Talk:Dialect

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Contents 1 Latin languages are very easy to learn by Latin language speakers 2 Frisian 3 Dialect and Sociolect 3.1 Max Weinreich 4 Italian and Spanish 5 Polysemy of 'dialect/language' 6 dialects 7 Divergence between national varieties of the same language 8 Sociolect vs. diglossia 9 "Dialect" is determined solely by geography? 10 Definition of "Dialect" 11 Siberian Wikipedia 12 topolects 13 Moldavian situation more complex than it may appear 14 Dialect continuum 15 Dialect continuum: Spanish

The author of this seems to think that non-standardness is an essential part of the definition of dialect. My understanding of the way linguists use this term is that that is not part ct".

I prefer the definitions:

"A dialect is a variety spoken by a geographically defined speech community."

"A sociolect is a variety spoken by a socially defined speech community."

-- Ruhrjung 05:35 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Dialects have not died out in France. If you click on the Occitan link you wil discover it's still widely spoken. Perhaps another country could be adduced as an example, or the statement could be clarified. Trontonian

Since it hasn't been clarified, I removed this bit: "In many countries dialects pretty much died out, for example in France, where many dialects and languages like Occitan (once a literary language) were spoken." Dialects are widespread in France, as are other languages. Breton, Basque, Alsatian, Corsican, and Flemish are widely spoken. Alsatian is often considered to be a dialect, come to think of it, and it could be argued that Flemish is one. Trontonian

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I have read that linguistics (maybe not sociolinguistics) refers to varieties of language, whose variations may be shared by members of similar class or education level (the sociolect or social dialect of above) or by members a certain region or town (the traditional dialect). The standard variety of a language is considered a dialect along with less prestigious varieties.

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Your socalled "valid" information does not help to understand the problem, it only confuses. Read the Abstandsprache, Ausbausprache, Dachsprache concept and try to understand it and you will learn that it works very well. Get aout of you language closet! (User:145.254.191.8, unsigned)

English-speaking linguists don't use those words, and they don't define 'dialect' in the way you want them to. Salsa Shark 02:31, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Search Google for ausbausprache or ausbau language in english texts and you will find they do, even if it's only a few educated linguists and not ordinary people, e.g.:

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Language.

http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/celtic/papers/wmclparl.html.

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/slals/wp6/sallabank.pdf

http://www.bib.uab.es/pub/quaderns/11385790n7p167.pdf

http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/MegaBBS/thread-view.asp?threadid=956&start=1

Nationmaster is a copy of Wikipedia contents, thus you can also quote Language (or maybe an old edit, in case that fact was deleted in the meantime). andy 11:26, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

http://www.uni-trier.de/uni/fb2/anglistik/Projekte/stubbs/german.htm indicates that Ausbausprache is a german word often used by english speaking linguists.

The dutch wikipedia site nl:Standaardtaal uses the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache/dialect-continuum-concept without naming the german terms. This concept was developped mainly to explain why Dutch and German are two different languages and why many German dialect are not, even though many German dialects differ more from standard German as the Dutch languages does. This concept today is used to solve many disputes about the question what is a "language" and what is a "dialect", e.g in the case of Scotts, Galego, the french based languages spoken on the channel-island and so on. PLEASE restrain your preconceptions against Germans and German scholarship!

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I will continue to label your work as vandalism, for the following reasons.

1. Your argumentative tone ("Dialect IS a linguistic term ...") and your use of "if only" in the last paragraph are not only unscholarly, but violate the neutral point of view espoused by Wikipedia. Such comments are fully appropriate for your own user page (of course you haven't got one - you haven't got the guts to sign in with a proper user name, so of course you haven't got a user page) but they have no place in an article. I will continue to delete such subjective arguments.

