Languages in the News: November 2016

It's that time again when we bring you the best language news stories from last month. Let's get straight to it with a story from Slate about the US presidential election. Thanks to Americans going to the polls, American English has some new vocabulary including the verb early vote. You can read about how this election changed language here.

There was a lot of love within the language community for Arrival, a sci-fi film about linguists who have to find a way to communicate with aliens who show up on Earth. NPR was full of praise for the film and its focus on language. Read what they had to say here.

Earth looks like a fine place to visit.

The Washington Post (WP) looked at Arrival from the effect it had on the profile of linguists. While we've always believed linguists were cool, WP reckoned that the film helped to raise the profile of linguists and make them "almost cool". Read all about these almost-cool linguists here.

Business Insider focused on the film's accuracy and portrayal of linguists at work. In an interview with Jessica Coon, the linguist who consulted on the film, they discuss how the work and practices of linguists were very accurately represented. Of course, there were still a few falsehoods that Hollywood let slip in the name of entertainment. Read about them here.

With the end of the year rolling in, you can expect plenty "of the year" articles and stories to start popping up. Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year was already decided in November and the BBC ran the story. Learn more about the word of the year here.

With the Word of the Year decided, it's hardly surprising that Oxford Dictionaries provided their own articles on it. There was one article we found particularly interesting about the other words considered for the word of the year. You can check them out here.

The New York Times gave us a fascinating article on Catalan in Italy. The language is under threat in Alghero, on the island of Sicily, where it is still spoken, despite very few efforts from the Italy to protect it. Read about these unsual struggles here. 

Our last great language news stories both come from NPR. In one story, they explained how California decided after nearly two decades to reintroduce bilingual education which you can read about here. In another related story, you can also read about the benefits of bilingual education on the brain here.

If there were any interesting stories we missed, feel free to tell us about them in the comments below.

When Actors Dub Themselves

Around Christmas I always seem to watch a lot of films. To be honest, I'm not much of a film fan. My friends and family are lucky if they can convince me to go to the cinema twice in a year since I used to work in one and generally detest the experience. However, I don't mind staying in and watching a film.

One of the films I decided to watch this holiday season was Guardians of the Galaxy, the Marvel comedy released this summer that featured a rag-tag bunch of space villains who through a series of (un)fortunate events end up being far more important to the safety of the galaxy than they would like to be. While I won't say the film is a cinematic masterpiece, I certainly enjoyed it and had a good giggle while doing so. As usual, after the film I researched the actors, directors, and additional information about the film online and came across the following clip, which I knew I had to watch.

Aside from the seemingly odd "je s'appelle Groot" that the French dub opted for, the main thing that struck me about this video was that Vin Diesel voiced the character (who says nothing more than "I am Groot" throughout the film) in a number of languages.

This reminded me of Danny DeVito in The Lorax back in 2012. While you could argue that DeVito hardly mastered the languages he provided the dubbing for, you should still commend him for having the confidence to do it.

Even though the featurette claims this is the first time an actor has provided the dubs for all the languages in which a film was released, I do know that Antonio Banderas provided the English, Spanish (Castilian and Latin American versions), Italian, and Catalan voices for the unrelentingly-adorable Puss in Boots character from the Shrek and eponymous franchises.

So what about live-action films? After a bit more research, I discovered that Christoph Waltz provided dubbing for both the French and German versions of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, as well as the fact that it is common practice for actors whose first language isn't English to voice themselves in their native tongue.

While Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings is thought to be a polyglot, Viggo Mortensen, who played him in the movies, also speaks multiple languages. The Danish American actor speaks English, Danish, and Spanish and has provided voices for dubs in all three languages as well as featuring in a number of Spanish-language films.

Thanks to the language skills attained in her French-speaking prep school, Jodie Foster, a native English speaker, has lent her voice to many of her own films for the French dubbing. Helena Bonham Carter, who also speaks French fluently, has acted in French-speaking roles as well as providing her own dubbing.

Penelope Cruz went one better than the dubbers when she played the same character in both the Spanish-language film Abre los ojos as well as its American remake Vanilla Sky. I'm not sure whether or not she provided the corresponding English and Spanish dubbing for each version, though...

The "vanilla sky" in Vanilla Sky was
reminiscent of a Monet painting.

Do you know of any other actors who dub themselves into foreign languages? What do you think of those who do? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

The Languages of Separatists in Europe: Part 2

On Friday following the results of the Scottish Referendum, we took a look at several languages spoken by separatist groups around Europe. We didn't find it very surprising that a large number of separatist groups in Europe speak a different language to the rest of the country. We concluded Friday's post with a look at the Netherlands so today we'll carry on through the alphabet with some of the separatist movements we find the most interesting.

