Quotables — Rebecca Posner

This is part of the post series ‘Quotables: notable quotes from notable linguists’.

How many Romance languages are there?

An answer to this question that has been slightingly labelled sancta simplicitas is that there is only one: the languages are all alike enough to be deeemed dialects of the same language. Another equally disingenous answer might be ‘thousands’—of distinctive local varieries—or ‘millions’—of individual idiolects. The usual textbook answer is ‘ten, or possibly eleven’, according priority to putative chronologically early differentiation from the common stock, allegedly linked to ethnic differences among speakers.

—Posner (2004), p. 189.

References

Posner, Rebecca. 2004. The Romance languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.