2. Your accusation that I - and others who are "watching" this article - are harbouring "preconceptions about Germans and German scholarship" proves to me that YOU are NOT a scholar. Your accusation is completely false. In a lot of ways, I consider myself to be pro-German - and I see nothing wrong with the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache concept AS A USEFUL TOOL for analyzing the dialect/language problem. However, it is NOT the only possible frame of reference. It is good - as far as it goes. Other frames of reference yield different results, however. To say that only the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache paradigm is correct is a subjective judgement, not an objective fact, and should not be presented as a fact.

3. I have read the associated articles. There is nothing wrong with the concept as an analytical tool akin to a measuring device. When you measure something, do you use inches or centimeters? They yield different results, don't they? But neither renders the other invalid. Likewise, there are a number of tools for analyzing the relationship between dialects and languages. They give different results that are not directly comparable. *That is a major part of why the distinction between a language and a dialect is a very subjective one.

As I said, the paradigm you shared has its merits. I would hope that somebody (maybe even you) will incorporate it into the article, along with the other analytical tools that are discussed. If nobody else does it, I'll do it myself when I can squeeze in the time over the next few days. (David Cannon 28 January 2004 02.30am)

Saidly enough Europeans got used to treated by the current US-administration in away, that damages almost all sober discussion (e.g. "Old Europe", "Freedom Fries"), not only on the field of politics. This administrations is backed by half of the American people and you wonder, that people don't react cool, when they see a smiling Donald Rumsfeld declaring it indisputable that Iraq has weapons of mass destructions and now nothing is found! Or mentioning Germany and Libya as the countries, who don't help in the "war against terror", without a public out cry in the USA. This kind of treating the rest of the world and broadcasting it with the global American media dominance is poisening all sober discussion. And you wonder that people suspect widespead preconceptions in the American people. People are not just machines but human being with emotions, even scholars often can't hide them. Do you think international scientific congresses are sober events? People try to restrain their emotions, but sometimes you just want to cry out and one may overreact. Please keep this in mind. It may help you to understand why "America" and more and more the English language is hated by more and more people in the world.

Now that we are done bashing Americans, could you explain how the Abstanssprache/Ausbausprache/Dachsprache categorization system applies to Chinese. Mandarin is clearly a Dachsprache, but I have no idea how say Cantonese, Min-Nan, and Shanghaiese fit into the system. -- User:Roadrunner

It only fits in this categorization because originally it was used only as a written language in a form of writing, that does not tell anything about the pronunciation. Like 2+2=4 can be unterstood by everybody, who uses western numbers, Chinese characters can be used by everybody, who ever learned them, all the same how they are pronunced. Many Japanese can read a text written in Chinese characters, without having leanred Chinese at all, only because the same characters are also used as "Kanji" in the Japanese writing system. Therefore replacing traditional Chinese writing by the much easier Pinyin system would destroy Chinese unity and Cantonese cold not be seen as a dialect of Mandarin, because it is so different, thus a Abstandsprache. Shanghaiese is not that different, it could be integrated in a system written in Pinyin, as Swiss dialects are intergrated in the Standart German system. Vietnamese adopted a latin based spelling system in order not to be incorporated into "Chinese" and Korean developes "Hangul" for the same reason. Both Vietnamese and Korean are Abstandsprachen in regard to "Chinese". The Chinese writing system in a way can work like a programming language, which can easily used by speakers of different languages.

Reading the Dutch (nl:Dialect) and German (de:Dialekt) article about dialect may be VERY helpful. With the obove mentioned concept the long lasting confict if Dutch is a German dialect was solved! [[]]

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For your information, I'm not even American - as you would know if you had bothered to check my user page. Irrelevant controversies such as the Iraq War have NO bearing on a discussion of linguistics, and give the appearance of a man grasping for straws. Stop bringing up irrelevant side-issues. (David Cannon)Davidcannon 19:21, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the rearrangment, incorporating and giving equal preference to the viewpoints of numerous contributors. Sometimes a hardy controversy may result in a better mutual understanding of different viewpoints. "The evil vandalizer"

• Thank you, too. I'm sorry I called you a vandal - I no longer think you were. Just a passionate person who got a bit carried away; I can see that I got a bit carried away, too. Yes, vigorous debates can eventually lead to a more comprehensive article, too. Again, I'm sorry I used the word "vandal" too carelessly. (David CannonDavidcannon 02:07, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC))

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Hey folks. I just wanted to point out, in this bit:

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. Taiwanese nationalists make similar claims for Taiwanese to be recognized as a language, rather than a Mandarin dialect.

