Language secessionism

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Language secessionism (also known as linguistic secessionism or linguistic separatism) is an attitude supporting the separation of a

but it is attested in other parts of the world.

In Arabic

Sociolinguistic background

The

This situation has important political and social implications. Modern Standard Arabic is the official language of all Arab countries, and enjoys the status of a global language. Standard Arabic is also the lingua sacra of Islam, which further increases its importance. However, a claim could be made that it is no one's first language, since Arab children acquire their local dialect in the natural process of generational language transmission, and learn Standard Arabic later, when they begin formal education.^[3] Proficiency in Standard Arabic provides insight into a vast literary tradition spanning over 1,500 years. However, proponents of recognizing local Arabic dialects as official languages claim that the discrepancy between spoken vernaculars and Standard Arabic is just too wide, rendering proficiency in Standard Arabic unattainable for most.

In Egyptian Arabic

Egyptian linguistic separatism is the most well-developed linguistic separatism in the Arab World. The most popular platform diffusing the idea of the Modern Egyptian Language (rather than the Egyptian dialect) is the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia also known as Wikipedia Masry or Maṣrī. It was the first Wikipedia written in one of the many Arabic dialects. Importantly, the idea of Egyptian linguistic separatism goes further back, to thinkers such as Salama Musa, Bayyūmī Qandīl, Muḥsin Luṭfī as-Sayyid, and the Liberal Egyptian Party.^[4]

Egyptian linguistic separatism does not simply claim that Egyptian Arabic should become the official language of Egypt, which in and of itself is a matter decided by politicians, not linguists. However, proponents of Egyptian linguistic separatism, such as Bayyūmī Qandīl, substantiate their political demands with pseudoscientific claims.^[4]

Linguistic separatism remains a fringe movement within Egyptian society. The idea remains particularly attractive to Coptic Christians and liberals, who see Egyptian nationalism as an alternative to Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism.^[4]

In Catalan and Occitan

Common characteristics

In the Occitano-Romance languages, language secessionism is a quite recent phenomenon that has developed only since the 1970s. Language secessionism affects both Occitan and Catalan languages with the following common features:^[5]

• A breakaway from the tradition of Occitan and Catalan 19th century revivalist movements, which usually support the internal unity of each of these languages.
• An often deliberate ignorance of the tradition of Romance linguistics.^[6]
• An exacerbation of the
  linked to dialects
  , which secessionism considers as separate languages.
• A lack of success (or a very marginal position) in linguistic scientific research.^[7]
• An active lobbying in regional political circles.
• The support of a writing system or of any prescription, which breaks up linguistic unity and exaggerates dialectal particular features.

In Catalan

In Catalan, there are three cases:

• Royal Academy of Valencian Culture
  ).
• standardization
  of Catalan.
• In
  Franja de Ponent (a Catalan-speaking strip in eastern Aragon), language secessionism is quite marginal. It appeared during the 2000s. It is supported only by a fraction of the already minority pro-Aragonese movements, who overstate a so-called Aragonese ancestry
  in the Catalan spoken in Aragon.

In Occitan

There are three cases in Occitan:

• In the
  Auvernhat dialect, language secessionism has been supported since the 1970s by Pierre Bonnaud, who founded the Bonnaudian norm, the group Cercle Terre d'Auvergne and the review Bïzà Neirà. It has negligible impact in the population, where knowledge of the language is in any case at best residual. Auvernhat cultural circles are divided between the unitary vision of Occitan (associated with the Occitan classical norm) and secessionism (associated with Bonnaudian norm
  ).
• In the Provençal dialect, language secessionism appeared during the 1970s with Louis Bayle and has been reactivated since the 1990s by Philippe Blanchet and groups like "Union Provençale" and "Collectif Provence". This secessionism supports the Mistralian norm (but it does not represent all Mistralian norm users, since some of them claim traditionally the unity of Occitan). It has little impact in the population, whose knowledge of the language is anyway residual. Provençal cultural circles are divided between the unitary vision (supported by users of both Mistralian norm and classical norm) and the secessionist vision (supported by one some users of the Mistralian norm). The Regional Council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur voted a resolution on 5 December 2003 that approved the principle of the unity of "Occitan or Langue d'Oc" and the fact that Provençal is a part of it.
• In the
  Aranese as "Aranese, the variety of the Occitan language peculiar to Aran ("Er aranés, varietat dera lengua occitana e pròpia d'Aran"). Similarly, the status of autonomy of Catalonia, as reformed in 2006, confirms it with the following expression: "The Occitan language, which is named Aranese in Aran" ("Era lengua occitana, denominada aranés en Aran"
  ).

In Spanish

In Andalusia, there is a fringe movement aimed at promoting the Andalusian dialect as a separate language from Spanish.^[8]

In Hindi and Urdu

The

but may not be close to the Delhi dialect.

In Romanian

The official standard language of

During the Soviet era, the USSR authorities officially recognized and promoted

and underwent several of the language reforms of Romanian.

