DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE:A language is a dynamic set of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication and the elements used to manipulate

them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon. Language is considered to be an exclusively human mode of communication; although animals make use of quite sophisticated communicative systems, none of these are known to make use of all of the properties that linguists use to define language. DEFINITION OF DIALECT: _ A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. In popular usage, the word "dialect" is sometimes used to refer to a lesser-known language (most commonly a regional language), especially one that is unwritten or not standardized. This use of the word dialect is often taken as pejorative by the speakers of the languages referred to since it is often accompanied by the erroneous belief that the minority language is lacking in vocabulary, grammar, or importance. The number of speakers, and the geographical area covered by them, can be of arbitrary size, and a dialect might contain several sub-dialects. A dialect is a complete system of verbal communication (oral or signed, but not necessarily written) with its own vocabulary and grammar. A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect. Other speech varieties include: standard languages, which are standardized for public performance (for example, a written standard); jargons, which are characterized by differences in lexicon (vocabulary); slang; patois; pidgins or argots. The particular speech patterns used by an individual are termed an idiolect. A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect (although in common usage, "dialect" and "accent" are usually synonymous).

Introduction Where do these terms come from?

According to Einar Haugen (1966), quoted in Hudson (1996) English made no distinction between language and dialect until the Renaissance period when the term 'dialect' was borrowed from Greek. Haugen suggests that the distinction was made in Greek as a result of a 'number of clearly distinct written varieties in use in Classical Greek, each associated with a different area and kind of literature'. It would appear that the original Greek meaning of the term is quite different to what it means in English today. The distinctions made also differ between different cultures, making the question even more complex. In France, for example, the French word 'dialecte' is used to refer to regional varieties which are written; and the term 'patois' is used to refer to regional varieties which are not written.

How do we define a language?

A language is a dynamic set of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication and the elements used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon. Structural similarity or dissimilarity can only tell apart very dissimilar languages. It is easy to confirm that, for instance, Chinese and English, or Kurdish and Turkish are clearly different languages because their linguistic structures are so dissimilar. But despite being structurally very close to each other, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are called different languages. Serbian and Croatian may be even closer to each other but they are now (again) called two different languages. Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi are both structurally and lexically very similar, Kannada and Marathi are structurally almost the same but lexically dissimilar -- all are called different languages. Structural similarity can thus mainly be used to differentiate between two languages in cases which are so clear that no linguists would be needed anyway to solve the problem. In other cases, linguistic criteria are not of much help.

What are the differences between a language and a dialect?

SIZE
A language is bigger (has more speakers) than a dialect, since a language is considered to be the sum of its dialects. Dialects are therefore considered to be subcategories of a language. So, if we take English as a language, we might consider varieties such as Cockney, Yorkshire English, Australian English, etc as dialects of the language 'English'.

PRESTIGE
A language is more prestigious than a dialect. A dialect is popularly considered to be "a substandard, low status, often rustic form of a language, lacking in prestige. Dialects are often being thought of as being some kind of erroneous deviation from the norm - an aberration of the 'proper' or standard form of language." (Chambers and Trudgill 1998). For most people (at least in Britain), the level of prestige a variety has is dependent on whether it is used in formal writing. Varieties which are unwritten are commonly referred to as dialects, whereas those used in writing are considered to be the 'proper language'.

Standard English - language or dialect?

What is Standard English?
Hudson suggests that the variety of a language that we refer to as a 'proper language' rather than a dialect is a Standard Language. Standard English, for example the kind of English used in textbooks, official documents, etc, is simply another dialect of English. It is the English that would be taught to foreign learners, or used in education systems. It is important to note that this variety has no linguistic prestige over others - the selection of a given variety depends on social, not linguistic factors (Milroy and Milroy, 1993). There are four processes a variety goes through to become standardized (Haugen 1966) 1)Selection - The variety must be chosen out of a group of competing varieties as the one to be developed into the standard form. The selected variety is not, as I said earlier, any more linguistically 'correct' than other varieties. The decision is one of great social importance, since those who speak this variety of the language will automatically gain prestige as the variety does. Therefore, what is most important is the varieties acceptability amongst the most powerful sectors of society. 2) Codification - the standard variety is codified (written down) so that it is some way fixed as the standard. Codification of modern Standard English took place in the 18th century, when Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary along with many grammar books, first appeared. Once a variety had been codified, it is possible for members of the community to learn and use the 'correct' forms that they believe will give them social advancement (Milroy) 3) Elaboration of Function - As the standard language is diffused socially and geographically (often through writing or education systems)it becomes necessary for it to be used in a wider variety of functions, such as administrative functions associated with central government, in parliament, in education and of course in literature. As a result, a wider vocabulary for this variety needs to be developped and new linguistic items added so that the variety can be used in all these domains.