This is misleading. You begin by talking about Bulgarian and Macedonian being mutually intelligible languages/dialects, and then go on to suggest that Mandarin and Taiwanese are similar. This is not correct. If anything, this parallelism could only be used to suggest the dynamic nature of the dialect/ language divide: that is, Macedonian/Bulgarian -- considered seperate languages for political reasons, in fact very closely related, and Taiwanese/Mandarin -- considered dialects for political reasons, but in fact not more closely related than French and Spanish and certainly not mutually intelligible.

Further, no one has ever suggested that Taiwanese is a dialect of Mandarin; even the very pro-Mandarin ROC government does not suggest this. Rather, it is suggested that Taiwanese (and Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka, etc) are all dialects of an overarching 'Chinese Language' with anchors in a common written form. Whether or not this is true is more a question of politics than Linguistics, of course -- as is pretty much any argument about languages and dialects, as this article demonstrates quite well.

At any rate, I would suggest that someone clarify that Mandarin is not to Taiwanese as Bulgarian is to Macedonian, which is currently being (falsely) implied.

[edit] Latin languages are very easy to learn by Latin language speakers

Only a person that isn’t a Latin speaker believes that the Latin language are the same. They are not; thought a cult Latin speaker can easily read any Latin language. In the past few days I attested that when I’ve read Occitan and another language of France (I would NOT consider it a dialect!!!) that I don’t even remember its name. I’ve never eared that language and I didn’t know its existence. Thought I could understand most of it. Why… because we all have the same origin. And because of Etymology, the written languages are similar cause they are based on Latin. We in Portugal write and speak differently. We write “ouro” (gold). Doubt we say (in my region) “ourum” (in English would sound like awooroong) though “awoouroo” is also valid, and in Spanish is “oro” (sounds like awraw) In the writen language, Ouro is very similar to Oro. But is spoken very differently. We really only use the O in the end, just because we had make it always. I thing is also almost impossible that two speakers from different Lantin languages don’t understand something of those languages. If they say that is it probably a nationalist/regional pride or lack of interest in understanding. Between Portuguese and Spanish. This is what happens:

• A Spanish speaker can easily read Portuguese
• A Portuguese speaker can easily read Spanish
• A Spanish speaker normally gets confused with the sounds of Portuguese and doesn’t understand half of the conversation. If he is smart and interested he could understand most of it, but will have difficulty to do the Portuguese sounds and use proper portuguese grammar.
• A Portuguese speaker understands Spanish. Some call it “simplified Portuguese”, or Portuguese as “complex Spanish”. Or say that Spaniards are lying when they say that don’t understand them.

Because Latin languages are so connected some stronger languages declare the others are dialects of it. And start a real dialectization of that language. Others that are the same language are declared different, by the same reason. For me a dialect is a slit different pronunciation, some different words and some small different grammatical differences. At least is what we use in Portugal, Brazil, São Tomé, Angola and others (locally speaking, we only declare Brazilian and São tomense as a variety, and this varieties and the other are composed with dialects).

