Word Finder - dialect

definition

A variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular area, community or social group, differing from other varieties of the same language in relatively minor ways as regards grammar, phonology, and lexicon.

definition

Language that is perceived as substandard or wrong.

definition

A language existing only in an oral or non-standardized form, especially a language spoken in a developing country or an isolated region.

synonyms

• vernacular

definition

A lect (often a regional or minority language) as part of a group or family of languages, especially if they are viewed as a single language, or if contrasted with a standardized idiom that is considered the 'true' form of the language (for example, Cantonese as contrasted with Mandarin Chinese, or Bavarian as contrasted with Standard German).

synonyms

• patois
• vernacular

definition

A variant of a non-standardized programming language.

example

Home computers in the 1980s had many incompatible dialects of BASIC.

definition

A variant form of the vocalizations of a bird species restricted to a certain area or population.

There is dialect variation across the UK.

It was a dialect closely related to Bulgarian.

Soon after the dialect had reached its latest form, the Latin alphabet was adopted.

He was a master at dialect poetry!

The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers.

Confirmatory evidence of this is to be found, not only in the character of their constructions, but in the circumstance that a tribe closely akin to the Mayas (the Huastecos) still occupies a retired mountain valley of Vera Cruz, entirely separated from their kinsmen of the south, and that a dialect of the Maya language is still spoken in northern Vera Cruz.

The dialect spoken by everyone looked toward Oslo rather than London.

As there are no traces of literary productions in the native or Magyar dialect before the 12th century, the early condition of the language is concealed from the philologist.

Their language is a dialect of Persian and does not differ materially from Kurdish.

I by no means say in all his gifts, but only in some single point; as, for instance, the beauty of his language, or its harmony, or the natural and peculiar grace of the Ionic dialect, or his fulness of thought, or by whatever name those thousand beauties are called which to the despair of his imitator are united in him."

Of the two dialects commonly called Sabaean and Minaean the latter might be better called Hadramitic, inasmuch as it is the dialect of the inscriptions found in Hadramut, and the Minaeans seem undoubtedly to have entered the Jauf from Ijadramut.

The dialect of the Minaeans is sharply distinguished from the Sabaeans (see above).

The country had four universities, those of Leipzig, Wittenberg, Jena and Erfurt; books began to increase rapidly, and, by virtue of Luther's translation of the Bible, the Saxon dialect became the ruling dialect of Germany.

The language of the people is a dialect of Songhoi.

Castilian is spoken by the upper and commercial classes; the lower and agricultural employ a dialect resembling that of the Catalans.

Among the few prose writers of distinction were Andrew Spangar, whose " Hungarian Bookstore," Magyar Konyvtdr (Kassa, 1738), is said to be the earliest work of the kind in the Magyar dialect; George Baranyi, who translated the New Testament (Lauba, 1 754); the historians Michael Cserei and Matthew Bel, which last, however, wrote chiefly in Latin; and Peter Bod, who besides his theological treatises compiled a history of Hungarian literature under the title Magyar Athends (Szeben, 1766).

The language of the people of Mosul is a dialect of Arabic, partly influenced by Kurdish and Syriac. The Moslems call themselves either Arabs or Kurds, but the prevalent type, very different from the true Arabian of Bagdad, proves the Aramaean origin of many of their number.

To it Sundanese stands in the relation that Low German holds to High German, and the Madurese in the relation of a strongly individualized dialect.

Among the other languages which have been reduced to writing and grammatically analysed are the Balinese, closely connected with the Javanese, the Batta (with its dialect the Toba), the Dyak and the Macassarese.

They spoke a dialect of Turkish preserved in the Kudatku Bilik, a moral treatise composed in 1065.

Here appeared the Monumenta Poloniae historica of Bielowski, previously mentioned; but Polish in this province has to struggle with the Red-Russian or Ruthenian, a language or dialect which for all practical purposes is the same as the Southern or Little Russian.

We further possess a Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch written in the Samaritan dialect, a variety of western Aramaic, and also an Arabic translation of the five books of the law; the latter dating perhaps from the 11th century A.D.

Spanish, with various modifications of dialect, and the introduction of many Indian words, is the principal language; and the majority of the inhabitants claim descent from the Spanish colonists - chiefly Galicians - who came hither during the 16th and subsequent centuries.

They are distinct in origin from the other inhabitants of Spain, from whom they differ in their dialect and costume.

In Mexico itself the languages of the Nahua nations, of which the Aztec is the best-known dialect, show no connexion of origin with the language of the Otomi tribes, nor either of these with the languages of the regions of the ruined cities of Central America, the Quiche of Guatemala and the Maya of Yucatan.

The Sumo-Misquito Indians occupied the Atlantic coast and the interior of Nicaragua and Honduras, where they still live in small tribes; a dialect of the hitherto unknown Sumo languages.