Poland

The region of Silesia is located in both Poland and Germany. While the region's separatist movement wishes to unite the region as its own independent nation, the inhabitants of each country tend to speak the majority language of their respective nation, with the Silesians in Poland speaking Polish and those in Germany speaking German.

Bran Castle in Romania

Romania

There are a number of proposed independent areas of Romania. These areas tend to be inhabited by either ethnically Hungarian people or by Hungarian-speaking Romanians.

Russia

If you ever read our series on the languages of Russia, you will know that the world's largest country has plenty of indigenous languages. Since it also spans two continents, there are plenty of different groups in terms of ethnicity and the language they speak. 

Both Russian and Chechen are spoken in the region of Chechnya, which has its own movement to break away from Russia.

The region of Dagestan is also a special example because there are so many different languages being spoken there. There are calls for Dagestan, with the Ingushetia and Chechnya regions, to unite as a single independent region.

Serbia

The Republic of Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008. While the area was the site of horrible fighting between Serbs and Albanians during the late 1990s, the Republic of Kosovo has been recognised by a great number of countries across the world. It should be noted that the ethnically Albanian and Albanian-speakers in Kosovo were generally part of the separatist movement.

Spain

Spain, much like France, is home to a good number of separatist movements. Since Spain and France are neighbours, a number of these separatist movements exist across their borders.

We mentioned the Catalan separatist movement on Friday when we covered France. However, the majority of the breakaway nation can be found in northeast Spain, where the Catalan language has official language status in the autonomous region of Catalonia.

We also mentioned the Basque separatist movement in France. However, the movement's real stronghold is in the Spanish autonomous community of País Vasco, which while meaning "Basque Country" in Spanish, should not be confused with the entity that many Basque separatists consider to be the real Basque Country.

Seemingly the entire coastline of Spain is home to separatist movements, while the "Castillian" centre of the country seemingly feels Spanish. In the northwest, Galicia is home to the Galician language and its own separatist movement.

The Balearic Islands have small separatist movements as well, both as part of the Països Catalans and as a Majorcan sovereign state. The islands are home to a number of speakers of a Balearic variety of Catalan called Mallorquí in reference to the island.

There are a couple more European countries with separatist movements that we could cover, but we don't feel like touching the situation in Ukraine with a barge pole and we're saving the United Kingdom and Scotland for when the dust has settled.

The Languages of Separatists in Europe: Part 1

Yesterday Scotland went to the polls to vote on their independence from the United Kingdom. We don't write this blog to promote a political agenda, just the agenda that languages are awesome and we love them. Since there are plenty of separatist movements in Europe, we thought we'd take a look at which ones speak a language different to the prominent language or languages spoken in the country that they are seeking to separate from.

While we're trying to keep language and politics apart, you'll quickly see how difficult defining a language is when politics gets involved. For the most part, we have attempted to go with a linguistic consensus rather than a political one, but if we've slipped up and missed something, please tell us in the comments. We're not indicating that every speaker of these languages is a separatist either. Finally, we're only covering a few select separatist movement in Europe with languages that fascinate us.

Albania

Northern Epirus is part of a historical region that is currently part of Albania. The people in this region speak Greek, which as you can guess, is not the majority language of Albania. That title belongs to the Albanian language.

The canal in Brussels, a battleground for Belgium's two separatist groups.

Belgium

As you may know, Belgium has two main languages. 56% of the population speaks Dutch or Flemish, while 38% speak French. However, the "separatist" movements in Belgium have another element to them: some wish to join other countries.

The Walloons, the French-speaking inhabitants of Wallonia, have a movement to join with France or to make Wallonia its own state. On the other hand, the Flemish and Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Flanders wish to separate from Belgium and make Flanders its own state, with a small minority wishing for the region to become part of the Netherlands.

Cyprus

The separatist movement in Cyprus already has its own sovereign state, if you happen to be the Turkish government. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is primarily inhabited by the ethnically-Turkish peoples of the region and considers Turkish its official language. The region declared its independence from Cyprus in 1983, though Turkey was the only nation to recognise it.

Denmark

The Faroe Islands are inhabited by the Faroese people, who also happen to have their own language, Faroese. There are around 66,000 speakers of Faroese in the world, with nearly three quarters of them residing on the Faroe Islands.

