I just got back from Hong Kong.  It was a very interesting trip,
and has renewed my interest in learning the Chinese language.
Does anyone know of any good self-study course?  Anyone have any
experience with the tapes hawked in the Atlantic, like Audio
Forum?

51 responses total.

Which Chinese language do you want to learn?
 
Some years ago, before my father's first trip to China, he took a self-study
course in Mandarin.  The course had him increase his vocabulary by marking
objects in his home with little post-it notes with their chinese equivalents.
 
I went to my folks house about a month before his trip, and there were little
pieces of paper on everything.  On the clock, was the mandarin for clock.  On
the phone, the mandarin transliteration for phone.  On the fruit in the fruit-
bowl, there was a tag on an orange, a banana, and an apple.
 
I found one on the floor.  I asked, "What's this, the chinese for floor?"  
 
My dad picked it up and looked at it.  "No, its 'dog'.  She must have 
lost it when she scratched at her collar." 
 
I laughed.  My dad pointed at the ceiling.  There was a little tag on it.
Yep.  
 
He may not have had any grammer, but he had a large vocabulary.

I might be wrong, but I think Cantonese would be the most useful.  That's
what they speak in Hong Kong and Guangdong, which is the province adjacent
to HK.

In Hong Kong, they speak Cantonese.
Hong Kong and Guangdong are actually two islands that can be referred
to as Hong Kong though... most people I know from Guangdong will tell
you they're from Hong Kong
In China, the official language is Mandarin, although, if you travel
the country, you will discover that every village has it's own dialect.
In Taiwan, they speak Mandarin and Taiwanese.
So when you say you want to learn the Chinese language, you had better
be more specific, learn only to write (characters are the same in all
dialects), or you'll have a heck of a lot of work to do trying to 
learn all of the different dialects!

At my school, they only teach Mandarin, but my friend who takes it says that 
she wishes they taught Cantonese, because that's what she hears most people 
speaking here.  I don't know where most Chinese immigrants are from, though.

Where does your friend live, asp?  Chinese immigrants from different
places tend to go to different places, because the trend was started
long ago, and most people will go where they have relatives.
For example, where I grew up, most of the students of Chinese descent
spoke Mandarin, where as if you go to Toronto, it's almost like being
in Hong Kong, with the amount of Cantonese you hear.

That's fascinating. I know so little of the Chinese people or their languages.
I studied Japanese about 20 years ago, and I had to learn a lot
of Chinese Characters (called kanji in Japan) back then. I really 
enjoyed that part, too. I still have a character dictionary
written for English speakers who are learning Japanese.
But my question here is about Mandarin vs. Cantonese.
I never studied Mandarin or Cantonese, although I know they are
non-inflected monosyllabic tone languages, utterly different from 
inflected polysyllabic non-tonal Japanese.

I understand the regional distinction and the government sanctioning
of only Mandarin, but how different are they? Are they like separate
spoken languages which just share the written form, or are they more
like two dialects of the same language, where some words and pronunciations
and idioms are different, but the structure of the language is the same?  
Can Cantonese be understood in Beijing?

(sorry, I guess that's a lot of questions at once)

Mandarin and Cantonese are both dialects of Chinese. To those who can
understand both of the languages, they are very similar, but to those
of us who can't, it is very diferent. One must understand that in China
if you as much as leave the vilage, you wil be hearing a diferent
language. But the characters are al the same. That is what unites the
Chinese language, the writen part, because no one could posibly learn
al the dialects.
Hope you can read this for some reason my computer is not leting me 
type any double leters on grex today. *shrug*

Thanks, yeah I can read it fine without double letters.

I guess I had read somewhere that there were many dialects of Chinese,
but I am not at all sure I have an idea of how different they are.
Is the difference only pronunciation of words, or are there different
word choices? If there are only pronunciation differences, it would
be a lot like listening to someone with a regional accent. It would
be distinctly noticeable, but nevertheless completely comprehensible
to all. Not at all like another language.

Somehow I suspect that the difference between, say, Cantonese and Mandarin
is greater than that. But wouldn't word choices and idioms result in a
difference which could be seen in the written form? Though the characters
used for the same words are the same, different words are used.
If that were true the languages could well be nearly unintelligible to
speakers of the other one despite the character=word agreement.
Did that question make any sense?

