A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a
variety of a language characteristic of a
particular group of the language's speakers.[1] The term is
applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class.[2]
In popular usage, the word "dialect" is sometimes used to refer to a lesser-known language (most commonly a regional language), especially one that is unwritten or not standardized.[3] This use of the word dialect is often taken as pejorative by the speakers of the
languages referred to in that way since it is often accompanied by the erroneous belief that the minority language is lacking in
vocabulary, grammar, or importance.
The number of speakers, and the geographical area covered by them, can be of arbitrary size, and a dialect might contain several sub-dialects. A dialect is a complete system
of verbal communication (oral or signed, but not necessarily written) with its own
vocabulary and grammar.
A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a
sociolect. Other speech varieties include: standard
languages, which are standardized for public performance (for example, a written standard); jargons, which are characterized by differences in lexicon (vocabulary); slang; patois; pidgins or argots. The particular speech patterns used by an individual are termed
an idiolect.
A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology,
including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of
pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect (although
in common usage, "dialect" and "accent" are usually synonymous).
Standard and non-standard dialects
A standard dialect (also known as a standardized dialect or "standard
language") is a dialect that is supported by institutions. Such institutional support may include government recognition
or designation; presentation as being the "correct" form of a language in schools; published grammars, dictionaries, and
textbooks that set forth a "correct" spoken and written form; and an extensive formal literature that employs that dialect
(prose, poetry, non-fiction, etc.). There may be multiple standard dialects associated with a language. For example, Standard
American English, Southern English, Standard
British English, and Standard Indian English may
all be said to be standard dialects of the English language.
A nonstandard dialect, like a standard dialect, has a complete vocabulary,
grammar, and syntax, but is not the beneficiary of institutional support.
"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,
- because they are not used in press or literature, or very little.
- or because their language lacks prestige.
The term idiom is used by some linguists instead of language or dialect when there is no need to commit
oneself to any decision on the status with respect to this distinction.[citation needed]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 where 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 Slavey, for
example, 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 linguists 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 Chinese,
whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often considered dialects and not languages, despite their mutual
unintelligibility, because they share a common literary standard and common body of literature.
In Italy, the word dialetto is often used of a regional language, particularly if it
differs considerably from Italian.[citation needed] When speaking about a regional variant of Italian, the usual term is
inflessione.
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy"
-
The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich published
the expression, "A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot" ("אַ שפראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמײ און פֿלאָט", "A language
is a dialect with an army and navy"; in Yivo-bleter 25.1, 1945, p. 13). The origin of this statement is, however,
uncertain — Weinreich explicitly says that he did not coin it. It illustrates the fact that the political status of the speakers
of a variety influences its perceived status as language or dialect. Most governments establish a standard variety of their
language (or languages) to be taught in schools and used in official documents, courts and so on; often it is also promoted for
use in the media.
Political factors
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.)
Similar examples abound. Macedonian, although mutually intelligible with
Bulgarian, certain dialects of Serbian and to a lesser extent the rest of the
South Slavic dialect continuum is
considered by Bulgarian linguists to be a Bulgarian dialect, in contrast with the international view, and the view in the
Republic of Macedonia which sees it 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.
Interestingly, such moves may even appear at a local, rather than a federal level. The US state of Illinois declared "American" to be the state's official language in
1923[1], although linguists and politicians throughout much of the rest of the country
considered American simply to be a dialect.
There have been cases of a variety of speech being deliberately altered to serve political purposes. One 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, became known as Moldovan, the Cyrillic alphabet was restored 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; while in Moldova, the head of the Academy of Sciences'
Institute of Linguistics, Ion Bărbuţă, described the dictionary as a politically motivated
"absurdity".
In contrast, spoken languages of Han Chinese are
usually referred to as dialects of one Chinese language, to promote national unity. The article "Identification of the varieties of Chinese" has more details.
In the Philippines, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on the
Filipino Language) declared all the indigenous languages in the Philippines dialects[citation needed] despite the great differences
between them, as well as the existence of significant bodies of literature in each of the major "dialects" and daily newspapers
in some.
The significance of the political factors in any attempt at answering the question "what is a language?" is great enough to
cast doubt on whether any strictly linguistic definition, without a socio-cultural approach, is possible. This is illustrated by
the frequency with which the army-navy aphorism discussed in the preceding section is cited.
Historical linguistics
Many historical linguists view any speech form as a dialect of the older
medium of communication from which it developed.[citation needed] This point of view sees the modern Romance languages as dialects of Latin, modern Greek as a dialect of ancient Greek, Tok Pisin as a dialect of
English, and Scandinavian languages as dialects of Old Norse. 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:[citation needed] French has undergone more rapid change than have Spanish and Italian.