France

It appears that almost every minority language spoken in France has its own separatist movement. The movement to make the Basque Country a sovereign nation is complicated as it is currently an international region that is part of both France and Spain. Of course, Basque, the language isolate, is the main language of this movement.

The separatist movement in Brittany has the Breton language, a Celtic language more closely related to Scottish Gaelic and Irish than the national language of France, French.

The official language of the Catalan separatism movement is Catalan, a Romance language. The proposed nation that unites Catalans in this group is made up of the Països Catalans, an international region in northeast Spain and southwest France, the Rousillon region in particular.

Germany

The Bavarians in Germany have a separatist movement to make the Freistaat Bayern its own sovereign state. The Bavarians also have a few dialects and languages of their own: Bavarian, Swabian, and East Franconian German.

East Frisia has ambitions of becoming its own nation. The native language of the region is Saterland Frisian, a language in decline with an estimated 1,000 native speakers.

Italy

There is a movement for independence on Italy's island of Sardinia. The island is home to the Sardinian language, which while being a Romance language, is incomprehensible to speakers of Italian.

Certain people in Veneto also feel the region would be better off if it was its own sovereign state. The Venetian language has around 2 million native speakers in Veneto, the surrounding regions, Slovenia, and Croatia.

Netherlands

Much like East Frisia in Germany, Frisia in the Netherlands has both a language and a separatist movement that seeks to make the region independent from the Netherlands. In addition to the Saterland Frisian language spoken in East Frisia, the Frisians in the Netherlands speak the other closely-related varieties of the Frisian language: North Frisian and West Frisian.

We'll be back after the weekend with more separatist movements and their languages. If there are any fascinating languages favored by European separatist groups that we missed, please tell us about them in the comments below.

Fiesta Nacional de España: The Languages of Spain, Part 1

Today we'll be looking at the languages spoken in Spain as tomorrow is the country's national day, known as the Fiesta Nacional de España in Spain's principal official language, Spanish. Since we covered the Spanish language as one of our first language profiles, we felt today would be best suited looking at the other languages spoken in Spain.

Regional Languages

Since Spain is made up of autonomous communities, certain languages, particularly those native to a certain region, can hold co-official status with the national language, Spanish, also known as Castillian Spanish.

Catalan/Valencian

The Catalan language is principally spoken in the autonomous community of Catalonia, known as Catalunya in Catalan. The Catalan language is a descendant of Vulgar Latin, which was spoken in the regions surrounding the Pyrenees during the time of the Roman Empire.

As a relative of Occitan, which is principally spoken in France, Catalan shares more similarities with other Gallo-Romance languages such as French and Italian than it does with its geographical neighbours on the Iberian peninsula, such as Spanish and Portuguese.

The Mediterranean coast seen from Vinaròs, a town in the
Valencian Community near its border with Catalonia.

In the Valencian Community, the language is known as Valencian, or to use its endonym, valencià. This has been subject to much debate amongst those in the Valencian Community and Catalonia and as it stands, both Catalan and Valencian are considered the same language and different languages. Some linguists even believe that they are immensely similar languages that just so happened to evolve identically side-by-side and become mutually intelligible, though we're a bit sceptical of that last one.

The Catalan/Valencian language has a total of 7.2 million native speakers and the regions where it is spoken are home to some of the highest levels of bilingualism in Europe, not to mention being the largest communities where the main spoken language is not a national official language.

Galician

Galician, which is another language that may or may not be a language, is spoken principally in Galicia. As a close descendant of Portuguese or arguably a dialect of the language, Galician shares many qualities with the Portuguese language.

In the 13th century, the language known as Galician Portuguese diverged to become what some linguists say is now the Portuguese language and the Galician language. Other linguists believe that the two are part of a dialect continuum that includes Galician, Portuguese and rural dialects of both languages which are mutually intelligible between one another.

In Galicia, around 58% of the population are said to speak Galician as their first language, while over 3 million people are said to speak the language natively worldwide.

On Monday we'll be back with more regional languages of Spain and some of the prominent immigrant languages that have shaped the culture, history, and modern lifestyle of the country.

Part 1 | Part 2

The Best Multilingual Cities In Mexico And The Caribbean

After exploring the best multilingual cities in Europe, we headed to Canada and then onto the US in search of the best places to go for those who love languages.

Today we're heading south of the border into Mexico and then onward to the Caribbean. First stop, Tijuana...