4) Acceptance - the variety must be accepted as the standard variety by an influential group of society. It will then spread to other groups, and other forms will become non-standard. Hudson comments that a standard language, once accepted, serves as a 'strong unifying force for the state'. It becomes a symbol of independence.

Standard English - language or dialect?

SE as a dialect
Chambers and Trudgill argue that all speakers of English are speakers of a particular dialect of English, dependent on their geographical and social backgrounds. No dialect of English is linguistically superior to any other, but certain dialects have more prestige associated with them - for example, Standard English. But do we want to consider Standard English as a language? Or is it just another dialect of the overall concept - English? It certainly has more prestige than other dialects, yet it is spoken by a remarkably small percentage of English speakers.

Mutual Intelligibility
Problems with this theory
Another criteria used for distinguishing language from dialect is mutual intelligibility. If two speakers are able to understand one another, we can assume that they are speaking different varieties of the same language. Although this defintion seems clear-cut, there are many problems with it's application. Firstly, let us consider the Scandanavian languages of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, which are usually considered to be three seperate languages (especially by their speakers). However, speakers of these three languages can readily communicate and understand each other (C&T). Another example of this is Serbian and Croation - speakers have no problem understanding one another, yet they are referred to as different languages. Furthermore, whilst we would normally consider German to be one language, some varieties (such as Swiss German and Standard German) are not mutually intelligible. Another problem with this definition is that mutual intelligibility is a matter of degree, ranging from totally intelligible to totally unintelligible (Hudson). How far down this scale must two varieties be in order for us to class them as different languages? Where is the cut off point? A third problem is that a person's ability to understand another person is dependant on various factors. For example, the speakers past experience or exposure to the particular variety. For example, a speaker of Cockney English may have difficulty understanding a speaker of Irish English - however, if the speaker of Cockney English has, let's say, Irish parents - he or she might have no problems at all understanding. We can also note that mutual intelligiblity is not always mutual. For example, Danes understand Norwegians better than Norwegians understand Danes. This is probably due in part to the suggestion that "Norwegian is pronounced like Danish is spelt."

Dialect Continuum
How do we draw boundaries between langs?
Another problem with using mutual intelligiblity as a criteria is that we can arange varieties in a chain, known as a dialect continuum. In this chain, each pair of adjacent varieties are mutually intelligible,but pairs that are not directly adjacent in the chain are not (Hudson).

One such chain is said to stretch from Amsterdam through Germany to Vienna, and another from Calais to the South of Italy. This leaves us with a problem - how do we draw boundaries between languages? How do we decide where one language ends and another begins?

Language as a Political and Social Factor

The answer appears to be due to social and political, rather than linguistic factors. Since a 'standard language' can act as a symbol of independence, many groups are keen to keep their language seperate from others, despite being practically identical (e.g. Serbian and Croation). A language is a political or socially created concept, not based on linguistic differences.