I'll try to answer this the best I can.
The characters are all the same, and therefore, no matter what dialect
of Chinese you speak, if you are literate, you can communicate easily
with any other literate person.  It is only the pronounciation of the
characters that are different, but somehow, it's not the same as it is 
here.  The differences in English prnounciation depending on region are
not nearly as great as the ones in the different Chinese dialects.  It's
not as simple as north and south.  China is made of many little villages,
and every village speaks a different dialect.  I guess it's because
Chinese doesn't have an alphabet.  I mean, in English, how many different
ways can you pronounce something?  And the differences aren't enough 
that you can't understand the other person (well, most of the time, I've
heard stories).  But in Chinese, unless you speak a dialect, there's
very little chance you will know it, unless you hear it a lot, at home,
or elsewhere.  There.  I hope that answered your question.  :)

Good point: while everyone knows what the characters mean, different groups
can *call* them anything they want! A language of aliases! 

Thanks for the answer. Let's see if I get it, then.
It is the same words, then, but each dialect of Chinese has such a different 
pronunciation that they can be unintelligible to speakers of another one.
I guess that can happen much more easily in Chinese than in English, because
of the monosyllabic nature of every Chinese word.

This mostly fits with what I've heard.  The assignment is entirely arbitrary
in terms of *sound*, relatively constant in terms of meaning.  This assumes
some pretty strong similarities of structure among all the dialects, but
that's not much help for oral communication.

English has historically undergone some major shifts in letter-to-sound
mapping, most notably in the vowel sounds.  (If you'll notice, most other
European languages' sounds for long & short vowels are similar to each other
but quite different from English's.)  This would make understanding the
English of 4 or 5 centuries ago much harder than the written language
suggests - if there were speakers (or recordings) around.  But that *is*
mostly the vowels, and I suspect that we'd be able to get along if we
had to.  (The differences would be systematic, & vowels are fairly redundant
as far as information content goes - you can mostly read English with all
the vowels crossed out, albeit slowly.)

The situation with Chinese (as I understand it) is different in that the
mappings are mostly arbitrary rather than systematic, in principle.  I don't
think it's quite that bad in practice, but it's bad enough to produce
mutual intelligibility among people who have the very same written form of
the language.

*sigh*
While Kim's comments are, in the main, accurate, there are some linguistic
concepts that she completely mangled, so let me try to state it a bit more
consistently:

"Chinese" is identified by the average Westerner (i.e., in this case, 
user of an alphabetic script) as a single language because the writing
system is universally intelligible.  Japanese uses the same characters,
as does Korean, but because both systems also have additional characters
(in the case of Korean, the use of Chinese characters has almost completely
faded, I'm told), they do not belong to the same "language."

All speech systems subsumed under the term "Chinese" furthermore come from
the same source -- just as English, German, and Dutch all came from
ProtoGermanic.  there is no more arbirariness in the shifting of Chinese
sounds over time than there is in the shifting of English sounds; all
sound change is principled and regular.

Whether one terms the systems subsumed under Chinese as dialects or as
languages depends primarily on ones definition of those two terms.
Generally, two speech systems are different languages if speakers of the
systems can't understand each other (in speech).  This is hardly a black-and-
white distinction:  speakers of German can usually puzzle out Dutch, and
speakers of Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian can frequently intermingle.
There is a spectrum of language differentiation, and where we draw the
lines can often be arbitrary.  The accepted analysis currently is that
most of the speech systems within Chinese are, in fact, dialects, but
there are some outlaying regions that speak something different enough to
be called a language.

Saying that English has more sound variety because we have 26 letters
is patently absurd.  There are many letters that have multiple 
pronunciations (we have five vowels but 11+ vowel sounds), and vice versa.

brighn, I appreciate your definition of what is a language and what is a
dialect. It is a very nice operational definition, but as even you pointed out 
it is as fuzzy as heck. If I have 3 regions, A B and C, with B in the middle
both geographically and linguistically, then I could easily have
A and B be dialects of the same language, and
B and C be dialects as well, but by that operational definition A and C be 
different languages.

I don't buy it. I think if two dialects use the same words but have
corrupted the pronunciations even beyond the point of intelligibility, then
they still have the right to be considered dialects. That appears to be the 
case with many if not most of the Chinese dialects.

This has nothing to do with characters. I am quite familiar with Japanese.
It is a completely different language with all kinds of language
features that are not present in any dialect of Chinese.
Verb inflections, adverb inflections, are prime examples.
It uses mostly the same characters, but that is only because they were
borrowed to express in writing what was an unwritten mongol-derived language.

