Jonathan Kew wrote:
> On 27/11/13 19:21, Scott Kostyshak wrote: > >> There appear to be 742 languages of Indonesia >> [1]. Are those languages not "Indonesian"? > > While there are many hundreds of other languages spoken in Indonesia > (see also http://www.ethnologue.com/country/ID/languages), which thus > may be referred to as "Indonesian languages", they are not actually > named "Indonesian"; they each have their own name(s). But Scott did not ask 'Are those languages not /named/ "Indonesian" ?'; he asked 'Are those languages not "Indonesian" ?', which I would argue is a very different question. If we consider the languages of China, I think few Sinologists would claim that all but one are not "Chinese". This seems a valid parallel to me. ** Phil.
