"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" is a quip about the arbitrariness of the distinction between a

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

and a

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

. It points out the influence that social and political conditions can have over a community's perception of the status of a language or dialect. The facetious adage was popularized by the sociolinguist and

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

scholar

Max Weinreich Max Weinreich ( yi, מאַקס ווײַנרײַך ''Maks Vaynraych''; russian: Мейер Лазаревич Вайнрайх, ''Meyer Lazarevich Vaynraykh''; 22 April 1894, Goldingen, Russian Empire – 29 January 1969, New York City) was a Russ ...

, who heard it from a member of the audience at one of his lectures in the 1940s.

Weinreich

This statement is usually attributed to

, a specialist in Yiddish linguistics, who expressed it in Yiddish: The earliest known published source is Weinreich's article ''Der YIVO un di problemen fun undzer tsayt'' ( "The YIVO Faces the Post-War World"; literally "The YIVO and the problems of our time"), originally presented as a speech on 5 January 1945 at the annual

YIVO YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word '' ...

conference. Weinreich did not give an English version. In the article, Weinreich presents this statement as a remark of an auditor at a lecture series given between 13 December 1943 and 12 June 1944: In his lecture, he discusses not just linguistic, but also broader, notions of " ''yidishkeyt''" ( – lit.

Jewishness Jewish peoplehood (Hebrew: עמיות יהודית, ''Amiut Yehudit'') is the conception of the awareness of the underlying unity that makes an individual a part of the Jewish people. The concept of peoplehood has a double meaning. The first is d ...

). The sociolinguist and Yiddish scholar

Joshua Fishman Joshua Fishman (Yiddish: שיקל פֿישמאַן — Shikl Fishman; July 18, 1926 – March 1, 2015) was an American linguist who specialized in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity. ...

suggested that he might have been the auditor at the Weinreich lecture. However, Fishman was assuming that the exchange took place at a conference in 1967, more than twenty years later than the YIVO lecture (1945) and in any case does not fit Weinreich's description above.

Other mentions

Some scholars believe that Antoine Meillet had earlier said that a language is a dialect with an army, but there is no contemporary documentation of this. Jean Laponce noted in 2004 that the phrase had been attributed in "" (essentially anecdote) to

Hubert Lyautey Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey (17 November 1854 – 27 July 1934) was a French Army general and colonial administrator. After serving in Indochina and Madagascar, he became the first French Resident-General in Morocco from 1912 to 1925. Early in ...

(1854–1934) at a meeting of the Académie Française; Laponce referred to the adage as "" ('Lyautey's law').

Randolph Quirk Charles Randolph Quirk, Baron Quirk, CBE, FBA (12 July 1920 – 20 December 2017) was a British linguist and life peer. He was the Quain Professor of English language and literature at University College London from 1968 to 1981. He sat as ...

adapted the definition to "A language is a dialect with an army and a flag".Thomas Burns McArthur, ''The English languages'', p.205

Weinreich

Other mentions

See also

References

Further reading