i wanna write a post about lingual elitism n regional languages… and how elitism and class n all that has alienated the masses from most writing…
and how the “improperness” of regional languages, non-standardized languages, and non-official dialects… is exactly what makes them good for poetry and lyricism.
and in fact, i’d argue that this is the function of most standardized language. to have something disconnected, originally purposely hard, and paying more homage to history than contemporary living languages.
and yeah basically… i feel if more of us got to read texts in our regional language, minority language or dialects.. then we’d all probably understand theory more, or find literature, like poetry or lyricism.. to be a lot more emotive and intimate.
oops.. i ended up writing the post, i guess. oh well.
anyway, i fucking love dialects, non-standardized languages, regional languages and minority languages.. and i wish they got more respect and recognition. and i think national languages in general are a huge alienating wall for a lot of people.
also, i know that per country this is a huge political topic, and i just feel like i need to say i don’t speak of every country here..
just that i think the people of the world deserve to see or hear their own tongue, not one established by academics 130 years ago, in some city across their country, or even across the world.
language has been a huge political tool, used to both create nationalism but also to assimilate groups.. and this is why the right to speak your language is so important. because it’s identity and also works against old prejudices and policies.
and as i said, i think it’s genuinely beneficial for people to see literature that resembles closely how they speak.
lingua francas is a whole other topic. tbh multilingualism needs to be encouraged too, but never at the expense of minority or regional languages.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, both as a writer and as a linguistics student, thus, allow me to elaborate:
It actually goes further than that: linguistically speaking, there is no real difference between a language and a dialect! What “merits” the title of language and what is simply considered a dialect is mostly a political decision. (Linguists like to say that a language is simply a dialect with an army and a navy)
I’ve also heard Norwegians talk about Bidialectalism (as in bilingualism but with dialect) so that’s a thing as well! (Although I haven’t heard it being discussed in any other language jet)
Also, historically speaking, people on average spoke a lot more languages than we do today (like speaking 4 or 5 languages was considered pretty normal). So there’s not really any argument against speaking a dialect or regional language and learning foreign languages on top of that! It would merely be traditional.