If I understand correctly, the borrowing of the Chinese written language
to express an existing oral language is not the way the various forms
of Chinese appeared. I am guessing from what abchan said earlier that the word 
usage radiated along with the written language. I am also guessing that the 
architectural features of the language were preserved (e.g., monosyllabic 
words, compounds to relieve ambiguities, tones).

I am not satisfied with the operational, fuzzy definition of a dialect,
but I am willing to look at the development or history to help decide
a question like that. 

I don't recall anyone claiming that English had more sound variety because
it has 26 letters. Abchan said English had less, and guessed that it was
because Chinese doesn't have an alphabet. This is not at all absurd.
It makes sense to me that if 25 different words are pronounced "ma - tone1"
in dialect A, that not all will necessarily be pronounced the same in a 
neighboring dialect. This kind of issue doesn't come up in English because the
words are spelled out. Most dialect differences come about because of vowel
shifts in English. This difference permits every word in Chinese to have
its pronunciation drift in a different direction. The alphabet in English
prevents a similar phenomenon.

If I misrepresented what abchan was saying, I trust I will be corrected.

(There are consonant shifts too, of course.  And Steve, you are thinking
of one kind of dialect difference - pronunciation - whereas there are of
course other kinds of differences (vocabulary and grammar, at least).
I am quibbling on details - I think I generally agree with your main points.

FWIW, I've been told that the Scandinavian languages are more or less
mutually intelligible.  I don't know any of them myself & haven't
ever tried to confirm this from the viewpoint of native speakers; and
I'm sure that there's significant loss of precision across the language
barrier.  But I wonder if anyone would argue that they're just dialects
at this point, rather than closely-related but distinct languages.

And in any case, *however* we characterize the language/dialect distinction
in abstract terms, the line will be fuzzy in practice.  (Application of
the criteria will be disputable.  Just for example, how far does
"mutually intelligible" have to stretch?)

Dutch and German are mostly mutually incomprehensible. In fact, two
Dutch dialects can be mutually incomprehensible. The grammars are
similar, but vocabulary to a large extent, and pronounciation to an
overwhelming extent, are very different.

#14:  Quite right, re:  what Kim said about the English alphabet.
That was my inference.  There is less homophony in Chinese, and more
in English, than is typically alleged.  Dialects of English in 
Appalachia, where the literacy rate is abyssmally low, are generally
considered to be the most conservative dialects in modern English.

The written mode has little affect on the rate of change.
er, effect.

Rane, I have no knowledge of Dutch, but can read it sloggingly
and VERY inaccurately based on Germ\an, which I am far from fluent in.
I was including the written form, which is fair in this discussion,
since we're talking about the written form of Chinese as well as
the spoken.

Oops, going back to #14:  You mention tone:  that is on reason for less
cononantl variety in Chinese.  That has nothing to do with the way
in which the language is written.  Consider:  sight, site, cite -- 
homophones but not homographs:  the spelling has done little to 
preserve pronunciation in "sight", "night", "knight", etc.  Comparing 
English and Chinese on ANY level and saying this part is less diverse,
thsis aprt more, because of a simple factor is like saying that 
oranges and apples aren't the same color because the first is a citrus
fruit.

The definition I give of language and dialect is the most useful:
the lay definition is based on political boundaries and writing systems,
hence the difficulty characterizing African languages (which usually
do not respect political boundaries, such taht there are, and only
acquired writing systems fairly recently).

It is admittedly grossly flawed.  The only other answer is to say
that there are no languages.

Well you've mostly convinced me regarding reasons behind diversity.

As far as what is a dialect versus a separate language, I cannot
accept mutual incromprehensibility. I admit it, I am a mathematician
before a linguist. To me all the dialects of a language must form an
equivalence class. That is, the relationship of "being a dialect of the same
language" must be a transitive relationship.

That is to say, if A is a dialect of the same language as B,
and B is a dialect of the same language as C, then
A must be a dialect of the same language as C in my book, and I
don't think A and C's mutual incomprehensibility should stand in the way.

I struggle with that myself.  Certainly someone from the deep South of
the United States would have difficulty discoursing with an Upper Class
Londoner, even though they're ostensibly speaking the same language 
(after all, *I* can understand them both).

What sort of definition should we use, then?  Geopolotical?  Orthographic?
Social?  Folk?

Let's just say "cultural" and push the problem over into anthropology!

Passing the social scientific buck, eh?

Exactly.  The identity criteria for cultures are surely no easier to
pin down - but that's a problem for some other conference.

