Is Belarusian a language?

[JiaTheResearcher]

language standardization is authoritarian. standard is useless, only mutual intelligibility above a certain degree is important for interpersonal communication, the rest must be allowed as local, regional and even personal variance! each person should be free to speak and write as they please

There in no golden standard in language regulating. Either you get a separate language in each village for the sake of chaotic democracy or you force people to unite economically and politically within the state with use of authoritarian methods. Personally I prefer to leave things as is. Nowadays there is no need in Belarussian language at all and if its active supporters even take power they repeat ukrainian scenario in Belarus.

[Nurzat]

There in no golden standard in language regulating. Either you get a separate language in each village for the sake of chaotic democracy or you force people to unite economically and politically within the state with use of authoritarian methods. Personally I prefer to leave things as is. Nowadays there is no need in Belarussian language at all and if its active supporters even take power they repeat ukrainian scenario in Belarus.

not true, separate language doesn't need to mean separate anything, lots of languages can share the same space

[Zohor]

There in no golden standard in language regulating. Either you get a separate language in each village for the sake of chaotic democracy or you force people to unite economically and politically within the state with use of authoritarian methods. Personally I prefer to leave things as is. Nowadays there is no need in Belarussian language at all and if its active supporters even take power they repeat ukrainian scenario in Belarus.

Usage of language doesn't make a language, have you heard about Toki Pona? No one uses it natively, it was artificial language yet still a language. Freaking Latin, if not Christianity and Bible in medieval times most likely it would die of and no one would give a shit about it.

I agree with you that there no golden standard rule because such issues are discussed by linguists and it was the point of the thread.

In this thread I simply wanted to discuss if Belarusian fills the criteria of being called a language. My first arguments was that Belarusian has some dialects within it, good start for discussion because it's rather easy to find a good contrargument for it. Unfortunatelly it turnt out differently becuase contrarguments are rather political than linguistic.

[Your Old Comrade]

In principle, we can argue that what the Russians are doing in Ukraine and Belarus is exactly the same thing as what the Danes and Swedes did in Norway, the Danes in Iceland and the Faroese, the English in Scotland, Wales and Ireland,the Dutch in much of the whole country (part. Brabant, Limburg and Frisia), the French-speaking elite of Belgium in both Wallonia, Brussels and Flanders, the Italians in Aosta, the Veneto, Sardinia, Sicily and South Tyrol, the Spanish in the Canary Islands, Catalonia and the Basque Country. the French in Corsica, Brittany, Alsace, Flanders, Artois, the Basque Country and the whole Occitan-speaking area. They call it nation-building, but let's call it for what it is: cultural genocide.

In all these countries, a metropolitan political elite, tried to force its power on a subjugated nation under the guise of nationalism. In every area that I mentioned, languages or dialects were either forced under ground, marked as an object of shame or completely replaced. Yes, the Bretons spoke Bretonic. In Wallonia, people spoke Walloon, in Brussels, Flemish had been the language since the day the city was founded. Flemish was discriminated against until well in the 20th century and this is why the Flemish Movement gladly joined the Dutch in a language union. In the Netherlands, dialects are still not equal before the law although now in Limburg, Limburgic is used in their local parliament and Frisian has finally equal status, but they had to literally fight for it.



And they only got it, because the government, with the end of the Indonesian War of Independence, only having been concluded two years prior, was afraid of facing a second possible movement for secession.

When I grew up, dialect was still literally shamed out of you in school. That's barely 30 years ago. My mum was stronger than I was: she refused to speak standard Dutch and stuck to Brabantine. I gave way, so unless I am with family, I speak, as it was called Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (lit. Common Civilised Dutch), or today: standard Dutch.

So is Belarussian a language? Its speakers perceive it as one, and they perceive themselves as seperate and what or how they feel is none of Moscow's business. Nor was it the business of an arrogant elite in The Hague, Brussels or Paris, to legislate what dialect or language people were or are speaking.

[Your Old Comrade]

There in no golden standard in language regulating. Either you get a separate language in each village for the sake of chaotic democracy or you force people to unite economically and politically within the state with use of authoritarian methods. Personally I prefer to leave things as is. Nowadays there is no need in Belarussian language at all and if its active supporters even take power they repeat ukrainian scenario in Belarus.

Are Norway and Switzerland chaotic ? In both countries, the elites are not so different from the people, unlike here where they don't go to the same schools, speak the same language or dialect or even communicate with those they lord over. They barely know what is going in the province or, on the other side of town.

[Zohor]

Another video about Belarusian dialects, there are subtitles, auto-translate is good enough to get the context. Also, the lady seems to be so passionate about the topic

[Ugo]

Another video about Belarusian dialects, there are subtitles, auto-translate is good enough to get the context. Also, the lady seems to be so passionate about the topic

I understand every word, don't you?

[Zohor]

I understand every word, don't you?

Of course I do as well, it was information for non-Slavic speakers that they can translate subtitles to English and it will be decent

[Ugo]

Of course I do as well, it was information for non-Slavic speakers that they can translate subtitles to English and it will be decent

I don't understand Polish at all. It is strange that Poles understand Russian dialects.

[Zohor]

I don't understand Polish at all. It is strange that Poles understand Russian dialects.

It's because I had Russian as second foreign language at school(instead of German which is in most Polish schools) for 9 years