Portuguese dialects are fully understandable locally and by other Portuguese-speaking country, with some rare exceptions - some say that dont understand any dialect of the other because of Pride Portugal-Brazil Angola-Mozambique (false unintelligible dialects), dought when speakers of the other dialects are put in the environment of the other, they dont say that. Others like Açoriano (Azorian) are really difficult to understand for other dialects, but it is because of the strong and different accent and not words or grammar. Portuguese dialects normally form a continuum of very small differences from the neighbour dialect, and to very different dialect. In Portugal Transmontano-Açoriano In Brazil: N ordestino-Gaúcho. The link dialects between Portugal and Brazil (form a continuum by the north of Brazil (Nortenho or Alto-Minhoto or Beirão to Nordestino) by the south of Brazil (Estremenho - Carioca) = Lisbon - Rio de JaneiroPedro 20:42, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Couldn't Spanish and Portuguese be considered a language continuum?

I think language continuum implies a smooth transition from one language to the next. This might be true in some parts of Portugal, but from what I've read and heard (I've only ever been to Brazil, and it is my second language so I can't say for sure), the northern dialects tend to show a smoother trasition to Spanish, but if you went from Lisbon to Madrid, you would find a pretty sharp line weaving in and out of the border. Pedro makes a good point that within Portuguese there are communication difficulties springing from the dialectual differences. Middle class people from Rio sometimes have a hard time understanding working class bahianos, which isn't that far off geographically. I understand that the same situation exists in the spanish speaking world. It makes me wonder about people who lump Italian, Spanish and Portuguese into one big language without considering the complexities involved. Kyle543 18:52, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Language continuum doesn't necessarily imply a smooth transition but it does imply a series of small steps from one end of the geographical area of the continuum to the other. There is a Romance continuum across southwestern Europe from northern France to southern Italy. and from western Portugal to eastern Switzerland. This doesn't imply that French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are mutually intelligible but it does imply that the people living just north of the French/Spanish border speak a Romance dialect which is mutually intelligible with the one spoken by people living just south of the border. -- Derek Ross | Talk 05:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Frisian

Would Frisian really be part of the Dutch-Low German-German continuum? As far as I have understood it, it is quite different, although it has borrwed a lot of vocabulary from these aforementioned languages..

[edit] Dialect and Sociolect

The article explicily distingiushes dialect (geographically determined) from sociolect (detmined by 'social stratum') - yet in almost the same breath defines Black American English as a dialect (rather than a sociolect). Would it not be better to allow a more general definition of dialect (eg. variety of language used by people from a particular region or a particular social background) that would allow Black American English to fit the definition?

p.s The second paragraph insists that dialect is oral and verbal. However clearly there are dialects in Deaf Sign Languages - Australian Sign Language (Auslan) has at least two.

Would regular contributors to this page like to incorporate these observations or allow me to make the neccessary changes? -- ntennis 15 Mar 2005

No offense intended, Ntennis, but I (at least) missed your comment since it wasn't added at the end of the page. Of course it could be said that I was lazy when I didn't use "Page history" to find out what you'd added, but maybe I'm not the only one.

In any case, I do disagree. I think it would be more logical to add that "strictly speaking" "Black English" is not a dialect, maybe rather a sociolect, but that it actually is a bit hard to fit into the scheme — and, of course, remove the words "or a particular social background".

 :-)

Anyway, yes you were and are allowed to make the change - obviously! But you must always be prepared on someone else being less considerate than you are. A certain amount of carelessness, ones one have made an addition, is only good for one's psychological wellbeing.

--Ruhrjung 08:25, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

I've done some changes, chiefly to avoid repetition in the introduction, but I commented out Black English at the same time. Now, littering Wikipedia with html-comments is no good practice, I know, I know, but my thought (I actually had one! :-) was that it's too commonly mentioned as an example of a non-standard language, so maybe, maybe, its return to the text can be avoided if presumtive contributors (but not readers) can see the comment.

--Johan Magnus 14:06, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Ruhrjung for pointing out that comments should be added to end of the page. I personally feel that the AAVE example illustrates the point well (though as mentioned above contradicts the stated definition of dialect). There should at least be some example here of a non-standard dialect. Maybe Schwyzerdütsch as a non-standard dialect of German? However for readers of an English-language article, I think the AAVE example will be immediately understood in relation to the prestige of standard English.