Interlinguistics
One language, Interlingua, was developed so that the languages of Western civilization would act as
its dialects.[citation needed] Drawing from such concepts as the international scientific vocabulary and Standard Average European, linguists developed a theory that the modern Western languages were
actually dialects of a hidden or latent language. Researchers at the International Auxiliary Language Association extracted words and affixes
that they considered to be part of Interlingua's vocabulary.[4] In theory, speakers of the Western languages would understand written or spoken Interlingua
immediately, without prior study, since their own languages were its dialects.[5] This has often turned out to be true, especially, but not solely, for speakers of the Romance
languages and educated speakers of English. Interlingua has also been found to assist in the learning of other languages. In one
study, Swedish high school students learning Interlingua were able to translate passages from Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian
that students of those languages found too difficult to understand.[6] It should be noted, however, that the vocabulary of Interlingua extends beyond the Western language
families.[7]
Concepts in dialectology
Concepts in dialectology include:
Mutual intelligibility
-
Some have attempted to distinguish dialects from languages by saying that dialects of the same language are understandable to
each other.
Diglossia
-
Another problem occurs in the case of diglossia, used to describe a situation where, in a given society, there are two
closely-related languages, one of high-prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of
low-prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. An example of this is
Sanskrit, which was considered the proper way to speak in northern India, but only accessible
by the upper class, and Prakrit which was the common (and informal or vernacular) speech at the time.
Another example of diglossia are the ancient Egyptian languages Demotic and
Hieratic.
Dialect continuum
-
A dialect continuum is a network of dialects in which geographically adjacent dialects are mutually comprehensible, but with
comprehensibility steadily decreasing as distance between the dialects increases. An example is the Dutch-German dialect continuum, a vast network of dialects with
two recognized literary standards. Although mutual intelligibility between standard Dutch
and standard German is very limited, a chain of dialects connects them. Due to several
centuries of influence by standard languages (especially in Northern Germany, where even today
the original dialects struggle to survive) there are now many breaks in intelligibility between geographically adjacent dialects
along the continuum, but in the past these breaks were virtually nonexistent.
The Romance languages — Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Provençal, French, Walloon, Piedmontese, Lombard language, Occitan, Corsican, Sardinian,
Sicilian, Romansh, Friulian, Neapolitan other Italian dialects, and others — form another well-known continuum, with varying degrees of mutual
intelligibility.
Diasystem
-
A diasystem refers to a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms. An example is Hindi-Urdu or Hindustani, which encompasses two main
standard varieties, Urdu and Hindi. Another example is Norwegian,
with Bokmål having developed closely with Danish and Swedish, and Nynorsk as a partly reconstructed language based on old dialects. Both are recognized as official languages in
Norway.
Pluricentrism
-
A pluricentric language is a language with several standard versions: English is
such a language. Portuguese too.
The Ausbausprache — Abstandsprache — Dachsprache framework
-
One analytical paradigm developed by linguists is known as the Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework.
It has proved popular among linguists in Continental Europe, 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.
Examples from Many Languages
-
A useful set of examples of the difficulty of distinguishing languages from dialects may be found in the article cited
above.
Dialects of English (in Great Britain)
-
Northern
- [u] butler, cut, some
- /æ/ dance, grass, path
- /u:/ cow, down
Southwestern
Welsh
Irish
- rhotic 'r'
- monophtongal articulation [e:, o:] take, home
Scottish
- rhotic 'r' articulated in all positions
- nondistinctive length lad/lard, fud/ food, cot/caught
Selected list of articles on dialects
See also
References
- ^ Oxford English dictionary
- ^ Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
- ^ Note, for example, the use of "dialect" in the following sentence from a
biographical portrait of Theodore Roosevelt (The river of doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's darkest journey (2005) by Candice
Millard, Doubleday), "... and Rondon, although he knew ten different Indian dialects..." (p. 80). A perusal of current newspaper
columns shows the same usage.
- ^ Gode, Alexander, Interlingua-English Dictionary. New York: Storm Publishers, 1951.
- ^ Morris, Alice Vanderbilt,
General report. New
York: International Auxiliary Language Association, 1945.
- ^ Gopsill, F. P., International languages: A matter for Interlingua.
Sheffield: British Interlingua Society, 1990.
- ^ Gode, Alexander, Interlingua-English Dictionary. New York: Storm Publishers, 1951.
External links
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