What`s the difference between a dialect and a language?

How to classify a variety of speech as either a language or a dialect is one of those never-ending linguistic debates. Here I give my 2 cents, looking at 3 main criteria.

Music: "Clobber" by Silent Partner. Outro music: "Otis McMusic" by Otis McDonald.

[jhonrydc]

This is so important, especially for Filipino speakers, who've been taught that their rich regional languages are merely "dialects"

[joaofernandes]

In my opinion, Europe is very rich in dialects of a same language that got separated into different languages for political reasons. I'm giving some examples and I'd like some native speakers of these languages to comment if they disagree with me:
- Portuguese (my native language) and Galician. In this case, we have the problem that, although the dialects are mutually intelligible, we don't use the same written standard, so we say exactly the same thing, we pronounce almost the same sounds, but we write the words differently in many cases, with different letters to express the same sound.
- Asturian, leonese, mirandese;
- Catalan and valencian;
- Dutch and flemish;
- Croatian, Serbian, etc.;
- Bulgarian and Macedonian;
- Czech and Slovac.

I even heard some austrians say that their german and Germany german are different languages, so the political thing is really driving Europe crazy when actually we are not that rich in different languages, though we are very rich in regional or national dialects.

[valhar]

Those two Scottish people were incredible.


It's true, though. I lived in Manchester for a while, and I had people speak to me on the street whom I could not understand at all.

[sunriselg]

About criteria No. 2 - not all languages have writing systems.

[RodrigoDavy]

There's a very interesting case that shows this language/dialect dillema.

There's this language called Galician spoken in Galicia/Spain. This language is a very close relative to Portuguese, in fact they are both derived from the Galician-portuguese language which was spoken in the middle ages. When Portugal became a kingdom in the 13th century the two dialects started diverging. Galicia also became a part of the Kingdom of Spain later.

For many centuries, portuguese developed as a very prestigious language, while galician didn't even have a proper written form most of this time.

Fast-forward to today, after 8 centuries of differetiation they are considered different languages. The thing is they are both muttually intelligible and are in fact still very similar. To the point that as a brazilian I can read the Galician wikipédia just fine without a second thought. The only reason they aren't considered the same language, is because Galician uses the Spanish written form. But since Galician is slowly losing speakers, there's a movement to reintegrate Galician into Portuguese, and adapting Galician to the Portuguese written form.

I mentioned this because I was reading about the recent treaty to unify the portuguese language and apparently Galicia was there as an observer. To be fair, I don't think Galicians will actually reintegrate their language to portuguese. The majority of Galicians are pretty happy as long as their language is respected within Spain. But I just find this fascinating.

[Yotanido]

I'm from northern Germany. I cannot understand Swiss German or Bavarian for the life of me. However, Dutch is actually rather comprehensible to me.
As far as I know, Swiss German uses the same written language as German German. Not sure about Bavarian dialects, though.
Dutch definitely uses a different written language.

Also, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish seem to be almost the same language, but they so have a (slightly) different written language.

I don't know - I think the difference is not very clear-cut...

[kennethflorek]

From the Detroit area, I was watching a Canadian program (something about depressed commercial fishing.) For one segment recorded from a boat, they put up subtitles and reduced the volume. Initially I assumed it must be a French speaker, but the sound was still loud enough that I noticed it was English, in a very Scott sounding version. After tuning my ears to the characteristic staccato rhythm and the speed, I could make out 90% of it. I happen to love the way different English speakers sound and Scotts are an especial treat. Scotts like to fire off words like machine gun rounds and coo at the end of noteworthy phrases.

[medievalmusiclover]

Hey Langfocus! Good job! I totally agree You. A wonderful example for dialect are the hundreds of dialects that the tribes in Colombia South America they speak. I spend years studying their folk music and I learnt a lot about Dialect meaning.

[alexh]

Since no one's said it yet, the language those 2 Scottish people were speaking is not English! It is the only other living member of the Anglican family of languages. It's called Scots. Scottish accents are different. The pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary changes from Scottish accented English to Scots Lied.

[BabbelUSA]

Great video! This is a super interesting topic to explore, as a lot of people get confused by these terms. We've delved into these waters on our channel as well, and added accents into the mix too. We love all your language content and look forward to watching more!

[asmarose]

what a useful video! really, I appreciate your effort . finally, I can simply understand the difference between these two definitions. thank you from KSA

[dnitisastra]

It's like Malaysian and Indonesian language actually, when we speak we understand each other and we can understand both standardized forms of language, but it's a different languages (because the growth and development of Malay and Indonesian I think, like what you've said in your past videos) indeed. Even now I think Malay is a dialect of Indonesian or Indonesian is a dialect of Malay, CMIIW. I'm Indonesian btw

[myowncomputerstuff]

I'm surprised he didn't mention Chinese at all. Two branches of the language such as Mandarin and Cantonese obey Criterion 2 with their identical writing system and and written vocabulary, but they both differ completely when it comes to Criterion 1, since a Mandarin speaker will not be able to understand a Cantonese speaker. It's pretty wild that all these vastly different _languages_ just get clumped up into one "language" called Chinese, while there are instances like the Former Yugoslav Republics, and on a lesser scale, very similar languages like German and Luxembourgish.

[bradleyrobinson]

Miigwech, Paul. Lots of terrific information on your channel.

[ritay.]

Hey Paul, you are awesome! Keep up with the good work :)

[rendradelano]

Hahaha indeed! As an Indonesian, I think my national language (Bahasa Indonesia) and the Malaysia's counterpart (Bahasa Melayu/Malay) are two dialects of the same language, despite some differences in vocabulary due to different path during the European colonization in the region. Oh, politics!

[carschmn]

I had an elderly client who spoke Dari (he was from Afghanistan). His English wasn’t great so we hired him an interpreter. He didn’t like the interpreter because he was from the wrong ethnic group. It was very frustrating since there
aren’t a lot of dari speakers in my area.

[chinesespeakwelsh]

agreed on the scottish especially glaswegian accent. A friend of mine from Australia and I got trapped in Glasgow and we didnt understand anything there.

[batistab-ii]

It happens in Spain, Valencian and Catalan, are the same language, different dialect, only accent and a few words change. There are Valencian speakers who don't want to be associated with Catalan because of independentism issues in Catalonia. Valencians who feel more Spanish say it's different from Catalan, and Valencians who don't feel as Spanish don't mind recognising it's the same language as Catalan. That's the norm basically...

[paullobet]

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.