What exactly constitutes a language? Or a dialect, for that matter? From my own observations, most people have only a vague impression of the distinction between a language and a dialect. In this entry, I shall attempt to pen out my thoughts and thereby offer you a fresh perspective, of which you have been deprived as a result of the lack of attention this topic has been given. Just to be clear, I shall be approaching this topic purely from a linguistic point of view, insofar as my own definitions are concerned, and thus shall disclaim any responsibility over any sensitive political issues I might unintentionally tread upon.
Before we can take our own stands regarding language/dialect-pairs that lie in gray areas, let us first have a sense of what is an actual dialect and what are, in fact, two distinct languages.
Take for example, English and Chinese, two extremely influential languages in today’s context. While the former is used extensively in most parts of the world, the latter remains largely confined to the borders of China. Everyone who has at least seen both of these languages at some point of their lives would point out that these are two very distinct languages, without much hesitation. However, when asked why, most people will, and can, only point out that the main reason they thought as such was because of the different scripts these languages use. But what about other elements and distinctions? Compare the two sentences below.
A native speaker of English would say, “Let me get my jacket first.”
A native speaker of Mandarin Chinese would say, “让我先去取我的外套。”
What the Chinese speaker is essentially saying is “Let me first get my jacket.” Notice that apart from the differences in the choice of script, there exists also a difference in syntax (sentence structure), whereby the position of the adverbial of time varies by language. Of course, another difference between these two languages would be that while Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, English is not. A tonal language is a language wherein the meanings of spoken words change when the speaker changes his or her tone.
Although this is not common in most European languages, it is a norm for most East Asian languages, such as Mandarin and Vietnamese. Perhaps the most famous example would be the Chinese word ma, which can mean either mā (mother) or mǎ (horse). This can be the Achilles’ heel of language learners who dare take on the challenge of learning East Asian languages, as tones are a foreign aspect of language to them.
Now that we’ve got the idea of distinct languages settled, let’s move on to actual dialects (linguistically speaking, of course).
The English language is without doubt the lingua franca of today, having quite a number of variations across the globe. Apart from the more well-known American English and British English variations, there are also many other variants, such as Australian English etc. Although these variations or dialects may differ in the pronunciation and spelling of certain words, they are largely mutually intelligible, meaning that people who speak different variants can indeed understand each other most of the time. I shall elucidate the topic of mutual intelligibility in the next entry. For now, let us first have a look at the differences in spelling, which occur more frequently between American English and British English.
Compare the following words.
American English: color, flavor, offense, liter, sizable
British English: colour, flavour, offence, litre, sizeable
Having been brought up in a country where British English was the standard, some American variants do puzzle (and even irk) me, as if the words were spelt (or spelled) wrongly somehow. Nevertheless, any English speaker would be able to understand these words despite the subtle changes in spelling. Hence, even if words are spelt slightly differently in different dialects, they can still be considered to be of the same language.
Another difference would be the pronunciation of the words, albeit a difference due to various accents.
Although this can be a concern for non-native speakers of the English language, it usually poses no problems to most native speakers even across different countries. Besides, written communication will almost always serve as a viable alternative.
Finally, speakers of different variants of English might use different words when referring to the same thing. Compare the following.
American English: mad, apartment, fall, elevator, gas
British English: angry, flat, autumn, lift, petrol
We can see that though different words are used in each variant, English speakers can, to a large extent, guess the meaning of the words based on context. Hence, American English and British English can be considered dialects as there is a large degree of mutual intelligibility despite differences in word choice.
I conclude this entry with a Youtube video regarding the history of the English language that some of you might find interesting. I shall focus on Mandarin-Cantonese and Scandinavian language pairs in my next post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfKhlJIAhew
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