Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

My suggestion here, in this topic, revolves around the difference between a dialect and a language. And in the past, one standard that has been used is mutual intelligibility. But other professional linguists have found this fixed, binary, distinction to be impractical; it doesn't work very well in the real world. Other solutions are less well received/used. But there are other such ideas around. Mutual intelligibility is not the only standard used or recommended by linguists...

[Sy Borg]

6 shillings and 8 pence ... what could possibly be more intuitive? :)

[Mounce574]

I think that British-English and American-English are differences in dialect.
For example- Southern states, the people tend to have drawl or pronounce the same word differently. I say the word crayon where it sounds somewhat like crowns; something my friend from Michigan used to think was odd since she said it is cray-ons.
When I read some of James Herriot's books (He is an English Veterinarian and author) he addressed this dialect as well. People that lived in one area spoke in a manner he sometimes had issues understanding them.
Australian's speak English but in a more expressive manner. Canadians also speak English differently.
The common denominator in all 4 is that the alphabet is still the same 26 individual letters.
A question I would have for linguists is how do they know they are right in their interpretation of language?

[Lagayascienza]

Yes, American and British are not different languages. That's untenable by any measure. They are just different accents, or at a push, different dialects. The term "dialect" is usually used by linguists to refer to a particular variant of a language, particularly the spoken form of a particular variant.

It is one thing to assert that there are distinctions other than the commonly used "mutual intelligibility" criterion. It's another to say what those distinctions are so that we can assess their viability.

Mutual intelligibility has been shown to correlate well with counts of cognates on standardized word lists. It is the most often used, the most useful and the only really practical distinction between the concepts of "dialect" and "language".

[Pattern-chaser]

A question I would have for linguists is how do they know they are right in their interpretation of language?

They don't, of course.

[Lagayascienza]

A question I would have for linguists is how do they know they are right in their interpretation of language?

Well, unless you are a trained in the science of linguistics, or at least and avid lay reader of linguistics journals, you wouldn't have much of an idea whether they were right or not. But that's ok, we can't be abreast of all of science and so, in lots of things, we have to trust the experts. Some will have opinions, but lay people who are interested in the facts, or, at least, what is more likely to be true than Joe Blog's opinion, will do best to listen to the experts. To linguists.

You want to know if that mole is skin cancer? Go see an expert - a medical doctor. Want to know whether Transformational Generative Grammar and Deep Structure are still in the game? Or whether American and Australian English are separate languages, ask a linguist. People can have pompous, superior notions about the "mother-tongue". They are simply wrong.

[Sy Borg]

Mutual intelligibility has been shown to correlate well with counts of cognates on standardized word lists. It is the most often used, the most useful and the only really practical distinction between the concepts of "dialect" and "language".

Nah, Scottish is a whole other language ;)

[Lagayascienza]

Definitely a strongly differentiated dialect in it's spoken form. I hardly understand any of it.

[Sy Borg]

"strongly differentiated dialect" ... a less enlightened soul might say that she was babbling almost unintelligibly ;) I say "almost" because some keen-eared character on YT comments provided a translation, a feat of which I am in awe.

[Pattern-chaser]

The word language describes a body of words and the systems we apply to those words, such as grammar and spelling, in order to communicate with each other. A language includes the spoken, written, and signed forms of the words and systems. Some examples of languages include English, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Hindi.

The word dialect describes a particular variety of a language. A dialect often follows most of the rules of its respective language, but it may have different vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciations. Most dialects are recognized by their usage in a specific geographic area, but dialects may be determined by other criteria such as social class. Some examples of dialects include Australian English, Chilean Spanish, Egyptian Arabic, and Jamaican Patois.

The word language is more general, while the word dialect is used to refer specifically to a particular variant of one language. Additionally, a language includes the written form of communication, while the word dialect is often used specifically to refer only to a spoken variety of a language. The many dialects of English, for example, all use the same Latin alphabet but will often sound very different from each other when spoken aloud.

American is a spoken and written derivative of English...?



...and many other commentators describe the differences between language and dialect as sociopolitical rather than purely linguistic. Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are mutually intelligible, but usually considered to be separate languages, while many "dialects" of Chinese are not mutually intelligible, but called "dialects" anyway.

[Lagayascienza]

It is true that some people do approach language from an unscientific point of view. They may think, perhaps due to notions of cultural superiority, that there are “right” or “correct” forms of a language. For example, I’ve had Brits tell me that our language down here in Oz is not “real” English because it is not “the Queens English” when, in fact, they themselves speak nothing like the Queen. They don’t even speak in RP (received pronunciation). The British person casting the aspersion only thinks he/she does. Ya haft’a laugh. Which people do when this sort of thing happens down at the pub.

The fact is that there is more variation in the way English is spoken within Britain, and even within London, than across all of America and Australia. And, yet, we all of us, Brits and "colonials" alike, speak the same language - English. I can be understood in all anglophone countries and might only occasionally have minor difficulty with comprehension where an accent is very strong, for example in parts of Scotland where a strong brogue is spoken. And, occasionally, there will also be a few lexical differences but one can usually guess meaning by the context in which an unfamiliar lexical items occur. We are still speaking the same language - slight differences in the spoken form of the variants do not mean that we are speaking separate languages.

If one wants to know the difference between an accent, a dialect, a pidgin (or Creole) and a language, then the best thing to so is to ask a language scientist – a linguist - who will be able to provide answers based on research, and without pandering to unfounded cultural conceits like “the mother tongue” or the "correct" form.

Like most things human, language varies. And like most variations, accents, dialects and languages vary along a continuum. A variant can eventually diverge so much in terms of its pronunciation, lexicon and grammar, that it becomes incomprehensible, in both its spoken and written forms, to speakers of the original language(s) from which it evolved. For example, various pidgins and creoles have evolved, by an admixture of English and Indigenous languages, in places like Papua New Guinea and some Melanesian Island countries. English speakers from Britain or Australia won’t understand these unless they have learned, as a second language, the pidgin/creole which is now spoken as a first language by the inhabitants of these places. These are well on the way to becoming, if they are not already, separate languages.

It is only when this sort of evolution has occurred that we can meaningfully start to talk about a different language having evolved. The English spoken in Britain, North America, Australia, New Zealand and in parts of southern Africa is still, unquestionably, one language.

Unless they are dead languages, all languages evolve. Usage determines form and living languages refuse to be policed. The French have tried this, but without success. They have been forced to accept words such as “weekend”, and many others, into their dictionaries just as Old English had to change after the Norman invasions. Again, the only languages that do not evolve are dead languages, just as the only species which have stopped evolving are extinct species.

There is no single “right” form of French or of English or of any other living language. And whilst variants remain for the most part mutually intelligible to other speakers of a language, they are regarded by linguists to remain variants of the one language. When that is no longer the case, they have become separate languages, but this will invariably involve not just changes to pronunciation but also to lexicon, grammar and phonology. American and Australian are by no means at that stage yet and, with globalization and the growth of the Americanized Anglosphere, it is more likely that British English will change more than will American English. That's life.