:Can't we move on from this point?  It is clearly a dialect, as that word is used in English.  Indeed, "falares" and "dialetos" both translate as dialect in English, we simply don't make a distinction between these minor variations, so where Câmara said that the minor variations are called "falares" which are grouped into "dialetos" ("As oposições superficiais, ou secundárias, criam dentro de uma língua as divisões chamadas falares, que por sua vez são agrupáveis em dialetos"), we would struggle to translate it into English and it would probably be rendered as "... the divisions called sub-dialects, which in turn are grouped into dialects", but I just made up "sub-dialect"!  The only word I could think of in English that might approximate to something less than a dialect is "patois", but this word sometimes carries troubling social connotations similar to dialeto in Portuguese. 

 :Further, the section you quote from dialect has been revised: One usage—the more common among linguists—refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.[1] 

 :So, by both standards (normal English usage and as used by linguists), Mineiro is a dialect of Portuguese.  Further, that is how it is referred to in the Portuguese language Wikipedia (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialeto_mineiro).  And the reason I want to move on from this is so we can make it generally better.