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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

Flemish? I remember watching a TV show in Flemish (Hotel Beau Séjour[0]), so it's prevalent enough to invest that kind of money into.

What about Basque? Is that too controversial?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Beau_Séjour

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Flemish is more of a political construct than linguistic, it's a grouping of belgian-dutch the coastal, brabant and limburg language groups with each having their own regional dialects.

It's more than political. In speaking Flemish is to Dutch as UK English is to US English. In writing however there is no difference in spelling, but there is a difference in word choice.

Now, being from Belgium, even within that small part of the country where everybody is supposed to speak Dutch, I genuinely don't understand people from near the coast, which was about 150 miles from where I used to live.

Are you saying UK and US speak a different language? No one doubts it’s a different dialect, but we are talking about languages.

that is a political distinction

Mutual intelligibility is not a political distinction.

Well yes, the dialects are very distinct linguistically, but what is often referred to as Flemish is the Dutch "tussentaal" aka "verkavelingsvlaams"[1]. That's not really a language per se, it's a regiolect of the official Dutch language, itself a Dutch variant of the Brabant dialects. The Flemish Dutch is usually used a lingua franca because the official Dutch otherwise sounds too formal (and native dialect speakers are foreign language speakers of Dutch). If I was to nominate a regional language for recognition it would more be the regional dialects like Brugs, Gents, Antwerps, Brussels Vloms, Hasselts, etc.

What I find interesting is that the differences in Flemish dialects make them much more distinct than what would normally call dialects. There are significant grammatical difference beyond the usual vocabulary differences. For instance, coastal Flemish conjugates yes and no[1], Limburgisch is a tonal language.

[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tussentaal

I think those 24 languages reflect all the languages that are official languages at country level.

So for instance, Basque is not an official language of any country (only French in France and Spanish/Castilian in Spain). Belgium's official languages are French, Dutch, and German, "Flemish" is only a local variant of Dutch (Belgian French is also only a local variant of French).

Thanks. That makes sense.

In the US, people will resort to fisticuffs, over variants of Spanish. I usually translate into Castilian Spanish, because that seems to be the equivalent of "Vanilla" Spanish. No one is really happy (except the Spaniards), but I'm not accused of favoritism.

For what it’s worth, Castilian sounds very odd to American ears. For a good time you can ask «¿en castellano?» and be met with either a blank stare or laughter.

Official is a weird concept though. Turns out Dutch law never really bothered to define an official language, Dutch simply is the de facto standard and is required for a lot of things making it effectively the standard. This makes Dutch Sign Language the only language officially recognised by law. An attempt to recognise Frysian and Dutch as official languages in the constitution failed.

Sweden didn't have an "official" language before the Language Law of 2009. Five minority languages (Finnish, Meänkieli, Romani, Sámi, Yiddish) were officially recognized as such since 1999.

Same situation in USA, believe it or not.

Basque is an official language and declared as such in the Spanish constitution however restricted only to the regions that decide to apply it (Basque Country and Navarra).

If we want to go all legal, I believe that Spanish/Castilian is the only official language of the State, so at country level, with the other "Spanish languages" only official in their respective areas:

Section 3

(1) Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it.

(2) The other Spanish languages shall also be official in the respective Autonomous Communities in accordance with their Statutes.

(3) The richness of the different linguistic modalities of Spain is a cultural heritage which shall be specially respected and protected. [1]

[1] https://www.senado.es/web/conocersenado/normas/constitucion/...

Basque is not controversial, but spoken just by very little people.

Not sure that should be the qualifier, there might be more people able to speak Basque in the world than Danish, doesn't stop Danish from being well supported.

Quick google points to about 1M Basque speakers in the EU against 5-6M Danish speakers, there's also the fact that Basque is not the only official language in the country it belongs to, and that it's in fact not spoken in the vast majority of the country.

From https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor... we can find an excerpt relating to the policy and its purpose:

>One of the EU’s founding principles is multilingualism.

>This policy aims to:

>communicating with its citizens in their own languages

>protecting Europe’s rich linguistic diversity

>promoting language learning in Europe

With this in mind, the first intention fails by an enormous margin, given that 95%+ of Spain doesn't speak an iota of Basque, the second is met handily, given the long history of the language, and I'm not sure what to think about the third, any language whatsoever would serve that purpose.

Irish would have been a better comparison. More speakers of Basque in Spain than Irish in Ireland.

like British English vs US English, Flemish is a dialect of dutch

Ah. That makes sense.

It's all Greek, to me...

No, that’s the other side of the continent.

I know. It was a joke.

Old-fashioned one.

Get off my lawn...

I think sentence should be easily readable to Flemish speaker: "A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...

I think that sentence is easily readable for most people who speak at least one Germanic language.

It's mostly true, though, even if it's a somewhat simplified view.

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