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Dialect[i] refers to two distinctly different types of linguistic relationships. The more common usage of the term in English refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. [2] The dialects or varieties of a particular language are closely related and, despite their differences, are ...
The major native dialects of English are often divided by linguists into three general categories: the British Isles dialects, those of North America, and those of Australasia. [2] Dialects can be associated not only with place but also with particular social groups. Within a given English-speaking country, there is a form of the language ...
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. [1] This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 5 September 2024. Group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor 2005 map of the contemporary distribution of the world's primary language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The ...
In terms of mutual intelligibility, a survey in 1967 found the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tohoku dialects) to students from Greater Tokyo are the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in the mountains of Okayama Prefecture). [8]
French is an administrative language and is commonly but unofficially used in the Maghreb states, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.As of 2023, an estimated 350 million African people spread across 34 African countries can speak French either as a first or second language, mostly as a secondary language, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world. [2]
This is first of all due to the question of defining "language" vs. "dialect". Identification of varieties as a single language or as distinct languages is often based on ethnic, cultural, or political considerations rather than mutual intelligibility. The second difficulty is multilingualism, complicating the definition of "native language".
Dialectology (from Greek διάλεκτος, dialektos, "talk, dialect"; and -λογία, -logia) is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. In the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now considered a sub-field of sociolinguistics. [1] It studies variations in language based primarily on ...