The Weinreich witticism, ‘a language is a dialect with an army and navy,’ enjoys great popularity among linguists. This article gives a brief history of the witticism, documenting both a surprising inability to cite it correctly and an... more
The Weinreich witticism, ‘a language is a dialect with an army and navy,’ enjoys great popularity among linguists. This article gives a brief history of the witticism, documenting both a surprising inability to cite it correctly and an equally surprising willingness to alter the original wording. Linguists apparently take two main approaches to the witticism: a 'dismissive' approach which seeks to delegitimize the very notion of distinguishing languages from dialects, and an 'engaged' approach which highlights the non-linguistic factors at play in language-dialect disputes. Linguists from both schools invoke the joke to avoid discussing political factors in their own work.
A bibliography of works about the life and career of Max Weinreich, a leading figure in YIVO (The Yiddish Scientific Institute in Vilna, later New York) and pioneer in the fields of Yiddish Studies and Jewish interlinguistics. Apart from... more
A bibliography of works about the life and career of Max Weinreich, a leading figure in YIVO (The Yiddish Scientific Institute in Vilna, later New York) and pioneer in the fields of Yiddish Studies and Jewish interlinguistics. Apart from his magnum opus, The History of the Yiddish Language, Weinreich is best known for popularizing the quip, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
An older, short paper presenting a classification of interference phenomena based on Coseriu's notion of "positive" and "negative" Interference and with criticism of Weinreich's problematic distinction between interferences in "langue"... more
An older, short paper presenting a classification of interference phenomena based on Coseriu's notion of "positive" and "negative" Interference and with criticism of Weinreich's problematic distinction between interferences in "langue" and "parole" (and some statements against the empirically wrong assumption that increasing distance between languages will lead to increasing interference phenomena).
In the following discussion, Weinreich’s perspective on the First Yiddish Language Conference in Czernowitz and his changing understanding of its meaning for Yiddish will be traced across five decades. Naturally, understanding the nature... more
In the following discussion, Weinreich’s perspective on the First Yiddish Language Conference in Czernowitz and his changing understanding of its meaning for Yiddish will be traced across five decades. Naturally, understanding the nature of this evolution means understanding as much about Weinreich’s personal evolution as it does about the times in which he lived. For the sake of convenience, his life may be divided into three phases: 1. His youth and early adulthood (1894–1924) 2. The years 1925–1939, during which he established himself in Vilna, Poland as YIVO’s guiding spirit and an internationally renowned scholar 3. And finally, 1940–1958, when he transformed YIVO into an Americanized institution in New York City.