Sometimes one can hear people speaking about "those tribes in Africa with all their dialects" while the same people speak about "European nations with their languages". Without necessarily intending to do so, one can in this way hierarchise people and what they speak. In Debi Prasanna Pattanayak's view (1991: 27-28), "the developed countries treat their respective dominant languages as resources, call them world languages, and use them to further their national interest', while those of the 'third world lites' who follow the West 'deride the mother tongues' in their own countries 'as dialect, slang, patois, vernacular, and condemn them to marginal use, or completely ignore them" (ibid., 28). But we can also hear a genuine question: is what XX speak a "language", or is it a "dialect"? Can the question be answered? What is the difference between a language and a dialect? There are no linguistic criteria for differentiating between a language and a dialect (or vernacular or patois). Structural similarity or dissimilarity can only tell apart very dissimilar languages. It is easy to confirm that, for instance, Chinese and English, or Kurdish and Turkish are clearly different languages because their linguistic structures are so dissimilar. But despite being structurally very close to each other, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are called different languages. Serbian and Croatian may be even closer to each other but they are now (again) called two different languages. Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi are both structurally and lexically very similar, Kannada and Marathi are structurally almost the same but lexically dissimilar -- all are called different languages. Structural similarity can thus mainly be used to differentiate between two languages in cases which are so clear that no linguists would be needed anyway to solve the problem. In other cases, linguistic criteria are not of much help. "Mutual intelligibility" has also been used as a criterion: if you understand a "language", A, without being taught that "language", it is a dialect (or another variety) of your own "language", B. Or your own "language" B is a dialect of the one you can understand, A. Or what both of you speak (A & B), are dialects of some third entity, C, which is then called "a language". But if you don't understand A, it is a different language. But the criterion of mutual intelligibility is also far from unambiguous. Let us say that speaker A understands B, and speaker B understands C, who in her turn understands D. On the other hand, speaker A does not understand C, and speaker B does not understand D. Where is the boundary then between language and dialect. Or if A understands B but B does not understand A (non-reciprocal intelligibility), are A and B dialects of the same language for speaker A who understands both, but two different languages for speaker B who does not understand both? In situations where languages are oral (spoken) languages and have not been reduced to writing, people in neighbouring villages often understand each other, either well, or at least to some extent, despite the differences, but they may not understand people from villages much further away. These in turn understand their close neighbours, etc. How well do the speakers need to understand each other? Is "semi-communication" enough (Haugen 1966: 102) or must the understanding be "complete" (and is it ever complete even between speakers of the same language)? Should the speakers who test the criteria be monolingual? It is, for instance, easy for me (Tove Skutnabb-Kangas), knowing other Indo-European languages like Danish, English, German, Latin, Norwegian and Swedish, to understand some Dutch, without having ever been taught Dutch. Would Dutch then be a separate language for a monolingual Swedish-speaker who does not understand Dutch, but a dialect of Swedish, or German or English, for me? Is oral understanding enough, or should we rather use understanding of writing as a criterion? Or the opposite: is understanding writing enough, or should one also understand the oral mode? A Finn who has studied Swedish at school, understands some written Danish, but does not understand spoken Danish at all. Is oral Danish then a

separate language from Swedish, while written Danish is a dialect of Swedish? And what about the deaf population? Should the criterion be used only with language spoken by a native speaker, with normal speed, or can a second language speaker who speaks slowly also be used? Age, amount of formal schooling, degree of met linguistic awareness, amount of exposure to the language or to other languages in general, learning styles, courage, motivation, fatigue, etc, obviously also affect intelligibility, in many situations much more than the "same language/different languages" question. Mutual intelligibility as a criterion thus discriminates well only in situations with structurally unrelated languages, as was the case with the structural linguistic criterion too. Neither similarity nor dissimilarity of structure, nor mutual intelligibility or lack of it can therefore differentiate between languages. The social functions of languages, measured, for instance, by the speakers' own views on what are different languages, are based partly on the two linguistic criteria (structural similarity, mutual intelligibility), but mainly on extra-linguistic criteria. One possible criterion which has been suggested is standardization. Only dialects which have been reduced to writing (a prerequisite for standardization) and been standardized are languages, everything else is something else (dialect, vernacular, patois). Peter Trudgill's old definition (1983: 16) reflects this; for him "languages" were "independent, standardized varieties ... with, as it were, a life of their own". This would drastically reduce the number of "languages" in the world. Very few indigenous languages and only a handful of sign languages would qualify as languages according to this definition. But it can be understood in the sense that it only becomes natural to speak about a language as a specific, discrete unit, distinct from other similar units, when there is a written form of that language, claims Tore Janson, earlier Professor of Latin, now Professor of African Languages, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (1997: 125). The written forms of today's languages in Europe displaced and replaced other ways of writing. In most cases, a written form came first and a name for the language only afterwards. One or some of the dialects were chosen as the basis for the written form, and the choice was obviously made by those or to benefit those who "needed" the written form in the first place: the lites, the state builders, the church representatives. These choices were also decisive for inclusion and exclusion: the rulers decided where the borders would be placed in the dialect continua between what was called one language and what another language. Thus, the main criterion for whether something is a dialect of another language or a separate language (and what is being standardized, what not) is the relative political power of the speakers of that language/dialect. The decisions about what are "languages" and what are not, are thus political decisions. Those with enough power can claim that what they speak is a language and what less powerful groups speak are dialects. Political definitions of a language would be: "a language is a dialect with an army (and a navy)" or "a language is a dialect with state borders" or "a language is a dialect promoted by elites". (TSK)