Seriously, though, this may be a case where different criteria are
appropriate for different contexts.  I'm personally (shooting from the
hip here, you understand) inclined to take that line as far as cultures
but not as far as languages go.  Hmm.

And one personal anecdote: I once heard a lecture (years ago) about Indian
cultures in Chiapas (Mexican state).  The speaker began with a short
movie giving general background, by no means an amateur job.  Before
playing this, though, she warned us that it said that there were 3
(I think) indigenous languages in the area under consideration, but that
it should say that there were 3 language *families*, comprising (again, I
think) hundreds (dozens?) of distinct languages.  This kind of thing
is not at all easy to sort out, & (fortunately for me) it's easy
to shoot from the hip in the absence of detailed technical knowledge.

Well the mathematician in me says that you could solve the problem I raised by
extending the definition to (as mathematicians say) the transitive closure.

For Linguists (and other non-mathematicians) that means we could define
two languages to be dialects of the same languae (as opposed to separate
languages) when there is a sequence of mutually comprehensible languages/
dialects between them.

Did that make sense to anyone?
Does that make any linguistic sense?
Remember, we're only defining words here.

Sometimes "different languages" are as much a question of politics as
anything else.  When what is now sw Sweden was part of Denmark, the
people there spoke something that was more like Danish.  After the two
separated, and as people moved around, the language chaned so that today
it's more like Swedish.  In england, until about the 13th century, the
language spoken in different parts of england was becoming more and more
different.  But when the country was unified, travel and communications
was improved, and as printing was invented, the process was reversed,
and in fact the language spoken around london became more or less the de
facto standard.  That's why Chaucer is more comprehensile to modern ears
than gawain & the green knight.

Australia represents perhaps the most puzzling test case for "when is a
langauge different".  Unlike most parts of the world, Australia has
never been large or civilized enough to have the kinds of large scale
wars & migrations the rest of the world has seen.  What that means is
that for many thousands of years, the ancestors of the present natives
have lived in just about the same place, around the edge of most of the
continent, leaving the center of the continent largely deserted.  As one
goes from tribe to tribe around the edge of the continent, the language
changes - but in each case the changes are not that large and it's clear
each language is closely related to its neighbor.  By the time one gets
to the other end of the continent, however, the changes are no longer
minor, but great enough that if you didn't know about the other
languages inbetween, you would think the 2 languages are completely
unrelated.

#23:  That makes mathematical sense.  Unfortunately you have just 
defined,er, um...
how many people are alive today?
A trillion or so?

Also re 23:
The problem is that relationships in the real world in fact don't usually
work that way.  To give a concrete and unrelated example: clearly adding
a grain of sand to a small pile doesn't make it anything but a small pile;
but from that you can't progress by induction to conclude that all sandpiles
are small (if one small pile exists).  Similarly, I'm fairly sure I'd want
to hear a *huge* amount of detail of examples like the one Marcus cited
before I'd say flatly that transitivity of "is a dialect of the same
language" holds up indefinitely.

In particular: 
It might well be that there are multiple sets of criteria, somewhat
unrelated to each other, which when satisfied in certain combinations
mean that two languages are dialects rather than separate languages.
(I guess I think this is the case.)  If so, it's at least possible (as
long as the criteria aren't fully known) that language A is a dialect
of B in view of one set of characteristics and a dialect of C in view
of another but that B and C share none of the features making *them*
dialects of a common language.  The probability of something like this
being true would go up dramatically as the number of links between increased.
 

I have no idea whether you case actually exists in real life, Dave.
Languages which are dialects usually share nearly all features, rather
than a very limited number of features, so I doubt it.

Regarding 25's criticism of my transitivity suggestion (23) I am puzzled.
Do you really think there is a path from language to every other?
This cannot possibly be even close to true.
I wouldbe shocked to learn there was a path of mutually intelligible
languages between a pair of very closely related languages that are not
mutually intelligible (and thus not dialects of the same language by
the initial definition given) such as Spanish and Portuguese.

Well, I guess you're going to shocked, Steve.
Spanish and Portugeuse are Romance languages, as is French.
German is a Germanic language.

There is a continuum of dialects in the Alsace-Lorraine region.
There is no clear-cut point at which one can say "O.k., different
language" -- every village is a point along the continuum.

Yet, somehow, you start out in Paris with French and wind up in 
Berlin with German.

