Language vs. Dialect: Mutual Intelligibility | SOC101

[0:02] One of the most difficult theoretical issues in linguistics is to distinguish between language and dialect or language and varieties. At first sight, There may be no problem at all. If two people speak differently, there seem to be only two possibilities. If they understand each other, they must speak varieties of the same language. If not, they can be said to speak different languages. But is it really that simple? Hmm, probably not. And this defines our program. We will first of all look at some problem cases.

[0:38] And knowing about these problems, we will then look at criteria to define what a language really is. And eventually, we will look at dialects or varieties and define them more precisely. Let's look at some problems first. Here we have three problem cases. The first one concerns the relationship between Dutch and German. Then we will look at Chinese and eventually we will look at Jamaican Creole. So let's start. with Dutch. And you Germans here in the audience, you can ask yourselves Do you understand?

[1:13] what The speaker says: So here is our first example from the Language Index of the Virtual Linguistics Campus: The Story, the North Wind and the Sun in Dutch. Now listen: The north wind And the sun? were discussing who was the strongest, toen een reiziger dressed in a warm coat, passed by. Did you understand that? Well, as a native speaker of German, I can clearly say: "No, I don't." Perhaps some words in it, when I see them in spelling, but Really, I don't understand it.

[1:48] Now native speakers of Dutch by contrast can understand German very well. So here's our first problem. Let's look at Chinese now. I have an native speaker of Chinese here, Mao Mao. Can you please come and help us a little bit? a little bit closer so that you can be seen by the camera. Mao Mao, can you say to us in standard Mandarin Chinese, the very big book? 很大的书。 Again. 很大的书。 Okay, thank you very much.

[2:20] Now we will load some varieties of Chinese and we'll ask Mao Mao whether she understands that or not. Okay, Mao Mao, here's the first variety of Chinese, so let's find out whether you understand what the speaker says. How did you die? Yeah, I can understand. I'm distinguished, but it's not totally different, but I can understand. You can understand it. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Now we will look at a different variety of Chinese and again we want your reaction.

[2:53] Okay, now here we have a speaker from Suzhou and again Please listen. Lord Augustus, Oh. Can you understand that? Is that Chinese? Oh, yeah, well. Um... No, I don't think so. But now look what we have here. What about that? very large book You can read it, can't you? Yeah. In all three cases, and this is the interesting thing, we have the same writing system, that unites Chinese and its varieties.

[3:26] The phonology was completely different though. Thank you very much. While the Chinese problem told us quite clearly that we must distinguish between phonology and the orthography. Now, The next problem concerns a language which is often classified as a variety of English, but is it really a variety of English? Do all native speakers of English in the audience understand the following text: in Jamaican Creole.

[3:59] So here we are. Another example from the VLC Language Index. a story in Jamaican creole not within the sunday that cost about which one of them changa when them see one man a come well wrap up in a one sitting well look like one winter cloak Dem decided the first one we get the man to take off in cloak at the changa one. Well, did you understand it? Well? Obviously, there are problems. with the concept of mutual intelligibility.

[4:33] So as we've seen with our three examples, Dutch versus German, we have obviously direction problems of intelligibility. As a speaker of Dutch, you can understand German. But as a speaker of German, you can't understand Dutch. then we may have levels of intelligibility That is, speech versus writing, lexis versus syntax. You see in the Jamaican example, you may have understood some words as native speakers of English, but the text as a whole was not comprehensible at all.

[5:12] And eventually we might have degrees of intelligibility, so many communication systems are classified as different languages, even though their speakers may understand each other more or less well. This is the case for example the North Germanic languages where speakers of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish would readily understand each other. So, in order to distinguish or to define what a language is, we cannot use the criterion of mutual intelligibility as the sole criterion. We need something more.

[5:48] Now what sort of criteria can we use? Well, here they are. The first one is standardization. Now, here we have A picture. that illustrate this. Languages involve a certain degree of standardization, that is the development of a grammar. Here we have grammar books in present day English. Spelling rules, dictionary and in many cases even literature. A second criterion for a language to be defined is the criterion of vitality. This refers to the existence of a living community of speakers.

[6:28] thus distinguishing languages which are alive. from languages which are dead. For example, Manx, a Celtic language that was formerly spoken on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea as compared with Welsh. a living language spoken in Wales. Both are two Celtic languages. Autonomy, the next criterion. Autonomy is a matter of feeling and thus a rather subjective criterion. A language must be felt different from other languages.

[7:02] But as we've already seen, for example, with Jamaican Creole, This is a matter of degree. rather than an all-in. or non-criterion. Reduction. Well, that's an interesting criterion that Um... reduced written standards, reduced functions in society help to distinguish varieties from standard languages. Here you see a picture of London. Now In London, there are many speakers of Cockney, a well-known variety of present-day English.

[7:41] but they will certainly admit that they are not representative speakers of present day English and will recognize other varieties as equally subordinate. They are using to some extent, a reduced variety. Well, and then we have norms, norms between good and bad. where languages normally involve norms, varieties don't. The speakers of languages have the feeling that they are good or bad speakers.

[8:16] and that good speakers, as good speakers, they represent norms of proper usage. For example, there are prescriptive rules in present day English like Do not split infinitives, do not say to boldly go Well, we know this is said in a famous movie. Anyway... Using these criteria, and there are even more criteria such as the historical development of languages, does the language have a history or not, and their cultures, One can define how languages differ from one another and from their varieties, there are sub-varieties which many linguists call dialects.

[8:58] Now in fact, there are three main types of variety or dialects. Both terms, variety and dialect are sort of head terms. They are considered as head terms for several types of dialects. So we have regional dialects, social dialects, or phonological dialects, or variety, regional varieties, social varieties, or phonological varieties. Now what is a regional dialect? indicated here by the Scottish versus English speaker. Mostly the term dialect is associated with some sort of regional difference between the speakers of a language. In English, for example, we have degrees of roticity in words like "car" where we're looking at the pronunciation of the final "r" in the phonology. We can also look at discourse markers, like elements such as you know,

[9:59] Thank you. in British English versus like In American English, Roticity, that is the pronunciation of the post-vocalic R, is a distinctive criterion for the identification of one's regional background in English. Speakers from Australia, most parts of England, have a low degree of roticity, they would say "car". The degree of post-vocally R in North America is higher, they would say "car". in North America, Ireland and maybe even in Scotland. There of course with a different type of are As in cod.

[10:39] Social dialect: well, when two people speak with one another, Their language is always influenced by a number of social factors, that is, for example, the role of the speaker and the listener, the relationship between them. Here we have two maybe socially differently organized people, a mind worker and some sort of, well, could be... some sort of gentleman with official function. And of course when they talk to one another, when they talk about a particular topic, their variety is influenced by these factors.

[11:14] Finally, we have the phonological dialect here, illustrated by two pictures. The picture of the Queen indicating received pronunciation versus a picture of a person from North America, signaling North American English. And there are, of course, phonological variables that define these two types of phonological varieties. And if we only look at the phonology, we might even call that phonology.

[11:45] accent I To give you one criterion that distinguishes these two, that is, for example, the realization of the a class words where in RP you would have something like class whereas here you would have something like Class. In many cases, it is difficult to distinguish the types of dialect from one another. The postulation of a dialect continuum seems to be a reasonable alternative But we'll deal with such a continuum elsewhere.