Dialect

Language

Beauty & a key to knowledge

What do we actually mean by the word dialect? Well, if you hear someone say that a person speaks with a northern dialect, they are not talking about dialect. One speaks with an accent, but one might be said to speak a dialect. The expression refers to a major subdivision of a language, but even linguists (i.e. students of linguistics) are not agreed on exactly how to use it.

Languages tend to vary somewhat over their geographical area and the local varieties can be grouped into major subdivisions, which are the geographical dialects. There is, however, a complication. There are also social differences in speech, so that two or more dialects may be spoken in the same area, especially in very hierarchical societies in which there are barriers to social contact between classes. For example, the Black English Vernacular (BEV) of the United States is a series of dialects which have evolved independently of the English used by the majority. Many black people know how to "talk white", just as people in large areas of the British Isles can speak Standard English when they need to, although they are more at ease using a local variety of English.

This means that dialect maps tend to be markedly oversimplified, generally ignoring social differences. Even so, things are not that cut and dried. Linguists are often divided over where dialect boundaries lie and whether a vernacular is a dialect of a particular language or should be regarded as an independent language.

There is a further complication in that linguists are divided over whether all major varieties of a language should be called dialects or whether the word should be reserved for varieties other than the principal form, often referred to as the standard language. Purists claim that everyone speaks a dialect and the "standard language" is just one which has acquired prestige. This has been summed up in the words quoted by Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an army and navy."

These difficulties come together in the extraordinarily complicated linguistic situation in the eastern part of Belgium, where Dutch fades gradually into Central German in an area where Standard French and the Walloon dialect are also used. The map on the next sub-page does not deal adequately with this. Even the map in the Wikipedia article on the dialects often known as Low Dietsch does not cover all the complications. The town of Eupen, which is effectively the capital of the German-speaking community in Belgium, lies west of the Benrath line and so uses a vernacular which is technically not German, but should perhaps be treated as one of the transitional dialects. The whole business is further complicated by the fact that Limburgish, spoken in an adjacent area, is sometimes regarded as a dialect of Dutch, sometimes as an independent language.

So where do I stand on all this? Well, while I follow the arguments of the purists, I take the pragmatic view that the word dialect should be used for varieties other than the principal form of a language. Moreover, I set the bar high. In England most people use a modified Standard English. Some speak with a regional accent, so use a phonetically modified SE. It is more common for there to be morphological and syntactical modification as well - morphology concerns the forms of words and syntax the structure of phrases and sentences. However, I should describe a variety of speech as a dialect only if it varies markedly from the standard language phonetically, morphologically, syntactically and lexically, that is to say, it must also have a considerable amount of vocabulary which differs from the norm.

Consider the following phrase, sometimes used to illustrate the point:

Two children playing marbles in an alleyway.

This could be spoken as it stands, but with a regional accent. That would be a phonetically modified Standard English. However, it is more likely that there would be some morphological and syntactical modifications as well, for example:

Two childer playing at marbles up an alleyway.

This would still be a modified Standard English, but imagine that there were marked lexical differences too, for example:

Twa bains laiking at taws up a ginnel.

Posted September 2011.