Tijuana, Mexico - The city of Tijuana is basically San Diego's Mexican cousin. Excluding the US-Mexico border, the two cities are joined. When joined with San Diego, the conurbation is the third largest bi-national metropolitan area in the world, and is home to many Spanish and English speakers.

Whilst Tijuana may not offer the best entertainment for everyone, it certainly attracts a certain type of crowd and if that's your thing, enjoy it!

Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City

Mexico City, Mexico - The capital of Mexico, known in Spanish as Ciudad de México, was originally an Aztec city known as Tenochtitlan until Spanish settlers came along and effectively flattened the place. It is now home to nearly 9 million people and houses people from many walks of life.

Aside from the obvious presence of Spanish, there are speakers of other languages from Spain, such as Basque, Catalan, and Galician. More popular languages spoken in Mexico City include English, French, and German from Europe, Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, and due to religious ethnicities, Hebrew and Arabic are also prominent.

Oranjestad, Aruba - Although Aruba is technically in South America, we've decided to include a couple of Caribbean islands in our list for today since they're not a part of the mainland and make a good place to stop off before we dive straight into the best of South America.

With Dutch and Papiamento as the official languages of Aruba, Oranjestad also has prominent numbers of English, French, and Spanish speakers. Plus it's on a Caribbean island, what more could you ask for?

Willemstad, Curaçao - The capital city of Willemstad is another multilingual city which features Dutch and Papiamento as its official languages. Willemstad also features a good number of Spanish speakers.

Tomorrow we'll be continuing our journey into South America!

The Best Multilingual Cities In Europe: Part 1

For language lovers there's nothing better than travelling, and whilst it can be nice to visit a place to hear one foreign language, there's something we love even more about multilingual communities. There are certainly some fantastic places to visit around the world if one language just isn't enough for you.

Today we'll be sharing a list of some of the best multilingual cities on the European continent. It was tough just picking these few, so if you feel we have missed any or disagree with our choices, let us know in the comments below.

Spain

The larger of the two countries found on the Iberian peninsula is home to many languages. Thanks to its system of autonomous communities, several regions in Spain have two or more native languages all with official language status.

A view of Barcelona from atop the Sagrada Familia. 

A Coruña - This town in Galicia not only boasts the languages of both Spanish and Galician, but an interesting history and varied culture. The climate may not be exactly what you expect from Spain, but it's certainly not as cold as Siberia and by no means as rainy as Scotland.

Barcelona - Spain's second city is not only part of Catalonia, where the native language, Catalan, can be found, but also a huge hub of other languages such as Spanish, English, German and French. As a popular tourist destination, the city is rife with multilingual communication and cultural exchange. Thanks to low-cost airlines, it is also a very popular destination for Brits going on weekend city breaks, but don't let that put you off.

Bilbao -The biggest city in the Basque Country is not only beautiful but home a multilingual culture of Spanish and Basque speakers. Bilbao is also home to the Euskaltzaindia, the regulatory body for the Basque language, so if you are interested in Europe's largest language isolate, Bilbao is the place to go.

Pamplona - Another city famous for its Basque-speaking population, Pamplona (known in Basque as Iruña) is well-known for the "Running of the Bulls", an event in which bulls are released into the streets and both inhabitants and tourists alike must flee. Aside from Spanish and Basque, expect to hear excited screams as well.

This enormous falla in Valencia was later
set alight in a flurry of pyrotechnic glory.

Valencia - The capital of the Valencian Community, which is the name of the region, is the largest city and home to Valencian, the language known as Catalan in neighbouring Catalonia to the north. Famous for its Falles (or Fallas in Spanish) festival, the Valencian city can boast a slightly nicer climate than Barcelona and, thanks to the large number of fireworks thrown during the festival, a louder one as well.

Andorra

Andorra La Vella - Nicely nestled between the Catalan and Spanish-speaking region of Catalonia and France, the tiny principality of Andorra and its capital is privy to four official languages: Catalan, Spanish, French and Provençal.

If you're not visiting the ski resorts, then why not wander round the city drinking in this multilingual principality in the Pyrenees.

France

Despite France's love of the French language and a fairly poor track record when it comes to minority languages, there are still a few places that you can hear more than just the language of love. France sits almost centrally between Romance languages and Germanic languages, and the country borders no less than eight other nations, including Spain, Andorra, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Monaco.

Dunkirk - The French city of Dunkirk is famous for the Dunkirk evacuation, or Operation Dynamo as it was known in the military. The city was historically a part of Flanders, which can still be seen to some extent given the languages spoken here. Though the French language has mostly replaced the Flemish that was spoken here, there are still some who speak it. If you don't get to hear the language, you can certainly sample some of the food which is still heavily influenced by the Flemish people.