A bald man has no hairs.  If he has one hair, he's almost bald.
If he has two hairs, he's almost bald.  One more hair than that,
he's still almost bald.  "Almost bald" is therefore a recursive
function, since it's true for i=1 and true for j=i+1.  Where does
the function stop?  10?  100?  1000?

If you don't like synchrony, try diachrony:  English traces back
to Greek, eventually.  Go back ten year, then ten more... keep going
and tell me when you reach the cliff where you stop speaking
English and start speking something else.

And I guess we're all chimpanzees, by the same logic... there's
a continuum linking us going back in time, then forward back up
the other branch.

(Not to make this into a religious argument... that last only holds,
of course, if one believes in evolution.)

I find your claim of a chain of languages between French and German
which are mutually intelligible to native speakers in each neighboring
village very difficult to believe, but I have not been there, so I will
trust you on that one..

In that case you need to reevaluate your starting point
that two languages are dialects of a common language if they are mutually
intelligble. If one accepts that definition then in Alsace toward the French
end of this chain we are talking about dialects of French, and we have
dialects of German at the other side. But no matter what language we consider
the somewhat ambiguous ones in the middle to be, one must eventually
have two mutually intelligible dialects, but one of French and one of German.
What common language are they dialects of? One must conclude that French
and German are dialects of a common language, and we don't want to define
"dialects of a common language" to work that way.

This discussion started, in fact, because I took issue with that definition.
I think you need to use some other information besides mutual intelligibility
to have a good definition.

I suppose another way out of this would be to allow that a dialect could
be a dialect of two different languages simultaneously. This seems quite odd, 
but maybe it's the escape route from this mess.

I've always had the impression that in Alsace-Lorraine they don't speak
something half-way between, but instead they speak french & german as 2
separate languages.  Perhaps things were different in the middle ages,
but even there, I have my doubts.  Historically, while french & german
are both from PIE, they've evolved mostly independently.

It's certainly not the case that "english traces back to greek".  In the
first place, greek is not one language - modern greek is about as
different from ancient greek as french is from latin.  In the 2nd place,
english, as a distinct language, is relatively recent; and is in fact a
mix of french, german, some danish, and more than a smattering of latin.
Now, as it happens, all of those are PIE derived, as is greek, so all
share a lot of common ancestry.  But they all split off from greek
before greek became its own language, so it's no more correct to say
"english is descended from greek" than it would be to say "man is
descended from chimp".

Curiously, before the english spoke english (or latin or danish or old
german), they were celts, and spoke some sort of celt language.  While
the celts weren't educated in any sort of modern sense, they certainly
respected learning & wisdom.  One of the bits of wisdom they had seems
to be that they were closely related to the greeks.  So it would seem
irish & whelsh have a better claim on being "traced back to greek".

*sigh*  Picky picky, y'all.  :)  What's with the academic rigors that some
of you feel the need to display?  :(

Fine... forget Alsace-Lorraine.  Go with diachrony.  It is possible to 
construct a spectral chain starting with modern French, going back in time
a long long long way, coming forward in time the same number of years,
and hitting German.  Certainly there were outside influences in the 
development of each language; to claim otherwise would be preposterous.
The point is, at no point is there a clear delineation separating French
from non-French.

The spectrum problem is well known in linguistics, and is a conundrum which has
led some scholars to give up using the term "language" altogether, relying
instead on concepts of idiolect and social contracts.

It's as misleading to say that English became a distinct language at such-and-
such a point as it is to say it derives from Greek.  And of course I meant
ancient Greek, not modern.

Oh, now I remember my other point -- we all speak multiple registers; the
distinction between register and dialect is fairly clear, as these fuzzy 
logic things go (<brighn wonders why all these technically-minded folks
seem to be unfamiliar with fuzzy logic>), but an important similarity
is a perceived distinction in appropriate context.  Someone living
in Alsace Lorraine knows to say "Guten Tag" to someone named Schmidt and
"bonjour" to someone named Mitterand; someone living in Michigan knows
that their parents are less likely to understand "That's rad, dude" than
his friends (to use outdated slang,  I think).  Language is not a nice
simple constant that exists outside of society (as some lingusitic 
theories have actually suggested).

I keep admitting my definition of language is flawed, and I keep admitting
to the flaws that are getting pointed out... why do you keep pointing
to the same flaws.  I'm just saying that, if you want to criticize my
defintion, you have to come up with a better one.  (That's my rule;  a silly
one, indeed... I guess I'd never sruvive in Grad School, eh, Kent?)

