dialect

Language

2022

We explain what a dialect is, its relationship with geography, characteristics, types and examples. Also, differences with a language.

Speakers of different dialects of the same language can understand each other.

What is a dialect?

In linguistics, the word dialect is used to refer to the different variants of the same language, especially geographic or regional variants.

Put more simply, a dialect is a form of materialization of a language, that is, a specific way of speaking the same idiom, which is shared by a community of speakers (one town, a region, a country, a continent, depending on how wide the perspective is) and that it is distinguished from other forms of speech typical of other regions or other groups.

For example: the Spanish language is spoken in Spain in a certain way, more or less homogeneous, and in America otherwise, more or less homogeneous. From this distinction we could speak of the peninsular dialect of Spanish and the American dialect. The differences between one and the other can be as specific as that in the first the word you is used for the second plural and informal person, while in the second it is preferred to use you.

Dialects are always part of the same language, and it is incorrect to classify a language that has few speakers as a dialect. Languages ​​have an independent history (although they always have bridges and connections with other languages), their own rules and a particular logic.

On the contrary, dialects are variations or, if you will, distortions of the ideal norm of a language. Thus, for example, the aboriginal languages ​​of the peoples colonized by Europe in America, Africa and Asia are just that: languages, their own languages, and not dialects.

This difference is important, but like many things about language, it depends largely on your point of view. Nowadays, no one would think of cataloging Spanish, French, Catalan, Italian and other Romance languages ​​as something other than their own and autonomous languages, but if we adopt a historical perspective, we will conclude that they are nothing more than dialects of Latin, the language of the ancient Roman Empire, long dead.

Therefore, dialects can be considered as mere regional variants of the same language, although there is always the possibility that, over the centuries, they end up becoming different languages. Instead, to refer to modes of speaks of a social class or a smaller group within the same speech community, the terms slang, jargon or sociolect are usually used.

Dialect characteristics

Dialects, in general, are characterized by the following:

  • They are common forms or tendencies of the speech of the same language, belonging to different communities and generally geographically distant.
  • They can contain sub-dialects or more particular dialect forms at the same time, when there are smaller speaking communities within the same geographic region, for example.
  • They are generally mutually intelligible, without the need for a learning or prior study, that is to say: a speaker of one dialect (American Spanish) and a speaker of another (Peninsular Spanish) can understand each other without much effort, despite the fact that there are more or less significant variations in the words they use. They must also have the same way of writing.
  • They can differ substantially from each other, both in the pronunciation of certain phonemes, in the meaning of certain words (lexicon), in the general intonation of the prayer (the "accent" or the "tune"), or even in the syntactic tendency.

Types of dialects

The dialects do not have a universal formal classification, however, it is common to distinguish between the prestigious varieties (educated norm) and the popular variants. This distinction is not due to linguistic, but political and cultural reasons:

  • The prestige variants are usually those of the capitals of the countries, the richest regions or the traditions aristocratic.
  • Popular variants are usually associated with the vulgar, the popular or lower classes, or rural regions.

Examples of dialects

Some examples of dialects are as follows:

The immense variety of American dialects of Spanish, which can roughly be grouped into certain very general trends, including:

  • Andean dialect, spoken in the regions of the Mountain range from Los Andes in South America.
  • Rio de la Plata dialect, spoken in the Rio de la Plata regions of Argentina and Uruguay.
  • Caribbean dialect, generally spoken by the nations insular areas of the Caribbean Sea and by the coastal regions of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica.
  • Peruvian riverside dialect, spoken on the Pacific coast of Peru.
  • Chilean dialect, obviously spoken in Chile.
  • Central American dialect, which occupies the old region mesoamerican and its adjacencies.
  • Northern Mexican dialect, typical of the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Baja California Sur and Baja California.

The Hispanic dialects of peninsular Spanish, typical of the regions of Spain, among which are:

  • Castilian dialect, also called northern, spoken in the region of Castilla.
  • Aragonese dialect, spoken in Aragon, but not to be confused with the Aragonese language.
  • Riojan dialect, spoken in the La Rioja region, but different from the Navarrese language.
  • Leonese dialect, spoken in the Leonese region, but different from the Asturleonian language.
  • Canarian dialect, typical of the Canary Islands.
  • Andalusian dialect, spoken in the region of Andalusia and with a very particular and recognizable intonation.
  • Madrid dialect, typical of the metropolitan regions of the Spanish capital.
  • Manchego dialect, typical of the Spanish region of La Mancha.

The dialects of Mandarin Chinese, one of the languages ​​spoken in China and the one we usually see when foreigners learn Chinese. Mandarin has enormous phonological and tonal variation, classifiable into the following five variants:

  • Standard dialect of Beijing, which serves as a cultured norm when speaking Mandarin Chinese.
  • Yángzhou dialect, typical of the southeastern regions of China.
  • Xi’an dialect, typical of the Chinese northeast regions.
  • Chéngdu dialect, typical of the southwestern regions of China.
  • Língbao dialect, typical of the central regions of China.

Dialect and language

The linguistic difference between a language and its dialects is that between a mental ideal and its concrete physical manifestations. That is to say: language is a social entity, a mental abstraction that is made up of a logic and a set of grammatical norms, that is, a way of representing language. reality.

On the contrary, a dialect is a materialization of these abstract ideals, a specific way of carrying them out in real life, that is, a way of speaking.

Seen this way, we all speak a dialect and not a language, that is, we share with all Spanish speakers the same abstract system of representation and the same set of grammatical rules in broad strokes, but with that system we produce particular concrete variants, different forms to speak the same language, depending on where we have learned it.

The tendency, for political and social reasons, is to think that the educated norm (that is, the variant of prestige) of the way of speaking of a country is formally equivalent to the language, that is, it corresponds to the ideal established by the norms from language.

However, that is not true: if we compare the speech of the capitals of each Spanish-speaking nation from Buenos Aires to Mexico City, through Bogotá and Madrid, we will see that they are radically different dialect forms, despite being part of the family tree. from Spanish.

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