User:Mclarenc86/Dialect

Dialect or language[edit]

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See also: Abstand and ausbau languages and A language is a dialect with an army and navy

There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing two different languages from two dialects (i.e. varieties) of the same language. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction (dichotomy) between dialect and language is therefore subjective (arbitrary) and depends upon the user's preferred frame of reference. For example, there has been discussion about whether or not the Limón Creole English should be considered "a kind" of English or a different language. This creole is spoken in the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (Central America) by descendants of Jamaican people. The position that Costa Rican linguists support depends upon which university they represent. Another example is Scanian, which even, for a time, had its own ISO code. It is difficult to determine the differences between dialect and language, and the specific definition of dialect is sometimes debated among scholars and researchers. Dialects do not always correspond with a standard written system this is the case for most spoken dialects. For example, spoken dialects of the Arabic Language do not have their own writing system that is distinguishable from other dialects. However, these dialects are not always mutually intelligible from one another. For example, speakers of the Levantine Dialect of Arabic may have trouble understanding speakers of the Egyptian Dialect. This leads to some debate among scholars of the status of Arabic dialects as their own regionalects or their own separate languages. To classify subsets of language as dialects, linguists take into account linguistic distance.

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Linguistic Distance

Main article: Linguistic Distance

An important criterion for categorizing varieties of language is linguistic distance, for a variety to be considered a dialect, the linguistic distance between the two varieties must be low. Linguistic distance between spoken or written forms of language increases as the differences between the forms are characterized For example, two languages with completely different syntactical structures would have a high linguistic distance, while a language with very few differences from another may be considered a dialect or a sibling of that language. Linguistic distance may be used to determine language families and language siblings. For example, languages with little linguistic distance, like Dutch and German, are considered siblings. Dutch and German are siblings in the West-Germanic language group. Some language siblings are closer to each other in terms of linguistic distance than to other linguistic siblings. French and Spanish, siblings in the Romance Branch of the Indo-European group, are closer to each other than they are to any of the languages of the West-Germanic group. When languages are close in terms of linguistic distance, they resemble one another, hence why dialects are not considered linguistically distant to their parent language.

Examples[edit]

Arabic

Map of the Arabic Dialects located in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula

Main article: Arabic Language

See also: Varieties of Arabic

There are around three geographical zones in which Arabic is spoken (Jastrow 2002).

Zone I is categorized as the area in which Arabic was spoken before the rise of Islam, it is the Arabian Peninsula, excluding the areas where southern Arabian was spoken. Zone II is categorized as the areas to which Arabic speaking peoples moved as a result of the conquests of Islam. Included in zone II are the Levant, Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, and some parts of Iran. Zone III are the areas in which Arabic is spoken that are located outside the continuous Arabic Language area.

There is a large amount of documentation of the Arabic dialects of Zone II. Among these dialects are the Levant or Levantine Dialect. This includes Syrian dialect. Egyptian and Sudanese dialects are also widely spoken and studied.