Mutual intelligibility
Mutual intelligibility
Some have attempted to distinguish dialects from languages by saying that dialects of the same language are understandable to each other. The untenable nature of blunt application of this criterion is demonstrated by the case of Italian and Spanish cited above. While some native speakers of the two may on occasion enjoy some limited mutual understanding, few people would want to classify Italian and Spanish as dialects of the same language in any sense other than historical. Spanish and Italian are similar, but phonology, syntax, morphology, and lexicon are sufficiently distinct that the two cannot be considered dialects of the same language.
[ Diglossia
: Diglossia
Another problem occurs in the case of diglossia, used to describe a situation in which, in a given society, there are two closely-related languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. An example of this is Sanskrit, which was considered the proper way to speak in northern India, but only accessible by the upper class, and Prakrit which was the common (and informal or vernacular) speech at the time.
Varying degrees of diglossia are still common in many societies around the world.
[ Dialect continuum
: Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum is a network of dialects in which geographically adjacent dialects are mutually comprehensible, but with comprehensibility steadily decreasing as distance between the dialects increases. An example is the Dutch-German dialect continuum, a vast network of dialects with two recognized literary standards. Although mutual intelligibility between standard Dutch and standard German is very limited, a chain of dialects connects them. Due to several centuries of influence by standard languages (especially in Northern Germany, where even today the original dialects struggle to survive) there are now many breaks in intelligibility between geographically adjacent dialects along the continuum, but in the past these breaks were virtually nonexistent.
The Romance languages—Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan/Provençal, French, Sardinian, Romanian, Romansh, Friulan, other Italian, French, and Ibero-Romance dialects, and others—form another well-known continuum, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
In both areas - the Germanic linguistic continuum, the Romance linguistic continuum - the relational notion of the term dialect is often vastly misunderstood, and today gives rise to considerable difficulties in implementation of European Union directives regarding support of minority languages. Perhaps this is no more evident than in Italy, where still today some of the population use their local language (dialetto 'dialect') as the primary means of communication at home and, to varying lesser extent, the workplace. Difficulties arise due to terminological confusion. The languages conventionally referred to as Italian dialects are Romance sister languages of Italian, not variants of Italian, which are commonly and properly called italiano regionale ('regional Italian'). The label Italian dialect as conventionally used is more geopolitical in aptness of meaning rather than linguistic: Bolognese and Neapolitan, for example, are termed Italian dialects, yet resemble each other less than do Italian and Spanish. Misunderstandings ensue if "Italian dialect" is taken to mean 'dialect of Italian' rather than 'minority language spoken on Italian soil', i.e. part of the network of the Romance linguistic continuum. The indigenous Romance language of Venice, for example, is cognate with Italian, but quite distinct from the national language in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, and in no way a derivative or a variety of the national language. Venetian can be said to be an Italian dialect both geographically and typologically, but it is not a dialect of Italian.
[ Diasystem
: Diasystem
A diasystem refers to a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms. An example is Hindi-Urdu or Hindustani, which encompasses two main standard varieties, Urdu and Hindi. Another example is Norwegian, with Bokmål having developed closely with Danish and Swedish, and Nynorsk as a partly reconstructed language based on old dialects. Both are recognized as official languages in Norway.
In a formal sense, the diasystem of a set of dialects can be understood as the underlying language for which each dialect has a typical realisation (language of metaphonemes). An example can be taken with Occitan (a strongly dialectalized language of Southern France) where 'cavaL' ( < late Latin *caballu-, 'horse') is the diasystem form for the following realizations.
Languedocien dialect: [kaɞal], spelled 'caval' (v is pronounced as in Spanish and -L > -l, sometimes velar, used concurrently with French borrowed forms 'chival' or 'chivau');
Limousine dialect: [tʃavau], spelled 'chavau' (ca > cha and -L > -u regularly);
Provençal dialect: [kavau], spelled 'cavau' (-L > -u regularly, and used concurrently with French borrowed forms 'chival' or 'chivau');
Gascon dialect: [kawat], spelled 'cavath' (intervocalic v is w and final -L is -t, sometimes palatalized, and used concurrently with French borrowed forms 'chibau')
Auvergnat and Vivaro-alpine dialects: [tʃaval], spelled 'chaval' (same treatment of 'ca' cluster as in Limousine dialect)
This conceptual approach may be used in practical situations. For instance when such a diasystem is identified, it can be used so as to define the way these dialects are written in a common form that eases greatly written communication with the highest tolerance to the various spoken form. After such a unification, the dialects appear as mere 'accents' of the diasystem. 'Yes, people from region A pronounce [X] what we spell z, while in region B, they pronounce it [Y]'. It should be noted that the goals in this example are more sociopolitical in essence than scientifically linguistic. Linguistically, Occitan is a cover term for a large number of languages (reduced to a typology of five here for convenience) of varying relational proximity in terms of linguistic features, and the dialect continuum does not stop at the outer geolinguistic boundaries conventionally assigned to Occitan.
[ Pluricentrism
Pluricentric language
A pluricentric language has more than one standard version: English is an example of these languages. Portuguese is also an example of this. Although as of January 1, 2009, a standard orthography was agreed upon by all Portuguese-speaking countries, this has no effect on the phonological, morphosyntactic, or lexical features that distinguish varieties.
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