I still believe that the word dialect is commonly used to refer to the language of socially-defined speech communities as well as geographically defined ones - it's even used this way in this article! The concept of a prestige dialect ('standard dialect') used by instituions is one example, even if the AAVE example is removed. I've now come to believe that the best definition for dialect is already in the body of the article: the specific form of a language used by a speech community. (with it's own grammar, vocab etc). Other encyclopedias and online dictionaries seem to concur.Whaddyas think? (the very vernacular ntennis) 14:51, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

AAVE maybe is rather a non-standard language ? ;-)))

Any well known dialect (Texan, for instance?) would surely do as an example, don't you think?

It's for sure true that usage of terms often is indistinct in ordinary speech, and this affects Wikipedia articles too, but that is per se no reason to express a definition more vaguely.

Prestige dialects and standard dialects are geographically defined. If they are not, then one ought to find other terms for them, as for instance meso- or acrolect. (Prestige dialects aren't necessarily standarcized, but standard dialects tend to develop into prestige dialects, ahem... prestige sociolects. Yes, undoubtly, a prestige dialect must be both socially and geographically defined. Tricky, isn't it?)

--Johan Magnus 15:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Max Weinreich

Reading the article, I found the quote on a language being a dialect which owns an army attributed to Max Weinreich. I had previously seen it attributed to Hubert Lyautey and so decided to research on books and ask some professors from my Italian university. All the sources stated that the quote is indeed by Lyautey and was used by Max Weinreich in a work, being afterwards erroneously attributed to him. I am correcting both the 'dialect', 'Hubert Lyautey' and 'Max Weinreich' articles, please contact me in casa of doubts. I tryed to act as a good-wikipedian as possible, really! :) tresoldi 16:34, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Could you please provide the names of some of the sources?

Florian Laws 16:09, 12 May 2005 (CEST)

Currently the article quotes both Weinreich and Lyautey!?

--Error 21:14, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I've edited out the redundancy and added a separate article about the origin of the aphorism. One of the reasons the confusion about its authorship has arisen is the lack of care with which people have noted Weinreich's own explicit statement of not being its originator. Unsubstantiated references to other sources will, however, do little to get the discussion back onto an objective track.

Futhark 8:50, 6 Sept 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Italian and Spanish

The article says '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.'

I know that Italians can get the drift of a spanish conversation. As in, if two spaniards are talking about the weather, an italian would know that they're talking about the weather, but maybe miss alot of the details. I've heard that this is also true between the different Italian dialects or languages, (depending on how you define them). I've even had a native Serbocroatian speaker tell me in simular words that she can sort of follow Polish, and pick out quite a bit of Russian, but I wouldn't imply, in an encyclopedia, that all Slavic languages are 'supposedly separate "languages,"'.

Either way, this paragraph more or less states that Italian and Spanish are the same language, which is very POV. As far as I can tell, there is more or less a consensus that they are seperate, distinct languges. I really wouldn't call something that unconventional encyclopedic. It does make a good point however, so if no one has any objections I'll come back next week and reword it to make it a little more neutural. Kyle543 19:18, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

By all means do so. David Cannon 22:48, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you don't come back shortly, I'll be forced to delete it. At the moment it's nonsense (unless I miss something, in which case it needs correction). Lombards and Sicilians are both Italians. Something's either wrong with that sentence, or the Spanish are a pretty tricky bunch. Felix the Cassowary 1 July 2005 11:53 (UTC)

The changes made to the article make it make sense, but I suspect it says nothing now. Are Sicilian and Lombard closer than Standard Italian and Standard Spanish Spanish? Sicilians and Lombards have difficulty understanding each other (talking their native dialects). Standard Italian–speakers and Standard Spanish Spanish–speakers, it seems, have difficulty understanding each other. But is the difficulty between Standard Italian and Standard Spanish Spanish less than the difficulty between Lombard and Sicilian? Unless it is, it doesn't say anything (and should be removed because it's worse than useless). If it is, it should explicitly say so. (Even if it, I don't think it's necessarily a problem with calling Lombard and Sicilian dialects of the one language and Italian and Spanish dialects of another even by mutual-intelligibility criteria, but that's a different matter and would rely on other arguments I don't have.) ~