Nowadays, the Cyrillic alphabet remains in official use only on the territories controlled by the breakaway authorities of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (most commonly known as Transnistria), where it is named "Moldovan", as opposed to the Latin script version used elsewhere, which the local authorities call "Romanian".

In Serbo-Croatian

.

Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Serbo-Croatian has lost its unitary codification and its official unitary status. It is now divided into four official languages which follow separate codifications: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian. This process has been accused of being grounded on pseudoscientific claims fueled by political agendas.^[12][13]

Indeed,

The problems of the so-called Ausbau-languages in Heinz Kloss's terminology are similar, but by no means identical to the problems of variants. In Ausbau-languages we have pairs of standard languages built on the basis of different dialects [...]. The difference between these paired Ausbau-languages and standard language variants lies in the fact that the variants have a nearly identical material (dialectal) basis and the difference is only in the development of the standardisation process, while paired standard languages have a more or less distinct dialect base.[25]

Kloss contrasts Ausbau languages not only with Abstand languages but also with polycentric standard languages,^[26] i.e. two variants of the same standard, such as Serbo-Croatian, Moldavian and Rumanian, and Portuguese in Brazil and Portugal. In contrast, pairs such as Czech and Slovak, Bulgarian and Macedonian, and Danish and Swedish, are instances of literary standards based on different dialects which, at a pre-literate stage, would have been regarded by linguists as dialects of the same language.^[27]

On the contrary, the Serbo-Croatian kind of language secessionism is now a strongly consensual and institutional majority phenomenon. Still, this does not make it legitimate to say that such secessionism has led to "

The intercomprehension between these standards exceeds that between the standard variants of English, French, German, or Spanish.[31]

The four varieties - Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian - are all totally mutually comprehensible [...] What there is, is a common, polycentric standard language - just like, say, French, which has Belgian, Swiss, French, and Canadian variants but is definitely not four different languages. [...] Linguistic scientists are agreed that BCSM is essentially a single language with four different standard variants bearing different names.^[15]

In Galician-Portuguese

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Portugal, a former southern

.

.

During the 19th century a

. Other writers wrote with a Portuguese-like orthography (e.g. Guerra da Cal and Carvalho Calero).

Reintegrationists claim that the official norm (released in 1982) was imposed by the Spanish government, with the covert intent of severing Galician from Portuguese. But this idea is rejected by the Real Academia Galega, which supports the official norm.

Reintegrationist and Lusist groups are protesting against this so-called language secessionism, which they call Castrapism (from castrapo, something like "patois") or Isolationism. Unlike in the case of Valencian Blaverism, isolationism has no impact in the scientific community of linguists, and it is supported by a small number of them but still has clear political support.

Galician-Portuguese linguistic unity until the 16th century seems to be consensus,^{[citation needed]} as does both Galician and European Portuguese being closer to each other, and also closer in the 19th century than in the 20th century and now. In this period, while Galician for the most part lost vowel reduction, velarization of /l/ and nasal vowels, and some speech registers of it adhered to yeísmo, all making it phonologically closer to Spanish. For example, European Portuguese had splits that created two new vowel phonemes, one of them usually an allophone only in the case of vowel reduction and the other phonetically absent in any other variant. Some dialects had a merger of three of its oral diphthongs and another three of its nasal vowels, and together with Brazilian Portuguese absorbed more than 5000 loanwords from French as well as 1500 from English.

It seems that the debate for a greater integration among

spelling agreement that would give particular regional differences such as that of Galician as well as major diverging dialects of Portuguese (especially in South America) more room (Reintegrationism), or the present standard based on the Spanish orthography, still did not cast official attention of government authorities in any of the involved countries, even if Lusophone support is expected to be strong in any of the first three cases.

A point often held by minorities among both Reintegrationists/Lusists and Lusophonists is that Portuguese should have a more conservative and uniform international speech standard that at the same time respects minor phonological differences between its

], but this is not especially welcomed by any party in Europe.

In Tagalog

Republic Act No. 7104, approved on August 14, 1991, created the Commission on the Filipino Language, reporting directly to the President and tasked to undertake, coordinate and promote researches for the development, propagation and preservation of Filipino and other Philippine languages.^[32] On May 13, 1992, the commission issued Resolution 92-1, specifying that Filipino is the

...indigenous written and spoken language of Metro Manila and other urban centers in the Philippines used as the language of communication of ethnic groups.^[33]

Though the Commission on the Filipino Language recognizes that a lot of the vocabulary of Filipino is based on Tagalog, the latest definition given to the national language tries to evade the use of the term Tagalog.

According to some

have divergent phonologies.

In Chinese

Mandarin versus other dialects

Among Chinese speakers,

]

In Hokkien

In the

In Taiwan, there is a common perception that Hokkien preserves more archaic features from

, and that it is not meaningful to say that one modern language is older than another.

See also

Notes