dialect
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈdaɪ.əˌlɛkt/
Forms: form: dialects
Etymology: From Middle French dialecte, from Latin dialectos, dialectus, from Ancient Greek διάλεκτος (diálektos, “conversation, the language of a country or a place or a nation, the local idiom which derives from a dominant language”), from διαλέγομαι (dialégomai, “I participate in a dialogue”), from διά (diá, “inter, through”) + λέγω (légō, “I speak”); by surface analysis, dia- + -lect.
Senses: examples: text: The question could be put: 'Is there anything inherent in a dialect which gives it a negative stigma or is it that the status of the majority of the speakers is transferred to the dialect?' — something that occurs in many regions in different countries.
ref: 1995, Michael [G.] Clyne, The German language in a changing Europe, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 117:
text: Comparative wordlists of two dialects of Yoruba with Igala.
ref: 2007 February 5, Roger Blench, “The Ayere and Ahan languages of Central Nigeria and their affinities”, in rogerblench.info, page 25:
text: Bloomfield, for example, noted that “local dialects are spoken by the peasants and the poorest people of the towns” (1933: 50) though he also thought that the lower middle class spoke 'sub-standard' speech.
ref: 2010, Mirjam Fried, Jan-Ola Östman, Jef Verschueren, editors, Variation and Change: Pragmatic perspectives (Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights; 6), John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, Dialect, by Ronald Macaulay, page 61:
text: Among common errors still persisting in the minds of educated people, one error which dies very hard is the theory that a dialect is an arbitrary distortion of the mother tongue, a wilful mispronunciation of the sounds, and disregard of the syntax of a standard language.
ref: 2014, Elizabeth Mary Wright (died 1958), Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
synonyms: word: patois
glosses: A lect (often a regional or minority language) as part of a group or family of languages, especially if they are viewed as a single language, or if contrasted with a standardized idiom that is considered the 'true' form of the language (for example, Bavarian as contrasted with Standard German).
examples: text: 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
ref: 1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational Grammar: A First Course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 139:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: A variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular area, community, or social group, differing from other varieties of the same language in relatively minor ways as regards grammar, phonology, and lexicon.
examples: text: Well, those children don't speak dialect, not in this school. Maybe in the public schools, but not here.
ref: 1975, H. Carl, Linguistic Perspectives on Black English, page 219:
text: […] 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."
ref: 1994, H. Nigel Thomas, Spirits in the Dark, Heinemann, page 11:
text: Many even deny it and say something like this: "No, we don't speak a dialect around here.
ref: 1967, Roger W. Shuy, Discovering American Dialects, National Council of Teachers of English, page 1:
glosses: Language that is perceived as substandard or wrong.
synonyms: vernacular
glosses: A language existing only in an oral or non-standardized form, especially a language spoken in a developing country or an isolated region.
examples: text: Home computers in the 1980s had many incompatible dialects of BASIC.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
programming
sciences
glosses: A variant of a non-standardized programming language.
examples: text: A curious question, which has as yet attracted but little attention, is whether the notes of the same species of Bird are in all countries alike. From my own observation I am inclined to think that they are not, and that there exist "dialects," so to speak, of the song.
ref: 1896, Alfred Newton, A Dictionary of Birds, page 893:
topics: biology
natural-sciences
ornithology
glosses: A variant form of the vocalizations of a bird species restricted to a certain area or population.
Hyponyms: dialect chain
dialect continuum
eye dialect
Kansai dialect
nondialect
nonstandard dialect
regional dialect
social dialect
standard dialect
subdialect
superdialect
supradialect
transdialect
Urtsun dialect
vernacular dialect
Derived terms: dialectal
dialectic
dialectical
dialecticism
dialecting
dialect island
dialectism
dialectless
dialect levelling
dialectologist
dialectology
dialectometrics
dialectometry
grapholect
interdialect
intradialect
-lect
microdialect
regionalect
Related terms: word: dialectally
word: dialectical
word: dialectician
word: dialectics
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: chronolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: cryptolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: ecolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: ethnolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: familect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: geolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: idiolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: regiolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: sociolect
sense: other lects (cp. -lect)
word: topolect
word: dialogue