We'll leave it there for today and continue our search for the best multilingual cities tomorrow across more of Northern Europe and onwards!

Read part 2.

Language Families And Dialect Continuums

Some languages are quite similar, while others couldn't be more different. More often than not, similar languages share a common ancestry and the languages that have many differences do not. When languages have a shared ancestry, a common root, or were initially the same language before diverging into different languages, they are said to be part of the same language family.

Like traditional human families, language families can be put into a family tree. Of course, speakers of related languages may not be genetically related. Almost every language belongs to a language family. However, there are certain languages that do not, and these are known as language isolates.

The five largest language families account for around 85% of the world's population and include Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic, and Austronesian languages.

Language family trees are just as beautiful.

Within each of these families there are branches and subdivisions. Both English and French are Indo-European languages, but English is a Germanic language like German, while French is a Romance language like Italian and Spanish.

For languages that are very similar, it isn't always possible to pigeonhole them in such a clear-cut way as to define them as a member of a particular language family's subdivision as we did with English and French. When this is the case, rather than use a tree model as we do with language families, we can use a dialect continuum, which classifies the languages more as a range than as separate entities.

When considering languages in this way, rather than saying Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian are all Romance languages, we'd consider them all to be a part of a Romance language continuum, both linguistically and geographically. You can see this for yourself with a car and several days of driving, if you so wish.

Starting in the west with Portugal (home to Portuguese) and heading eastwards across Europe, you can begin to appreciate the language continuum as you pass through Spain, experiencing Galician, Asturian, Spanish and Catalan, to name a few. As you reach France, you can enjoy hearing French and Occitan before hearing Italian in Italy and Romansch in Switzerland.

Languages, as much as we can attempt to classify and organise them, are sometimes so dynamic, unique and uncontrollable, that whether we consider them part of a continuum or members of a family seems fairly arbitrary when we could just be enjoying them!

Franco and Linguistic Fascism

It's probably safe to say that Francisco Franco wasn't a very nice man. His oppression of linguistic freedom in Spain wasn't the worst thing he did, but we do write a blog about languages so it's obvious what we'll be focusing on today.

Franco was a dictator and, like most dictators,
did some very bad things.

Despite being from Galicia, where both Galician and Spanish are spoken, Franco's hatred of the minority languages in Spain stemmed from a paranoia that the minorities would shatter his idea of a unified Spain and could communicate under his nose.

The Second Spanish Republic had recognised Catalan, Basque and Galician, but Franco abolished the statutes in favour of Spanish (or Castilian), which became the only official language of Spain. Under Franco, schooling and the media were always in Spanish. The minority languages became even more threatened as the number of speakers they had dropped.

The red area is where Spanish is currently spoken.
Other colours indicate the minority languages of Spain.

The Basque language was threatened and could have been extinct by now had Franco's regime continued in Spain. Towards the end of his tenure as dictator "by the grace of God", the minority languages were almost never spoken in large towns and cities and were severely under threat in smaller settlements such as villages.

Under Franco, Spaniards would be punished if found to be not speaking in Spanish. In Catalonia,some citizens would speak Catalan in their homes although it was punishable under law. However, Catalan was rarely spoken in the streets, at least not whilst under the watchful eyes of Franco's men.

The Falangist movement can be considered
to be different from fascism.

The effects of Franco's regime are still visible in Spain and the minority languages are still in a state of revival. Fortunately, neither Catalan nor Galician are considered to be endangered, while Basque is only considered to be vulnerable according to UNESCO. They would, however, be faring much better had it not been for Franco, his regime and the heavily-centralised and monolingual policies he enacted.

Endonyms And Exonyms: When In Roma

Did you spend your summer in Rome or Roma? Paris or Paree? Why are there different names for places? You wouldn't translate your own name... unless you're a pretentious arse, of course!

This is the Piazza Venezia in Roma. Or is it Venice Square in Rome?

In linguistics we have endonyms and exonyms. If you recall high school chemistry you may remember endothermic and exothermic. Endo being inner and exo being outer. If not, you've just learnt something!

So an endonym is an "inner name" (the -onym being "name" or "word"... the second o is omitted for simplicity), it's what the locals call a place. An exonym is the opposite, the "outer name", as it is known to foreigners, outsiders or in different languages. A simple example is England. In England it's called England, obviously, but in France it's called Angleterre. Countries generally have several exonyms.

