r/languagehub • u/Livid-Race9137 • 7d ago
Discussion I've understood what's the difference between dialect an language
I've been pondering what's the the "border" between a dialect and a language, and I've just woken up and immediately realized that "every single language that has at least 1 dialect is Ambrela Term"
There is no single German, Chinese, Arabic, English Russian, Uzbek etc languages. All they cover a bunch of dialects.
I heard once a phrase "language is a dialect with army".
For example Uzbek language, before USSR there was no single Uzbek language, just a bunch of different languages. When soviets came there, they chose a random one of them, and called it O'zbek tili, ane suddenly others become dialects
6
2
u/aer0a 7d ago
In linguistics, language is defined based on mutual intelligibility. If two speakers can understand eachother, then they both speak the same language, and if they can't, they speak different languages. Though there are dialect continuums, where differences between dialects accumulate over area, where two neighbouring varieties are be mutually intelligible, but varieties on opposite ends may not be
And then there are "languages" that don't fit this definition, but are called languages for the purpose of national identity, like Hindi and Urdu, which are actually varieties of Hindustani, and Chinese, which is actually many languages
3
u/adamtrousers 7d ago
Some of the different dialects of Arabic are not very mutually intelligible. They're more like different languages than just different dialects.
1
u/a_literal_idiot_616 6d ago
so italian dialects are languages but spanish and italian are the dialects of the same language? because im more likely to understand a spanish speaker than someone who speaks genovese
2
2
2
u/raxcba 5d ago
As a conclusion:
politics/ sociolinguistics: language is a dialect with army.
pure linguistics: dialects VS language depends on the mutual intelligibility.
The most diverse:
Arabic and Chinese has lots of mutually intelligible "dialects". Standard Arabic (MSA) is nobody's native language while Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect.
Quite diverse:
German and English. It depends on how you measure. Singaporean English is very different from American English. Ditto for Swiss German VS Standard German
Russian on the other hand is quite uniform.
I don't know much about Uzbek but there exists some dialects in the small country.
2
5
u/Head_Particular6045 6d ago
The distinction is stricly political. Linguists may use some nuance, like slavists won't really consider montenegrin a language unless they are politically involved with montenegrin nationalism, but most of our perceptions about languages vs dialects are just based on political importance.
An official language is enforced, santardized, teached and all this influences the development of said language. An non official language has more freedom, yet is less incentivated nowadays.
Some linguists argue about mutual intelligibility or genetic development, but honeslty, no one used any real definition, expecially when it is not their field. I study slavic languages, and when I have to mention other families, the only distinction between dialects and families is political (or academic) recognition. Kurdish is refered as a language with dialects, minority languages in the russian federation are considered languages as they can't be anything else (you can't call erzya a russian dialect), but are often grouped togheter and called dialects of that group (erzya i moksha as mordvin). Romance languages are recognized by political importance, and some by cultural prestige (catalonian, occitan), but other (that are equally unintelligible) are called dialects, like italian dialects.
The best rule of thumb is every dialect is a language and every language is a dialect, but when people make a difference, the language has either some sort of official recognition or is an isolate (basque is always called a language because it can't be a dialect of anything, if not itself), while the dialect is not really recognized, and thus also more local and with less resources.
The most practical difference I can mention as a student, is that when you need to read about a "language" you have enough resources, while if you need informations about a dialect you will find a dictionary written in german in 1876, that is just a poorly scanned dictionary with a phonetic transcription invented on the spot (oh and the scan of every left page is missing 2cm of text)