Yes, it IS a problem with calling Lombard and Sicilian "dialects" of Italian, a BIG one. Both Sicilian and Lombard are separate languages from Italian. Sicilian has some distinct words from Italian, and Lombard is a Gallo-Romance, not an Italo-Dalmatian language like Italian. Doesn't Ethnologue recognize these and many many other so-called "dialects of Italian" as languages in their own right???Frosty 22:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polysemy of 'dialect/language'

I think it's obvious from the discussion so far that the polysemy of 'dialect' and 'language' causes some confusion, and will certainly do so for non-specialist readers of the article. I suggest that the article should begin with a discussion of the various uses of the terms 'dialect' and 'language'. Both are defined in linguistics in terms of mutual-intelligibility, but are also commonly used in a political sense to show unity or diversity. The classic example of this is Chinese, which is described politically as one language with a number of dialects, whereas on linguistic grounds these 'dialects' would be considered distinct languages. - Dougg 04:41, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] dialects

Please add Category:Dialects to your favorite articles about dialects MPS 16:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Divergence between national varieties of the same language

I am trying to compile a table with a subjective assessment of the degree of divergence (in vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling and/or grammar) between so-called "New World" varieties of major European languages and their source languages. For each New World language, I considered 3 modalities, respectively the standard written language, the educated colloquial spoken language, and the popular (substandard) vernacular. The degree of divergence between each of the 3 modalities and the standard variety of the respective European source language was then classified as "negligible", "low", "medium", "high" or "very high" according to the criteria explained below. I call the comparison "subjective" because it is based on somewhat impressionistic criteria as opposed to hard quantitative metrics such as correlation coefficients and so on. Here is what I could come up with so far (since it is a purely subjective comparison, please feel free to disagree/criticize it).

Source Language	Regional Variants	Standard Written Language	Educated Colloquial Spoken Language	Substandard Vernacular
Portuguese	Brazil x Portugal	Low	Medium	High
English	United States x United Kingdom	Low	Low	Medium/High (*)
French	Québec x France	Negligible	Low/Medium	Medium/High (**)
Spanish	Mexico x Spain	Negligible	Low	Low
Spanish	Argentina x Spain	Low	Low/Medium	Medium/High (***)
German	Switzerland x Germany	Negligible	Very High	Very High
Dutch	South Africa x The Netherlands	Very High	Very High	Very High

(*) Includes African American vernacular English.

(**) Includes Joual.

(***) Includes Lunfardo.

Criteria for Classification:

1. Negligible: identical in both countries with the same spelling and grammar and a mostly common lexicon.
2. Low: minor differences in spelling, vocabulary and grammar; in the case of spoken varieties, pronunciation may differ greatly, but differences do not preclude mutual intelligibility.
3. Medium: broader differences in grammar and/or differences in pronunciation and/or vocabulary that might (occasionally) preclude mutual intelligibility.
4. High: major differences in grammar and/or differences in vocabulary and pronunciation that often preclude mutual intelligibility.
5. Very High: varieties under consideration are normally considered separate languages (e.g. spoken Swiss German in Switzerland versus standard German, or Afrikaans in South Africa versus standard Dutch).

PS: Switzerland of course is not a "New World" country, but it was included on the table out of linguistic relevance.

Argentina x Spain: High? I disagree. I've never heard of a single encounter where mutual intelligibility was precluded. I'm from Argentina and currently live in Spain and am in touch with the local "expat" community of all ways of life. User:Ejrrjs says What? 18:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sociolect vs. diglossia

Sociolect is stated to be distinct from dialect, yet the article mentions diglossia as concept within dialectology. Both seem to be about language varieties spoken by different social classes. Is there a contradiction or just a need for some clarification? --InfoCan 18:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Dialect" is determined solely by geography?

