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The other end of the "dialect" spectrum | ||
Tags: Dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Kannan Bilingual Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6148 days ago 13 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English*, Malayalam* Studies: Tamil | Message 1 of 10 06 May 2011 at 12:46pm | IP Logged |
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I have come across quite a few discussions about the point at which a "dialect" becomes
a "language", but I'm curious about the other extreme. That is, at what point does it stop being "just an accent and some odd vocabulary" and become a fully-fledged dialect? Would there have to be quite a lot of nonstandard vocabulary, or significant grammatical differences? In Malayalam, which is my native(ish) language, I'm not sure if there are many major (i.e. spoken by more than a few tribesmen in the woods somewhere...), strongly differentiated dialects. There are pronunciation differences, most of which are pretty systematic and can be worked out (and imitated) quite easily by a speaker of the "standard" language, at least these days due to media exposure. There will of course be a few (not very many, really) unfamiliar words, but they're usually easy enough to understand in context. The best candidates for actual dialects usually have something to do with religion - Muslims in North Kerala (although again, I can't really think of any real grammatical differences), and Tamil Brahmins living in Kerala (they sometimes speak Tamil-ised Malayalam or a mixture of the two, naturally enough), and apparently there is a Jewish dialect as well, although I've never heard anyone speak it. However, even these can hardly be compared to, say, German dialects, or even some dialects of English, because the grammar is just too close to that of standard Malayalam. Edited by Kannan on 06 May 2011 at 12:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 10 06 May 2011 at 1:32pm | IP Logged |
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IMHO, the old adage A language is a dialect with an army and navy still holds true.
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| Kannan Bilingual Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6148 days ago 13 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English*, Malayalam* Studies: Tamil | Message 3 of 10 06 May 2011 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
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That's not what I meant. I was asking at what point does something become a distinct
"dialect" rather than "just an accent and a few strange words."? For example, most people these days wouldn't consider Kentish a dialect of English - there's an accent (usually not that different from Estuary English or RP) and maybe a few old-fashioned local words. On the other hand, Yorkshire English (or at least some, more rural, varieties of it) is usually considered a distinct dialect. Where do you draw the line? The line between dialects and languages is a different issue -that's the other end of the spectrum to which I was referring. I'm talking about language varieties that barely even qualify as dialects here. Edited by Kannan on 06 May 2011 at 1:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 10 06 May 2011 at 5:39pm | IP Logged |
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The usage of the term dialect is quite arbitrary. Every single variant of a language can be considered a dialect, even
varieties that are quite close to the written standard (such as RP and General American). The division of a language into dialects is arbitrary too. In one context it can make sense to talk about Andalusian as a dialect, in another it can make sense to distinguish between Sevilla dialect and Córdoba dialect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 10 06 May 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged |
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"Dialect" is always a subjective term, but it's generally that there have to be grammatical differences, not just differences in accent and vocabulary, for something to qualify as a dialect.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 10 06 May 2011 at 11:56pm | IP Logged |
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There is no clear line between languages and dialects, but as Cainntear I would expect to see some grammatical differences and some systematic sound shifts, - not just an accent and a few local words.
For instance the Nordic languages are notorious for having postpositioned articles, but most Jutish dialects don't have them - instead of "huset" (the house) they have "æ hus" or "a hus". This is a fundamental difference in any sense of the word. Danish is also notorious for its "stød", mostly defined as a glottal stop, but more like a weak glottal stop plus an extra strong stress. However there is no stress in "Lollandish". The interesting thing is that you can find every imaginable step between these dialects and standard Danish, even as deliberate codeshifts in the speech of a single person. The only way to make sense of this is to look at the extremes rather than getting lost in the swamps in between. Edited by Iversen on 07 May 2011 at 12:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cntrational Triglot Groupie India Joined 5127 days ago 49 posts - 66 votes Speaks: Hindi, Telugu, English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 10 07 May 2011 at 5:34am | IP Logged |
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It's socio-politics that determines what are accents, dialects, and languages. I doubt you can find an objective standard. Edited by cntrational on 07 May 2011 at 5:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 10 07 May 2011 at 9:38am | IP Logged |
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In my daily usage of the word (i.e. when not talking about Chinese or similar controversial topics), the word "dialect"
means "accent and maybe some odd vocabulary". In Sweden we talk about a Stockholm dialect (actually several), a Gothenburg dialect etc. and don't differentiate them from what one might call a Stockholm or Gothenburg "accent". We tend to use the actual word "accent" only to denote foreign accents. Now that I think of it, we tend to use two words when we talk about it in Swedish. One is "dialekt", which maps handily to the English "dialect". The other is "brytning", which literally means "break" (like "He breaks in Spanish" = "He has a Spanish accent"). This word is exclusively used to talk about foriegn accents. When I talk English, I think I tend to map this to the word "accent". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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