On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 14:13:29 +0000 Richard Herring
junk@[127.0.0.1]> wrote in
news:alo2QcyJY+CAFwK+@baesystems.com> in sci.lang:

In message <400BDB92.CBE@worldnet.att.net>, Peter T. Daniels
grammatim@worldnet.att.net> writes
Nathan Leahy wrote:

I was shocked to discover no mention of xenolects in sci.lang, so I'll
explain before I ask my question.
Xenolect - (Close to official definition) An artificial language
constructed from a number of dialects with features distinctive of a
number of dialects hacked together.

[...]

Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Indonesian. (Could there be a Dutch-based parallel with Frisian?)

Does either form of Norwegian count?

Nynorsk certainly does.

Brian

(Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

Helmut Richter

Bokmal is derived from written Danish.

Which leads to the question:
"Norwegian" is supposed to be a "West Scandinavian" language.
Danish is supposed to be an "East Scandinavian" language.
Should not Nynorsk be counted as "West", while Bokmaal is
"East". Or did Bokmaal by a magic trasition 1905 became "West
Scandinavian"?

Which leads to the question: "Norwegian" is supposed to be a "West
Scandinavian" language. Danish is supposed to be an "East
Scandinavian" language. Should not Nynorsk be counted as "West",
while Bokmaal is "East". Or did Bokmaal by a magic trasition 1905
became "West Scandinavian"?

But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

Nathan Leahy <pretending2breal@yahoo.com> wrote:

Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
designed and used as an official language?

Standard German.

In sci.lang Nathan Leahy <pretending2breal@yahoo.com> wrote in <9732afb9.0401181555.63b18e66@posting.google.com>:
(snip)
: Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
: achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
: designed and used as an official language?

classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
grammarians.

But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

Helmut Richter

On 20-Jan-2004, Helmut Richter <a282244@mail.lrz-muenchen.de> wrote
in message <slrnc0povc.cqp.a282244@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>:

[...]

But I find the term "xenolect" very misleading. What is "foreign" in a
xenolect? When I read the headline, I spontaneously thought about
dialects of foreigners, e.g. the dialect of German-born "native"
Turkish speakers. (Yesterday I overheard two Turkish girls talking.
They did not use this dialect, which is more typically used by males,
but they switched languages permanently: about 80% Turkish and 20%
accent-free German. Mostly they switched between sentences but
sometimes also in the middle of a sentence, but constantly at a rate
of tens of switches per minute. Is this a normal phenomenon among
young people grown up in a foreign country?)

To the examples given by other posters, I'll just add that here
in Los Angeles, currently one of the most cosmopolitan urban
areas in the world, such code-switching is extremely common. Of
course, by far the most frequent case is between English and
Spanish, but I've personally witnessed it among
2nd-generation-American speakers of many other languages,
including, off the top of my head, Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese,
Tagalog, Arabic and Armenian.

Yusuf B Gursey <ybg@TheWorld.com> wrote in message news:<buhqq0$8lv$1@pcls4.std.com>...
In sci.lang Nathan Leahy <pretending2breal@yahoo.com> wrote in <9732afb9.0401181555.63b18e66@posting.google.com>:
(snip)
: Does anyone know of a case where rather than one dialect of a language
: achieving official status nad being taught as "proper" a xenolect was
: designed and used as an official language?

classical arabic was probably such even during its formulation by medieval
grammarians.

Er... Didn't they just take the Qur-an, say the grammar here is
perfect, pure, and correct and apply that. This implies to me that it
was just Mohammed's dialect. IIRC there are even inconsistencies in
use in the text and the perfection meant that all forms had to be
equally accepted

??? I thought Hochdeutsch was for all intents and purposes Prussian,
with some other North German bits. IIRC Austrian/Bavarian was
unintelligible with Hochdeutsch up until at least the early 1900s