Can't dialect also be influenced/determined by ethnicity? For example, American Black English (aka AAE, AAVE, etc.) is a consistent variety spoken in many locations. As is Hispanic English (aka Border English, Spanglish). It seems this definition is working from the notion of a dialect developed by 19th century German linguists and drawn upon by early-mid 20th century American dialectologists. However, sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists have moved beyond this simple dialect to neatly-bounded geographical location equation.

I happen to speak English, German (also regional dialects), French, Latin and Greek (both ancient and modern) . But I have noticed that in Wikipedia, even though noone ever questions that Bavarian, Saxon and Swabian are simply dialects of the same language, even though they are not mutually intelligible, several modern Greek dialects, such as Pontic, Cypriot, Cretan, are speculated to be, not dialects, but languages, due to regional differences in their vocabulary and pronuntiation. It seems to me that this is done rather for simple political that scientific reasons, and also stated by persons who don't have a personal knowledge of the dialects, but have only heard or read about them .

[edit] Definition of "Dialect"

Unfortunately, linguists have taken the common word "dialect" with a hitherto popular meaning (deviation from a standard speech ) to apply to an entire language within a geographical area. To tell someone in Oxford speaking Oxford English that he's speaking a dialect or a German in Hannover, a Swiss in Zürich or an Austrian in Vienna is tantamount to an insult.

Wikipedia is not concieved exclusively for a segment of a population trained in a certain field like linguistics. Taking this into consideration I propose to alter the definition in the article about as follows:

A significant deviation of a language is popularly known as a dialect, for example Low German is considered a dialect of High German. Since many languages simply do not have a single standard, linguists have extended this common definition to include any language in a particular geographic area which may well contain subareas. A good example is English. This means that all Americans speak a dialect and all Englishmen also speak a dialect but a different one.

Please comment.

Cakeandicecream 11:18, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if the Greek-derived learned word "dialect" had made its way from popular usage into linguistic usage. Au contraire, surely? As for "deviation": deviation from what? And as for Americans or English people each speaking "a dialect", which one might that be? Man vyi 17:43, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Since linguists have to do with languages a "Dialect" of a language falls in their domaine. Before using such terms a definition is unavoidable. However, when a defination requires an entire article, the value of that defination is questionable. I personaly think they should look for a different term.

A "deviation" means a deviation from an accepted standard. The question is: which dialect is the standard.

Cakeandicecream 07:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Siberian Wikipedia

Editors of this article may be interested in the proposal for closing the Siberian Wikipedia, on which a vote is currently being held in Meta. Please, take the "Addressing sockpuppetry" warning into consideration. - Best regards, Evv 04:49, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] topolects

should topolects be included within this section on dialects?

top·o·lect (tŏp'ə-lĕkt') n. A set of similar dialects constituting any of the larger distinct regional varieties of a language. For example, Mandarin Chinese is a topolect that includes the dialects of Beijing and Nanjing, and is distinct from Hakka, another topolect of Chinese.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Drex44

[edit] Moldavian situation more complex than it may appear

The reality of the situation is completely avoided by the article Moldovan language, which deals almost exclusively with the official language. More details about colloquial Moldavian speech and the history of language standardisation in the area have either been deleted or moved to the separate article on the history of the aforementioned language (viz Romanizators vs Originalists).