The dialect of the translation of St Matthew is Mercian.'

In fact before the middle of the r4th century the entire Old Testament and the greater part of the New Testament had been translated into the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period.

Of the Lollard movement in Scotland but little is known, but a curious relic has come down to our times in the shape of a New Testament of Purvey's Revision in the Scottish dialect of the early 16th century.

With the exception of a few fragments written in a Pehlevi dialect, all this recovered Manichaean literature is in the Ouigour or Vigur dialect of Tatar.

Arcadia, on the other hand, in the heart of Peloponnese, retained till a late date a quite different dialect, akin to the ancient dialect of Cyprus, and more remotely to Aeolic. This distribution makes it clear (r) that the Doric dialects of Peloponnese represent a superstratum, more recent than the speech of Arcadia; (2) that Laconia and its colonies preserve features alike, -n and -w which are common to southern Doric and Aeolic; (3) that those parts of " Dorian " Greece in which tradition makes the pre-Dorian population " Ionic," and in which the political structure shows that the conquered were less completely subjugated, exhibit the Ionic -a and -ov; (4) that as we go north, similar though more barbaric dialects extend far up the western side of central-northern Greece, and survive also locally in the highlands of south Thessaly; (5) that east of the watershed Aeolic has prevailed over the area which has legends of a Boeotian and Thessalian migration, and replaces Doric in the northern Doris.

The language spoken by the Pipils of Salvador (Balsam Coast) is a very old dialect of the Mexican language of the highland of Mexico.

German is the official language, though among themselves the natives speak a dialect of Frisian, barely intelligible to the other islands of the group. There is regular communication with Bremen and Hamburg.

But the native tradition of the Ghuzz was unquestionably right, as they spoke a pure Turkish dialect.

In character and interests he was rather Provencal than Spanish, a favourer of the troubadours, no enemy of the Albigensian heretics, and himself a poet in the southern French dialect.

The Hawaiian language is a member of the widely-diffused Malayo-Polynesian group and closely resembles the dialect of the Marquesas; Hawaiians and New Zealanders, although occupying the most remote regions north and south at which the race has been found, can understand each other without much difficulty.

Though again in the Transcendental Dialect he spoke of pure reason conceiving " ideals " of noumena, he did not mean that a noumenon is nothing but a thought arising only through thinking, or projected by reason, but meant that pure reason can only conceive the " ideal " while, over and above the " ideal " of pure reason, a noumenon is a real thing, a thing in itself, which is not indeed known, but whose existence is postulated by practical reason in the three instances of God, freedom, and immortality.

The men are tall, handsome and well-made, and the women are among the most beautiful in Spain; while the dark complexion and hair of both sexes, and their peculiar dialect of Spanish, so distasteful to pure Castilians, are indisputable evidence of Moorish descent.

Most of these elements have now become merged in the general type, but there are still many communities in which the popular language is a corrupt German dialect, largely Rheno-Franconian in its origin, known as " Pennsylvania Dutch."

On the north bordering on Turkestan the dialect of the nomadic Hor-pa tribes is much mixed with Turkic ingredients.

Lewin with the help of a Sikkimese lama compiled A Manual of Tibetan, or rather a series of colloquial phrases in the Sikkimese dialect, in 1879.

Bell (Calcutta, 1905), which has full English-Tibetan vocabularies, graduated exercises and examples in the Lhasa dialect of to-day.

The question has turned mainly upon the elucidation of the phenomenon of the silent letters, generally prefixed, which differentiate the spelling of many words from their pronunciation, in the central dialect or current speech of Lhasa.

As a rustic dialect the language lasted on in North Africa till the 5th century A.D.

While still a boy he accompanied his father to Florence, and there acquired a love for that Tuscan form of speech which he afterwards cultivated in preference to the dialect of his native city.

The vernacular language is not Bengali, but a dialect of Hindi; and the people likewise resemble those of Upper India.

A dialect with many old Persian forms and resembling the Mazan daran dialect is spoken.

The fellow-countrymen of Stevinus were proud that he wrote in their own dialect, which he thought fitted for a universal language, as no other abounded like Dutch in monosyllabic radical words.

In Switzerland there are Italian-speaking regions, as well as some spots (in the Grisons) where the old Romance dialect of Romansch or Ladin survives; while in Austria, besides German, Italian and Ladin, we havea Slavonic-speaking population in the South-Eastern Alps.

The Mazurs are distinguished from the Poles by their lower stature, broad shoulders and massive frame, and still more by their national dress, which has nothing of the smartness of that of the southern Poles, and by their ancient customs; they have also a dialect of their own, containing many words now obsolete in Poland, and several grammatical forms bearing witness to Lithuanian influence.