 1800′s.
Yola was indeed probably intelligible with Middle English as spoken in England around 1200-1300. That means it was an English dialect, right? Wrong! Middle English isn’t English, or it isn’t Modern English. In other words, Modern English and Middle English are two completely separate languages. Old English is another language altogether.
So each one gave either gave birth to another or was a descendant of another? So what? Ancestor languages and descendant languages are not the same language. For instance, yes, your parents gave birth to you and their grandparents gave birth to them. They are the descendants of their grandparents and you are the descendant of both your parents and your grandparents. Does that mean that you, your parents and your grandparents are all the same person because you gave birth to one another. Come on!