Strange as it may seem, there's no really good way to distinguish between a "language" and a "dialect." Because they're not objective, scientific terms. People use the words "dialect" and "language" to mean different things. "Language" can often refer to your own linguistic variety and "dialect" to the variety spoken by someone else, usually someone thought of as inferior. Or "language" can mean the generally accepted "standard" or radio-talk language of a country, while dialects are homely versions of it that vary from region to region and may not be pronounced the way the so-called "language" is. Language varieties are called "dialects" rather than "languages" because they're not written, or because speakers of that variety don't run the country, or because their language lacks prestige. In short, the distinction is subjective. It depends on who you are and where you sit. From a linguistic perspective, no dialect is inherently better than another. For example, the emergence of Parisian dialect as the standard in France, was just a matter of history. When the 10th century king of France set up his residence in Paris, the language of his court became the "standard." If things had gone differently, the

dialect of Poitiers or Dijon might be the national language of France today. Dialects can be socially determined, as Eliza Doolittle learned in My Fair Lady. Or they can be politically determined. The linguist Max Weinreich is often quoted as saying, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." His point was that politics often decide what dialect will be called a "language." Powerful or historically significant groups have "languages"; smaller or weaker ones have "dialects." Or the status of a language can be arbitrarily determined, by a person or a government. In southern Africa a missionary declared three separate languages to be a single tongue. He decided they were dialects of the same language and created what is now known as "Tsonga." On the other end of the scale, the government of South Africa arbitrarily declared Zulu and a language called Xhosa to be different tongues, even though there's no clear boundary between them. Dialect differences are often relatively minor -- maybe just a matter of pronunciation: "You say tomayto, I say tomahto." There can be differences in words such as American English "elevator" and British English "lift"-- which reminds me of George Bernard Shaw's famous quip that America and Britain are: "two countries separated by a common language." But dialects can also differ so greatly from one another -- I'm thinking of German in Cologne versus the German of rural Bavaria -- that speakers of the same language can barely understand one another, if at all. One of the tests people use to differentiate "language" from "dialect" is mutual intelligibility. You can say that people speak the same language -- or a dialect of the same language -- if they understand each other. If they don't understand one another, they must be speaking different languages. That seems like a good rule. So why, in a case like the Cologne and Bavarian dialects, which aren't mutually intelligible, don't the Germans call them separate languages? Or why are Swedish and Norwegian separate languages, when Swedes and Norwegians have no trouble understanding one another? It's really pretty confusing. It becomes even more muddled when speakers of Dialect A just don't want to understand speakers of Dialect B. Dialects of the same language aren't mutually intelligible, even though there's no linguistic basis for that. The two groups insist that they speak separate tongues, even though they don't.

So, do you conclude from all this that the terms "dialect" and "language" are politically and socially loaded? If so, you're absolutely right. Now let me ask: do you speak a language or a dialect? That's a trick question, because ultimately, all languages are dialects. You no doubt speak one of each. That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Tucker Childs, professor of Linguistics at Portland State University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us atwww.cofc.edu/linguist. And in the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

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The Difference Between Language and Dialect: The Philippines Illustration
In linguistic perspective, there really is no clear-cut distinction between language and dialect. Most experts say the terms dialect and language are very much influenced politically and socially. Institutions decide on which language is declared national, while society based on regional affiliations also claims dialect variation as languages in their own right. In the Philippines case, Filipino is the national language. However, a lot of people in different regions within the country also think that their dialects are different languages as well. To simplify our understanding, a golden rule is established. One is a language when another person who speaks a different language does not understand the person who speaks it. Language is then understood as a medium of communication used at macro level across a country with dialects under it that may come in different variations. In the Philippines, for example, languages and dialects diversely spread out across the 7,100 plus islands. To illustrate our definition above, everyone in the country can speak and understand Filipino but somebody who speaks Filipino does not understand somebody who speaks Cebuano or Hiligaynon, which are other major languages in the country from a different region. On the other hand, people who speak various dialects, coming from these major languages, can understand each other. The table below clearly shows the different languages in the Philippines translated into simple English words to their corresponding local major language:

Courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_Philippines

With this understanding, it proves that language identifies a country while dialect recognizes locality.