Word Finder - dialects

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.

Between several of these dialects it is probable that closer affinities exist.

The dialects differ very much in different parts of the island, so that those who speak one often cannot understand those who speak another, and use Italian as the medium of communication.

This phenomenon of what might have been taken for a piece of Umbrian text appearing in a district remote from Umbria and hemmed in by Latins on the north and Oscan-speaking Samnites on the south is a most curious feature in the geographical distribution of the Italic dialects, and is clearly the result of some complex historical movements.

Hunter states that the Dravidian tribes were driven southwards in Hindustan, and that the grammatical relations of their dialects are " expressed by suffixes," which is true as to the Australian languages.

Proceeding to Alexandria as assistant to the British consul-general there, he devoted himself to Arabic and its various dialects, and made himself master of Eastern manners and usages.

Rajasthani is the chief language of the country, one or other of its dialects being spoken by 7, 0 3 5,093 persons or more than 72% of the total population.

The whole country was occupied by a variety of tribes, speaking agglutinative dialects for the most part, though the western districts were occupied by Semites.

Before this there had been translations into French dialects, as by Philippe de Thaun (1121), by Guillaume, "clerc de Normandie," also, about the same period, by Pierre, a clergyman of Picardy.

Dialects, p. 16) that a tradition (preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v.

West of the Indus the dialects approach more to Persian, which language meets Arabic and Turki west of the Tigris, and along the Turkoman desert and the Caspian.

The difficulty of communication between the valleys has resulted in the growth of a great number of dialects.

Avarian is a sort of inter-tribal tongue, while Lakh or Kazi-kumukh, Kurin, Darghi-kaitakh, Andi, and Tabasaran are some of the more important dialects, each subdivided into subdialects.

Kretschmer goes further and divides the Illyrian language into two sharply defined dialects, the northern dialect being represented by the Heneti.

Oberlin published several manuals on archaeology and ancient geography, and made frequent excursions into different provinces of France to investigate antiquarian remains and study provincial dialects, the result appearing in Essai sur le patois Lorrain (1775); Dissertations sur les Minnesingers (1782-1789); and Observations concernant le patois et les mceurs des gens de la campagne (1791).

A study of the local dialects to be met with in some of the districts of the 'far interior, e.g.

Berber dialects are still spoken in Tunisia in the island of Jerba, in the Matmata country, and in the Tunisian Sahara.

Similar changes had taken place in some of the local dialects of Italy before the Christian era.

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.

In the reign of Darius, however, the Susianians attempted to revolt, first under Assina or Atrina, the son of Umbadara, and later under Martiya, the son of Issainsakria, who called himself Immanes; but they gradually became completely Aryanized, and their agglutinative dialects were supplanted by the Aryan Persian from the south-east.

Thirty languages and a hundred and six dialects are found in the Central Provinces alone, and twenty-eight languages and sixty-eight dialects in Berar.

The chief of these languages are Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Rajasthani, Marathi, Oriya, Telugu and Dravidian dialects.

Of these last the chief dialects are Gondi, Oraon or Kurukh, Kandhi and Kanarese, of which Gondi is by far the most important.

His language, which is very peculiar, seems to be a sort of mixture of the Ottoman and Azerbaijan dialects of Turkish, and was most probably that of the Persian Turks of those days.

No fewer than three separate dialects and a dozen sub-dialects are known in it.

This periodical, issued by the academy, has during the last decade (1870-1880) contained also comparative studies, by Arminius Vambery and Gabriel Balint, of the Magyar, TurkishTatar and Mongolian dialects.

Badakshan proper is peopled by Tajiks, Turks and Arabs, who speak the Persian and Turki languages, and profess the orthodox doctrines of the Mahommedan law adopted by the Sunnite sect; while the mountainous districts are inhabited by Tajiks, professing the Shiite creed and speaking distinct dialects in different districts.

In Palestine and western Syria, the home of pre-Christian Aramaic dialects, the vernacular Semitic speech had under Roman dominion been replaced by Greek for official and literary purposes.