“	Di mititei copchii întotdeauna am înşercat sî-i ajutăm pi părinţîi noştri. În ogradî, în grădinî, în casî sau pi deal, c-o furcî, c-o coasî, c-un şiocan, c-o măturî, c-un chiron, c-un hîrleţ, c-o cartoafî, c-o patlajicî, c-un teasc, mai în scurt, ca nişti copchii cum sî cadi. Încî di pi-atunşi ţîn minti cî părinţîi noştri ni prigăteu pintru zîlili şeli greli di bătrîneţî cari îi aşteptau, ş-întotdeauna ni spuneu sî şim cuminţi, sî n-ajunjim beţîvani sau lodari, ca sî aibî şini sî li aducî o canî di apî la bătrîneţi...	”
—L. Andronic, Toulouse, France, 2006

Similar examples of colloquial Moldavian speech can be found at sites such as faces.MD (roughly the Moldavian equivalent to MySpace) or certain jocular comments on jurnal.MD (some comments here for example), albeit usually without the important diacritics. This variety has many linguistic features (grammatical, syntactical, vocabulary) that are not shared with Standard Romanian, and a certain (albeit smaller) number of features which are not shared with the dialect of Romanian spoken in neighbouring areas of Romania.

Given the huge Rusophone population in Metro Chişinîu, it is not surprising that the linguistic situation in the area is very much fluid. Research does not seem to exist on the language usage of youths in the area although I have been told such research is currently in progress.

In fact, prior to Soviet control over Bessarabia, there was in fact a debate over the standardisation and valorisation of the local language, with some advocating using Standard Romanian and others advocating the usage of the local dialect with original (rather than French and Italian) words for technical terms. Although it did not succeed (with both sides being suppressed by Soviets), there was certainly a move for a Moldavian standard which would have been very different. --70.59.236.184 04:07, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dialect continuum

1) The article essentially states that there is a continuum between French and Italian. s that really so ? I.e. is the French of Fréjus mutually intelligible with the Italian of San Remo ? 2) I also removed Romanian as that language is isolated and thus obviously doesn't have a continuum with any other language. Travelbird 03:54, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure? The Romanian language article seems to suggest that speakers of Romanian are able to understand Italian to a certain degree. —Umofomia 05:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The main idea of a dialect continuum is that you have a continuous area where, when looking at local dialects there is not clear-cut line which differenciates one language from another. I.e. between Belgium and Germany the language becomes more and more German as you moved east from Brussels until you reach a point where most people would call in German proper.

Romanians may be comprehend a bit of Italian, but there is no such continuum between the two, as the two languages a seperated by Slavic languages.

Essentially it may be similar to Afrikaans and Dutch - which the two are very closely related and may even be (and were in the past) considered to be dialects of the same language, there is no dialect continuum between the two. Theew is no area "in-between" where Dutch slowly becomes Afrikaans and vice-versa. Travelbird 06:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

True... point taken. —Umofomia 06:39, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

As to the first question: In most European countries dialects are gradually falling out of use and those dialects that are still spoken are being influenced by the standard languages. Thus, many cross-border dialect continua do not exist any more (or only exist in the speech of the oldest generation of traditional dialect speakers).

Though I cannot prove it, I am sure that today the San Remo dialect of Italian would no longer be understood in Fréjus, as practically all Occitan dialects are moribund today. But a century ago, a fisherman from San Remo would have had no serious difficulties understanding the local language of Fréjus.

The same is true for the Dutch - German dialect continuum. Most dialects on the German side of the border are moribund these days. A Dutchman would still find people who understand his local dialect in, let's say Aachen, but his children or grandchildren will have to resort to one of the two standard languages or to English. Unoffensive text or character 07:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

OK. If that was that way (and would still be that way for local dialect speakers), then we indeed have a dialect continuum. Travelbird 11:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dialect continuum: Spanish

The article states that there is a dialect continuum that encompasses, among other languages, French, Occitan, Catalan and Spanish. To the best of my knowledge, there is no mutual intelligibility between any dialects of Occitan/Catalan and Spanish (Castellano). Furthermore, there is a sharp line separating Portuguese from Spanish. There may be a sort of continuum in the North (Castellano - Asturo-Leones - Gallego - Portuguese), but I am not sure about it. Unoffensive text or character 11:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)