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Languages without Dialects | ||
Tags: Dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4123 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 17 of 49 21 January 2015 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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From wikipedia:
A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation (including prosody, or just prosody itself), the term accent may be preferred over dialect. Vocabulary within Brazil: of course there are minor variations from state to state, but not too big to prevent comprehension. In fact, one can infer by the context those different words, so it proves that there is no significant change in vocabulary. Yes, maybe vocab changes a little bit more from PT-PT to PT-BR, but also here any half-brain Brazilian (PT-BR) IMHO can understand PT-PT. Grammar is the same. Some PT-PT structures are not used in spoken PT-BR but they are correct nonetheless So, I believe they are not dialects, just accents. To make things short, I belive that a dialect is a change within a language that prevents someone that speaks the original version to understand the speaker of that dialect, but not too big to form another language. It's something between no-dialect and new language. Minor variations IMO are just a matter of accents. But that's my way of seeing things, I'm sure you guys think differently 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4667 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 18 of 49 21 January 2015 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that practically any English speaker could understand one from anywhere else given slow enough speech and sufficient allowance for vocabulary differences, but I would never say that English has no dialects...
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| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4523 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 19 of 49 21 January 2015 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Dialects don't need to impact understanding at all as long as they are closely related (historically, these would be neighbouring dialects). And what is the "original version" of a language supposed to be? Some magical glorious standard that later fell apart into degenerated parts because of those sloppy youths who can't speak properly anymore? Even when we are speaking about proto-languages, we are talking about dialect continua, not some big homogeneous languages. Edited by daegga on 21 January 2015 at 7:21pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 49 21 January 2015 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is the question about whether there are there uniform languages/language without dialects or whether there are languages where you would be understood (at least by natives) regardless of the way you speak?
A common answer to the first question is Russian, and as for symmetric pluricentric languages (or just languages which happen to sound very different in other parts of the country) you could say English, Norwegian, Swedish... the list is long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluricentric_language Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 22 January 2015 at 12:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4101 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 21 of 49 21 January 2015 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
It seems to me like you're describing slang, not dialects, which often pre-date any standardised language (unless you're using the word dialect specifically to describe how new languages form from old languages). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gomorritis Tetraglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 4280 days ago 91 posts - 157 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Catalan, French Studies: Greek, German, Dutch | Message 22 of 49 21 January 2015 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
With these criteria I would say neither English nor Spanish nor French have dialects. Unless you for example consider Galician and Spanish dialects of the same language. But then why not add Portuguese and Catalan as more dialects of that same language? And Spanish and Galician are usually classified as different languages, even though a Spanish speaker can mostly understand Galician. So under your criteria maybe you wouldn't even classify them as different dialects, but as different accents? Edited by Gomorritis on 21 January 2015 at 10:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5061 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 23 of 49 21 January 2015 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Portuguese, no dialects? Portuguese has almost all the possible kinds of dialects, spanning the range of different
ways you can use that word! Portuguese is pluricentric--it has distinct varieties spoken in Brazil, Portugal, Africa, and Asia. Within each of the national varieties there are regional accents and different words and grammar. Some of them are distinct enough to impact comprehension, especially when considering informal language and lower-prestige accents. (though Brazilians and Portuguese have almost no trouble communicating with each other, I don't think they can always understand the speech people from the other country use among themselves. That's similar to Americans and British.) If you take all those varieties to be mere accents and require something to be more distinct before calling it a dialect, Portuguese certainly has those too! There's Riverense Portuñol in Uruguay, Mirandese in Portugal, Galician and Fala in Spain, Cape Verde Creole, Macanese Patois, and more. About the only way to claim Portuguese has no dialects, and still retain some reasonable meaning for that word, is to reserve it for situations like Arabic or Chinese where you have a standard written language and then several spoken varieties that are distinct enough to easily be separate languages, except they identify themselves in relation to the standard language instead of as separate languages. Edited by robarb on 21 January 2015 at 10:15pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| IarllTroseddwr Newbie United States Joined 3661 days ago 23 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 24 of 49 22 January 2015 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
I suppose I could have specified a bit more in my original post. I was specifically wondering about languages that do not have dialects which are (either significally or completely) mutually unintelligble. To give an idea of what I'm not looking for, here is a quote from this Wikipedia Article: Similarly, in Germany and Italy, standard German or Italian speakers have great difficulty understanding the 'dialects' from regions other than their own, but virtually all "dialect" speakers learn the standard languages in school and from the media. I'm not saying this quote is 100% true, but from what I've read, this kind of situation seems to occur fairly often. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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