In this video I have elaborated difference between language and dialect. It is very complex in linguistics to draw a clear cut distinction between language and dialect. Dialects are actually verities of the same language with distinguishable vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Different scholar and linguist often use two criterions to draw a distinction between language and dialect. These two criterion are;
1. Criteria of mutual intelligibility
2. Criteria of written form
The first criterion I have discussed is of mutual intelligibility. If two people speak differently, then, there are really only two possibilities.
They are not able to understand each other, in which case they can be said to speak different languages. They do understand each other, in which case they must be speaking different dialects of the same language.
One common problem is that dialects belonging to the same language are not always mutually intelligible (dialect continuum). E.g north vs. south American regional dialect. The other problem is that sometime two different languages are mutually intelligible as Hindi and Urdu. The solution to this problem is that speaker of same language share common written form if they are speaking different dialects, they must have same written form and vice versa.
In the end I have concluded that we can say that a language is group of dialects; to speak language is to speak dialect of that language. Language is a dialect with army and navy. Language is federal government and dialects are provisional governments.
#sociolinguistics
#dialect
#linguistics
11 окт 2024