Um, Marcus, I don't think it's quite fair to say that "before the English
spoke English (or ... ), they were celts ... ".  These other languages you
mention came into the picture complete with speakers of them, often swinging
axes & swords & looking for a nice place to settle down.  The Saxons &
Normans & all have as much claim to be the English before they spoke
English as do the Celts.

brighn slipped in.

I think that way because that was how I learned to think. It's important
for me to think very precisely in order to do my job. So that is a fact of my
personality, and there is not much I or anyone else can do about it.

Brighn, I am not questioning at all the continuity of progression as 
languages develop over time. I only questioned your definition which
relied wholly on mutual intelligibility. I didn't claim it was wrong.
In a mathematical sense definitions are incapable of being 'wrong',
but in another sense it could have been inconsistent with common usage.
There I would claim no expertise. I am only an amateur in matters of
linguistics. 

I am distressed to hear that some scholars are prepared to give up
using the term 'language' altogether, though. I see a clear analogy
between separate languages and separate species in biology.

(1) Through development, both change continuously over time. 
Stephen Jay Gould would argue that at times the rate of evolution in
species is very fast, but I doubt he would argue that it is discontinuous.

(2) Rather than being distributed about uniformly among the possibilities,
both genetic material and linguistic material clump together because of
intercourse between individuals. By clumping genetically, only individuals
from the same clump can mate, so we have species. By clumping linguistically,
only individuals from the same clump can understand each other, so we have
languages.

(3) Species allow for variations. These are clumps in gene-space which
are separate but can still interbreed. They belong to the same species.
Languages allow for dialects. These are clumps in linguistic-space which
are separate but still allow for mutual understanding.

OK so far I have agreed with you. You'll note the "mutual understanding
is back.

(4) Both genetics and linguistics have the same conundrum. A can 
(mate with | understand) B and B can (mate with | understand) C,
yet A cannot (mate with | understand) C. So they have to decide:
Are A and C the same (species | language) ?

I think the answer should be yes in both cases, for otherwise you would
be unable to decide which (species | language) B belonged to.
I do require them to be contemporary, however. I don't think it's useful to
decide whether (mating|understanding) is possible between non-contemporary
groups. 

If, through time, the (variation | dialect) B becomes extinct, then the bridge
between A and C is broken and this is how separate (species | languages) are
formed.

By the way, I don't consider that this analogy works so well to be remarkable.
I think it is a necessity for properties of language and genetics to be
analogous, because both by their nature are subject to the same pressure
which results from communication (of words or genetic material) between
individuals.

I suppose you could say the Angles have the best claim to the title "the
original English" - as much as anybody given all those other claims.
But you're right, it's a bit hard to decide who deserves that
title the best.  What I probably should have said was "the original
britains".

I rather thought that might be the case.  But come to that, is *that* even
clear?

It's true as far back as we have any evidence on what they spoke.
Before that, we only have prehistoric remains, and while they tell a
rich tale of many cultures supplanting one other, the historical
linguistic evidence is lamentably lacking.

Re #34:  O.k., I'll accept all of that.  I was snitting because of 
Aaron's attitude elsewhere, but you're ever so much nicer about it.
<*sigh*  I'm in love.>

Seriously, though, ignoring the fact that you did it again with "wrong" --
I know perfectly well that nothing in science is ever "wrong" or "right",
but it does bear repeating to anyone who might be listening in --
I'll agree with you.  What do we do with ligers and tions and mules?
Mules, after all, are sterile because they come from parents of two
different species... or do I have that wrong?  :(  Mating and reproduction
are possible, but flawed.

A true, culturally appropriate definition of language would of necessity
include a series of complex concepts and be fairly complex itself.
(both true and of necessity there are used in loose social scientific ways :)

Perhaps tiglons (I think that's the right name) and mules stretch the
parallel too far. In zoology, I am fairly certain that the ability
to produce viable offspring is not sufficient to define two varieties
to be of the same species, but rather the viable offspring must
also be able to further mate with individuals of either variety.

Thus horses and donkeys, lions and tigers are considered separate
species despite tiglons and mules, but the red fox and grey fox,
which were separated for years geographically, are stilll considered
different varieties of the same species because they can interbreed.

The parallel in language is that a new language is formed which can be
understood by speakers of other languages. The new language cannot
in turn give rise to further languages, so it is a dead end. I don't
think the parallel holds well. I propose we ignore mules and tiglons.
~

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss