the difference between dialect, accent and style.
Answers
Answer:
The most popular description of the difference between languages and dialects comes from the Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich, who allegedly heard it from an audience member during a lecture he was giving: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” While this is primarily a catchy, funny phrase, it does sort of get to the difference between languages and dialects. The decision for something to be called a language is tied up with how countries identify their boundaries, how many people speak the language and other political considerations.
“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”
There’s not really a scientific way to split languages apart from each other. You can say that Japanese and Swedish are clearly different languages, but some languages are very similar. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are all very close, to the point where they’re pretty much mutually intelligible. The dialects of Chinese, on the other hand, are not all mutually intelligible, but they haven’t earned the title of language. Really, there’s no exact difference between languages and dialects. In some writing, you might see that people say dialects are just spoken, whereas languages include both written and spoken aspects, but for linguists, they’re pretty much the same. Languages are just self-important dialects
Answer:
Explanation:
The most popular description of the difference between languages and dialects comes from the Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich, who allegedly heard it from an audience member during a lecture he was giving: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” While this is primarily a catchy, funny phrase, it does sort of get to the difference between languages and dialects. The decision for something to be called a language is tied up with how countries identify their boundaries, how many people speak the language and other political considerations.
“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”
There’s not really a scientific way to split languages apart from each other. You can say that Japanese and Swedish are clearly different languages, but some languages are very similar. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are all very close, to the point where they’re pretty much mutually intelligible. The dialects of Chinese, on the other hand, are not all mutually intelligible, but they haven’t earned the title of language. Really, there’s no exact difference between languages and dialects. In some writing, you might see that people say dialects are just spoken, whereas languages include both written and spoken aspects, but for linguists, they’re pretty much the same. Languages are just self-important dialects.
It’s worth knocking out one pervasive myth about languages and dialects. What you’ll most commonly see is that a “language” is considered the ideal form of a way to talk, like Standard English, and a “dialect” is a deviation away from this ideal, like Black English or Southern English. This imposes a hierarchy on language that is, frankly, elitist. It’s better to imagine language as an umbrella category for all of the dialects of English, including Standard English. There is no one dialect that is superior to any other.