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A '''dialect''' is a variant, or
variety, of a
language spoken in a certain geographical area. The number of speakers, and the area itself, can be of
arbitrary size. It follows that a dialect for a larger area can contain plenty of (sub-) dialects, which in turn can contain dialects of yet smaller areas, et cetera.
The concept ''dialect'' is distinguished from
sociolect, which is a variety of a language spoken by a certain social stratum, from
standard language, which is standardized for public performance (e.g. written standard), and from
jargon and
slang which are characterized by differences in
vocabulary (or
lexicon according to linguist jargon).
Varieties, such as dialects,
idiolects and sociolects, can be distinguished not only by their vocabulary, but also by differences in
grammar,
phonology and
prosody.
== "Dialect" or "Language" ==
There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing ''languages'' from ''dialects'', although a number of paradigms exist, which render sometimes contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference.
Language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages
* solely because they are not (or not recognized as)
literary languages,
* because the speakers of the given language do not have a
state of their own,
* or because their language lacks
prestige.
Anthropological linguists define dialect as the specific form of a language used by a speech community. In other words, the difference between language and dialect is the difference between the abstract or general and the concrete and particular. From this perspective, no one speaks a "language," everyone speaks a dialect of a language. Those who identify a particular dialect as the "
standard" or "proper" version of a language are in fact using these terms to express a social distinction.
Often, the standard language is close to the sociolect of the
elite class.
In groups where prestige standards play less important roles, ''"dialect"'' may simply be used to refer to subtle regional variations in linguistic practices that are considered mutually intelligible, playing an important role to place strangers, carrying the message of wherefrom a stranger originates (which quarter or district in a town, which village in a rural setting, or which province of a country); thus there are many apparent "dialects" of
Navajo and
Apache, for example, geographically widespread North American indigenous languages, by which the linguist simply means that there are many subtle variations among speakers who largely understand each other and recognize that they are each speaking "the same way" in a general sense.
Modern day linguistics knows that the
status of language is not solely determined by linguistic criteria, but it is also the result of a historical and political development.
Romansh came to be a written language, and therefore it is recognized as a language, even though it is very close to the Lombardic alpine dialects. An opposite example is the case of the
Chinese language whose variations are often considered dialects and not languages despite their mutual unintelligibility because they share a common literary standard and common body of literature.
=== Political factors ===
Max Weinreich has provided this definition: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". However, this also leads to inconsistencies and controversies, as political frontiers do not neatly follow lines of linguistic usage or comprehensibility. Depending on political realities and ideologies, the classification of speech varieties as dialects or languages and their relationship to other varieties of speech can be controversial and the verdicts inconsistent.
English and
Serbo-Croatian illustrate the point. English and Serbo-Croatian each have two major variants (
British and
American English, and
Serbian and
Croatian, respectively), along with numerous lesser varieties. For political reasons, analyzing these varieties as "languages" or "dialects" yields inconsistent results: British and American English, spoken by close political and military allies, are almost universally regarded as dialects of a single language, whereas the standard languages of
Serbia and
Croatia, which differ from each other to a similar extent as the dialects of English, are being treated by many linguists from the region as distinct languages, largely because the two countries oscillate from being brotherly to being bitter enemies. ''The
Serbo-Croatian language article deals with this topic much more fully.''
Parallel examples abound.
Macedonian, although mutually intelligible with
Bulgarian and often considered to be a Bulgarian dialect, is touted by
Macedonian nationalists as a language in its own right. In
Lebanon, the right-wing
Guardians of the Cedars, a fiercely nationalistic (mainly Christian) political party which opposes the country's ties to the
Arab world, is agitating for
"Lebanese" to be recognized as a distinct language from
Arabic and not merely a dialect, and has even advocated replacing the
Arabic alphabet with a revival of the ancient
Phoenician alphabet.