This is England when it really was Angleterre...
land of the Angles.

If your hometown has an exonym, you should consider yourself lucky. It suggests that the place was important enough for foreign people to talk about it and create their own word for it. French to English examples of exonyms include: Londres (London), Edimbourg (Edinburgh).

We have exonyms in English for Rome (Roma), Seville (Sevilla) and Munich (München) as well as many, many others.

Proximity appears to help create exonyms. French has a lot of exonyms for places in Spain. Barcelone (Barcelona) is in Catalogne (Catalonia, which is Catalunya in Catalan and Cataluña in Spanish). Lisboa is Lisbon in English. Due to pronunciation differences, many French places are spelt differently in Spanish. Whereas Tolosa for Toulouse comes from the original endonym in Occitan.

Endonyms and exonyms are not necessarily restricted to languages. Monolingual examples include Blighty as an endonym for England. It's not commonly used by Americans, Australians, Canadians, South Africans or pretty much anyone else who speaks English.

Our personal favourite, the Toon, is a nickname commonly used by residents of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (also known as Geordies) for both their hometown and football team. Although technically a nickname, it's used so frequently as the proper noun by the locals that it could and should be considered an endonym.

Some exonyms are similar to their corresponding endonyms, due to a simple case of being misheard or butchered. Sometimes they are translations of the meaning of the word, such as United Kingdom being Royaume Uni in French, and sometimes, in the unfortunate case of Germany, they're seemingly unrelated.

We're not going back to calling it perfume!

Germany (Deutschland in German) only really has similarities in Dutch and a few other Germanic languages. Across the Romance languages, however, it's known as Allemagne in French, Alemania in Spanish, Germania in Italian and Alemanha in Portuguese. At least Germans can take solace in the fact that they've probably been called far worse!
 

Language or Dialect? Part 2

Yesterday, we started making the call on what qualifies as a language and what qualifies as a dialect... read the first part here. Here's our next group of contenders in: Language or Dialect?

Catalan v. Valencian

This is definitely a no-brainer for us. The main issue of language or dialect for these two comes from an inability to decide what to call the language. If you're Catalan you call your language Catalan, if you're Valencian you call your language Valencian.

They have long been considered the same language, but certain locals have difficulty admitting to it. The governing body of Valencian, the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, considers the two to be names for the same thing. The differences are minuscule, we're talking about pronunciation and lexicon.

The ideal solution would be to change the name altogether. Catalencian or Valalan don't really roll of the tongue though...

Ruling: Dialects of Catalan/Valencian, just call it whatever you like!

American English v. British English

Now we're just being silly. Historically a bit of a Ross and Rachel story.

"Hey, it's quite nice here... actually, let's not pay taxes. Screw you monarchy! We'll make our own country!" Britain and the U.S. were "on a break" when Webster got his hands on the English language and wrote his "English for dummies", better known as his spelling reform for American English.

This is Noah Webster. It's his fault that
Brits and Americans are constantly
 fighting over whose spellings are correct.

Color or colour? Favor or favour... perhaps marketing would have taken off much quicker in the UK if they had been able to maximise their savings on ink like the U.S. did. Doughnuts? It'd be half price if you spelt them donuts.

Despite the niggling pains that those who speak as though they have a mouth full of chewing gum (Americans) are speaking the same language as those who speak as though they have a mouth full of fruit (the British), both parties will have to kiss and make up and admit that those wearing baseball caps, shorts and a bum bag (fanny pack) are speaking the same language as those in football (soccer) shirts with a pint of beer in hand (uhm... do Americans have a word for beer?).

Ruling: Dialects of English, unfortunately...

English v. Scots

Calm down! We're talking about the English language and the Scots language! Not football or a referendum!

Scots does not refer to Scots Gaelic, which is a Celtic language, but the Germanic language, which is related to English. It has no official status in any country but does have status as a traditional language under the Scottish Parliament and a regional or minority language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The debate comes down to whether it's just another type of English, just like Old English, Middle English, etc. or a separate language. They're barely mutually intelligible, though the same is sometimes said of the Scottish Dialect. One problem though... we've considered American English to be the same language as British English. If Scots is a dialect of English, then Americans would have to be able to understand speakers of Scots. But can they? We think not.

Ruling: Different Languages

Americans don't really understand bagpipes
either... though does anyone, really?

In the end though, language and dialects are really identified by the speakers. Linguists and governments can say what they want, but they can't change the minds of the people who speak their language... or is it dialect?

Part 1 | Part 2