Dialect
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈdaɪ.ə.ˌlɛkt/
Origin
From Middle French dialecte, from Latin dialectos, dialectus, from Ancient Greek διάλεκτος ("conversation, the language of a country or a place or a nation, the local idiom which derives from a dominant language"), from διαλÎγομαι ("I participate in a dialogue"), from διά ("inter, through") + λÎγω ("I speak").
Full definition of dialect
Noun
dialect
(plural dialects)- (linguistics) A variety of a language (specifically, often a spoken variety) that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group, often with relatively minor differences in vocabulary, style, spelling and pronunciation.
- 1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course, And in addition, many dialects of English make no morphological distinction between Adjectives and Adverbs, and thus use Adjectives in contexts where the standard language requires -ly Adverbs: compare
(81) (a) Tex talks really quickly + Adverb
(b) %Tex talks real quick + Adjective - A dialect of a language perceived as substandard or wrong.
- 1967, Roger W. Shuy, Discovering American dialects, Many even deny it and say something like this: "No, we don't speak a dialect around here.
- 1975, H. Carl, Linguistic perspectives on black English, Well, those children don't speak dialect, not in this school. Maybe in the public schools, but not here.
- 1994, H. Nigel Thomas, Spirits in the dark, ... on the second day, Miss Anderson gave the school a lecture on why it was wrong to speak dialect. She had ended by saying "Respectable people don't speak dialect."
- A regional or minority language.
- (computing, programming) A variant of a non-standardized programming language.Home computers in the 1980s had many incompatible dialects of BASIC.
Usage notes
The difference between a language and a dialect is not always clear, but it is generally considered that people who speak different dialects can understand each other, while people who speak different languages cannot. Compare species in the biological sense.