Languages vs. Dialects

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vince from Dallas.

Hey, Vince.

Hey, what’s up?

How y’all doing?

Good enough. Good enough. You?

Doing well.

Well, I had this roommate who was Chinese, and, you know, I’d always hear him talking on the phone with his mom, and, you know, they spoke Mandarin.

And I also had this guy that lived across the hall from us. He spoke Cantonese.

When they spoke to each other, you know, they spoke in English.

So I was, you know, I have different people about that, and, you know, they’re saying it’s different dialects of Chinese or whatever. So what’s the difference between a dialect and like a completely different language?

When we talk about Chinese, it’s actually kind of a mistake. We talk about it as if it’s one language. And really what you’ve got is a lot of languages and dialects in the same geographic region, some which are completely not mutually intelligible. They just do not, speakers of them do not understand each other.

And others where there’s some mutual intelligibility because they’re adjacent to each other and they haven’t changed that much over time. But they share a writing system. The writing system was kind of foisted upon these languages throughout the country. So even languages that aren’t all that well suited to the Chinese script use it.

And this is the problem when we talk about Chinese dialects. Some of them are utterly different. They’re systematically, syntactically, morphologically different. And some of them are very similar. They’ll have 30%, 40% shared vocabulary, same kind of syntax, da-da-da-da-da.

And that would explain why your friend and the guy across the hall didn’t understand each other.

Oh, wait. Okay.

So here’s where we get into the explanation of dialects versus languages. A language, well, there’s the old joke, which we have to talk about. Max Weinreich said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

So a lot of the reason that a language is called a language is because it belongs, it is officially endorsed by government or the organized body that runs a country. And so it has nationalism at the base of it. It has geopolitical power or boundaries to it.

And it’s things that have nothing whatsoever to do with linguistics. It’s about the social forces which promote that particular variety, which might be a better term than dialect, promote that language variety to the fore so that it’s taught in the schools, used in government discourse, in the government papers.

And that’s what makes it a language. The language is in many ways a political term and not so much a linguistic term or a technical term.

Yeah. I mean, think about English. You have American English, Australian English, Irish English. And yet some people might argue that English is really just a dialect of German.

Right. And maybe it’s just kind of got too big for its britches because it now belongs to these other countries.

A really big dialect.

And so a lot of it is about your perspective. It’s kind of like talking about when does the day end and the night begin?

You know, what does dusk look like?

I mean, dusk is indefinable.

I can’t really put the, I know that I’m in the middle of dusk, but I couldn’t tell you when it started or when it ended.

Is it when the stars come out that it ends?

Or does it begin when the sun goes below the horizon?

It’s kind of hard to say.

Languages, so a language versus dialect.

What is the great age?

How much intelligibility does there need to be between two varieties so that they can be called dialects?

And if they are dialects, which one’s the superior dialect?

Which one is the parent?

What do you think about that?

That’s a lot more thorough explanation than I’ve ever been given.

Let me recommend a resource to you that will explain this in kind of academic terms,

But you seem like you probably get it.

There’s this website we refer to often on the show called Language Log.

It’s where a lot of really top linguists from around the world contribute their thoughts

On current language development and current study that they’re doing and their peers are doing.

And there’s a fellow by the name of Victor Mayr, M-A-I-R, who is perfectly,

He studies, he knows a great deal about Asian languages and about English,

And even thinks some German.

And he often writes on LanguageLong about these very issues,

About the politics of Chinese and the way Chinese people speak English

And English people speak Chinese and translating back and forth

And the different kind of problems that you encounter.

Look for his name, Victor Mair, M-A-I-R, on LanguageLong,

And just kind of browse his post on Chinese,

And I think you’ll really start to understand some of what we were talking about here today.

Thank you all so much. You all did a great job.

Our pleasure, Vince.

Thank you for a really interesting question.

Yeah, it’s a great question.

I mean, the answers only come when somebody asks us something really kind of revealing about language as a whole.

Say hi to your roommate.

Okay.

All right, take care.

I will.

Thanks, Vince.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye.

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