There have been cases of a variety of speech being deliberately altered to serve political purposes. In the nineteenth century, for example,
Norwegian nationalists created
Nynorsk from a number of selected dialects spoken in the west of the country, which had been less influenced than eastern dialects by
Danish and
Swedish during centuries of
Danish and
Swedish rule. Another example is
Moldovan. No such language existed before
1945, and most non-Moldovan linguists remain sceptical about its classification. After the
Soviet Union annexed the
Romanian province of
Bessarabia and renamed it
Moldavia,
Romanian, a
Romance language, was transposed into the
Cyrillic alphabet and numerous
Slavic words were imported into the language, in an attempt to weaken any sense of shared national identity with Romania. After Moldavia won its independence in
1991 (and changed its name to
Moldova), it reverted to a modified
Latin alphabet as a rejection of the perceived political connotations of the Cyrillic alphabet. In
1996, however, the Moldovan parliament, citing fears of "Romanian expansionism," rejected a proposal from
President Mircea Snegur to change the name of the language back to Romanian, and in
2003 a Romanian-Moldovan
dictionary was published, purporting to show that the two countries speak different languages. Linguists of the
Romanian Academy reacted by declaring that all the Moldovan words were also Romanian words. Even in Moldova, the head of the
Academy of Sciences' Institute of Linguistics,
Ion Bărbuţă, described the dictionary as a politically motivated "absurdity".
=== Dialect networks and the dialect continuum ===
Some have attempted to distinguish dialects from languages by saying that dialects are mutually comprehensible while languages are not. But this paradigm does not always work.
Italians and
Spaniards, for example, can understand each other when speaking what are their supposedly separate "languages," whereas
Lombards and
Sicilians, speaking what are supposedly "dialects" of the same language, cannot. Another problem occurs in the case of a
diglossia, a network of dialects on a
dialect continuum in which geographically adjacent dialects are mutually comprehensible, but with comprehensibility steadily decreasing as distance between the dialects increases. A well-known example is the
Afrikaans-
Dutch-
Frisian-
German dialect continuum, a vast network of dialects with four recognized literary standards. Although standard Dutch and German are not mutually intelligible, a chain of dialects connects them, with no break in intelligibility between any geographically adjacent dialects along the continuum. A network of dialects similarly exists among the
Eastern Slavic languages, among which
Russian,
Belarusian, and
Ukrainian are recognized as three literary standards. The
Serbo-Croatian language can also be viewed as a network of four major dialects and three literary standards.
=== The historical linguistics point of view ===
Many
historical linguists view every speech form as a dialect of the older medium of communication from which it developed. This point of view sees the modern
Romance languages as dialects of
Latin, modern
Greek as a dialect of ancient Greek, and
Tok Pisin as a dialect of English. This paradigm is not entirely problem free. It sees genetic relationships as paramount; the "dialects" of a "language" (which itself may be a "dialect" of a yet older tongue) may or may not be mutually intelligible. Moreover, a parent language may spawn several "dialects" which themselves subdivide any number of times, with some "branches" of the tree changing more rapidly than others. This can give rise to the situation where two dialects (defined according to this paradigm) with a somewhat distant genetic relationship are mutually more readily comprehensible than more closely related dialects. This pattern is clearly present among the modern Romance tongues, with
Italian and
Spanish having a high degree of mutual comprehensibility, which neither language shares with
French, despite both languages being ''genetically'' closer to French than to each other: French has undergone more rapid change than have Spanish and Italian.
=== The Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework ===
One analytical paradigm developed by professional linguists is known as the
Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework. It has proved popular among European linguists, but is not so well known in English-speaking countries, especially among people who are not trained linguists. Although only one of many possible paradigms, it has the advantage of being constructed by trained linguists for the particular purpose of analyzing and categorizing varieties of speech, and has the additional merit of replacing such
loaded words as "language" and "dialect" with the
German terms of
Ausbausprache,
Abstandsprache, and
Dachsprache, words that are not (yet) loaded with political, cultural, or emotional connotations. It may prove to be a tool helpful for enabling people to see some ancient and poisoned linguistic controversies through a different lens of perception.
==See also==
*
Accent
==External links==
*
Incorporating Dialect Study into the Language Arts Class
*
Vernacular Dialects in U.S. Schools
*
Fishermen's Dialect on the South-East Coast of Scotland.ca:dialecte
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