Talk:Variety (linguistics)

message: I merged "Lect" here. It was a stub about an apparent synonym for "language variety".
"Lect" is also a neologism.
* It is not used in the recent introductory textbook on linguistics that I read (Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use third edition, 1999).
* It is not in the reasonably good English dictionary that I have at hand (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 9th edition).
* There are no independent results for Google search "define:lect".
However, I don't have any sources in sociolinguistics. If anyone finds out that in fact a "lect" is not the same as a "language variety", please revert this merge. In that case, please add information to differentiate the terms from each other. --Hoziron 09:08, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lect 

message: "For instance English journalists or lawyers often use grammatical moods such as subjunctive mood or conditional mood, which are no longer used frequently by other speakers." Subjunctive is fairly rare, but is that really true for conditional? Ardric47 04:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Were you to ask, I'm not sure most English speakers could identify the conditional mood. Cnilep (talk) 15:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of Conditional Mood 

message: Variety (linguistics) → Lect
The word "Variety" is very ambiguous, and is often used interchangeably in linguistic circles for a dialect. While it would still be benefitial to mention that a lect may also be termed as a "variety", it is best to clarify, and use the most accurate description. Mingeyqla (talk) 13:45, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name change 

message: There is currently an external link to http://www.pojkfilmsklubben.org/cgi-bin/langtools/whichVariety.cgi which is a web widget that attempts to estimate whether a text is written in British or American English. I removed this link on 23 June, since it doesn't contain any discussion of language varieties or other information relevant to this page. It was restored by IP User:83.42.6.168 on 16 July using WP:Undo, but the user offered no explanation as to why. Can we reach consensus as to whether or not the external link belongs here? Thanks, Cnilep (talk) 22:23, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  External link 

message: Sorry, I accidentally proceeded with reverting the move without entering the reason. The bold move to "(sociolinguistics)" seems unnecessary precision. The concept (and I believe the term too) predate the field of sociolinguistics. Unless "variety" can refer to multiple things in linguistics (as is the case with "accent" and "register"), I don't think it's warranted. Nardog (talk) 13:15, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move reverted 

message: I did a search on DuckDuckGo for "lects and dialects" and came up with:
Variety (linguistics) - Wikipedia
Search domain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics)
khmer lottery, a variety, also called an isolect or lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster.This may include languages, dialects, registers, styles, or other forms of language, as well as a standard variety. The use of the word "variety" to refer to the different forms avoids the use of the term language, which many people associate only with the standard language, and the ...
It looks like somebody snuck "khmer lottery" in where it doesn't belong. I don't know what to do about it, but I thought I should report it as some kind of vandalism.
Mourningdoves (talk) 16:46, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently DuckDuckGo crawled the page in the 10-minute window between the vandalism and revert that took place a few days ago. There's nothing we can do, it'll be gone soon when the search engine caches the page again. Nardog (talk) 16:52, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Odd item in the page description 

message: These two articles should be listed and maybe also quoted from:
Gold, David L. 1981. "Lect: A New Productive Suffix and Free Form." Leuvense Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor Germaanse filologie. Vol. 70. Pp. 49-52.
Gold, David L. 1982. "More on lect." Leuvense Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor Germaanse filologie. Vol. 71. No. 4. Pp. 443-445.
In connection with Hoziron's comment above:
lect indeed means 'language variety'.
Since it predates 1981 (see Gold 1981), it is no longer a neologism.
In connection with Mingeyqla's remarks above:
Variety'and lect have become the preferred terms in objective discourse because dialect has become tainted as a result of its use as a pejorative in lay circles ("Oh, it's really not a language; it's just a dialect").
In connection with this comment: The word "Variety" is very ambiguous, and is often used interchangeably in linguistic circles for a dialect.''
Variety and lect are not synonyms of dialect. A variety or lect can be at any level: an idiolect is a lect and a language can be considered a lect.S. Valkemirer (talk) 23:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on the free form lect and the suffix -lect