A Christian revision of it is probably preserved in the two dialects of Coptic. Of these the Akhmim text is the original of the Sahidic. These texts and their translations have been edited by Steindorff, Die Apokalypse des Elias, eine unbekannte Apokalypse and Bruchstiicke der Sophonias-Apokalypse (1899).

Such remains as there are of their language, a few expressions and the proper names of ancient chieftains still borne by certain families, connect it with the Berber dialects.

After spending six years in Constantinople, where he published a Turkish-German Dictionary and various linguistic works, and where he acquired some twenty Oriental languages and dialects, he visited Teheran; and then, disguised as a dervish, joined a band of pilgrims from Mecca, and spent several months with them in rough and squalid travel through the deserts of Asia.

In other dialects of Italy b is found representing an original voiced guttural (gw), which, however, is regularly replaced by v in Latin.

In other dialects, however, it had been palatalized to a sibilant before i-sounds some time before the Christian era; e.g.

Thus Norman-French spelt its palatalized c-sound (= tsh) with ch as in cher and the English palatalized cild, &c. became child, &c. In Provençal from the 10th century, and in the northern dialects of France from the 13th century, this palatalized c (in different districts is and tsh) became a simple s.

In some foreign words like cicala the ch- (tsh) value is given to c. In the transliteration of foreign languages also it receives different values, having that of tsh in the transliteration of Sanskrit and of is in various Slavonic dialects.

This arises from the pronunciation of u as yu, and does not affect the English dialects which have not thus modified the u sound.

At the headquarters of his order, in Fremona, he soon acquired the two chief dialects of the country, translated a catechism, and set about the education of some Abyssinian children.

The northern Doris, for example, spoke Aeolic, while Elis, Phocis, and many non-Dorian districts of north-west Greece spoke dialects akin to Doric. Many Dorian states had additional " nonDorian tribes "; Sparta, which claimed to be of pure and typical Dorian origin, maintained institutions and a mode of life which were without parallel in Peloponnese, in the Parnassian and in the Asiatic Doris, and were partially reflected in Crete only.

But the attempt to interpret, in terms of this Asiatic diagram, the actual distribution of dialects and peoples in European Greece, led to difficulties.

But these have also some forms in common with the " Aeolic " dialect of Boeotia and Thessaly, which in historic times was spoken also in Doris; Locris and Elis present similar northern " Achaean-Doric " dialects.

As evidence of an intrusion of northerly folk, however, the distribution of dialects remains important.

Even in northern and westcentral Greece, all vestige of any former prevalence has been obliterated by the spread of " Aeolic " dialects akin to those of Thessaly and Boeotia; even the northern Doris, for example, spoke "Aeolic" in historic times.

Attention is frequently called to the large number of linguistic families in America, nearly 200 having been named, embracing over 1000 languages and dialects.

Factions separated from the parent body developed dialects or languages by contact, intermarriage and incorporation with foreign tribes.

Among the Germans, who are most numerous in the north-east, Low German dialects are spoken, except in a Swabian colony round Kulmsee.

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.

He also studied Arabic, Sanskrit and the old South French dialects.

Here he devoted himself to the preparation of school-books, and the translation of the Bible and Prayer-Book into Yoruba and other dialects.

They are found in various dialects of Coptic, the mutual relations of which are not Coptic. yet certain, but the only ones which are preserved with any completeness are the Bohairic, or Lower Egyptian, and Sahidic, or Upper Egyptian, though it is certain that fragments of intermediate dialects such as Middle Egyptian, Fayumic, Akhmimic and Memphitic also exist.

Codrington (Melanesian Languages) has adduced evidence to prove that Melanesia is the most primitive form of the oceanic stock-language, and that both Malays and Polynesians speak later dialects of this archaic form of speech.

Older than these divisions, the date of which is uncertain, the ancient limits of the dioceses of Pamplona, Bayonne and Calahorra, probably corresponded more nearly to the boundaries of the ancient tribes, the Autrigones, the Caristi, the Varduli and the Vascones, with their still differing dialects, than do these civil provinces.