Dialect

Noun

 * 1)  A variety of a language (specifically, often a spoken variety) that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group, often with relatively minor differences in vocabulary, style, spelling and pronunciation.
 * A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
 * 1) A dialect of a language perceived as substandard and wrong.
 * 2) * Roger W. Shuy, Discovering American dialects, National Council of Teachers of English, 1967, page 1:
 * Many even deny it and say something like this: "No, we don't speak a dialect around here. [...]
 * 1) * Linguistic perspectives on black English, H. Carl, 1975, pg. 219:
 * Well, those children don't speak dialect, not in this school. Maybe in the public schools, but not here.
 * 1) * H. Nigel Thomas, Spirits in the dark, Heinemann, 1994, pg. 11:
 * [...] on the second day, Miss Anderson gave the school a lecture on why it was wrong to speak dialect. She had ended by saying "Respectable people don't speak dialect."

Adjectives for Dialect
drawling; guttural; hinterland; crude broad; garrulous; vulgar; handed-down ancestral; forcible; unintelligible; strange multiplying (pi) ;  unpleasant; peculiar nasal; native; authentic; queer; rural overaccented; delicious; amorous; gibbering; purest; expressive; barbarous; quaint untutored; hissing; unmusical.

Verbs for Dialect
adopt—; affect—; converse in—; drop— influence—; interpret—; lay aside—; missound—; modify—; overcome—; recognize—; study—; understand—; —amuses; — confuses; —corrupts; —missounds; —retains; —vanishes.

Synonyms for Dialect
provincialism, accent, idiom, jargon, vernacular, patois.

Antonyms for Dialect
standard speech, official language.

Derived terms

 * dialectal
 * dialectic

Related terms

 * dialectally
 * dialectical
 * dialectician
 * dialectics

Thesaurus
Acadian, Anglo-Indian, Brooklynese, Cajun, Canadian French, Cockney, French Canadian, Gullah, Midland, Midland dialect, New England dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, Yankee, Yorkshire, accent, argot, brogue, bundle of isoglosses, burr, cant, choice of words, class dialect, composition, dialect atlas, dialect dictionary, dialectal, diction, expression, formulation, grammar, idiom, idiomatic, isogloss, jargon, language, langue, lingo, lingua, linguistic atlas, linguistic community, linguistic island, local, local dialect, localism, locution, parlance, parole, patois, patter, personal usage, phrase, phraseology, phrasing, pidgin, pronunciation, provincial, provincialism, regional, regional accent, regionalism, rhetoric, slang, speech, speech community, subdialect, talk, tongue, usage, use of words, usus loquendi, verbiage, vernacular, wordage, wording

Etymology
From διάλεκτος:, from διαλέγομαι:, from διά: + λέγω:.

Translations

 * Arabic:, , دارجة
 * Armenian:
 * Bulgarian:
 * Catalan:
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin:,  ,
 * Croatian: ,
 * Czech: ,
 * Danish:
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto:
 * Finnish:, aluemurre
 * French: ,
 * German:, Mundart
 * Greek:
 * Hebrew:
 * Hungarian:
 * Icelandic:
 * Indonesian: dialek
 * Italian:
 * Japanese: ,
 * Korean:, 방언


 * Kurdish: زاراو
 * Latin:, dialectus
 * Latvian:
 * Lithuanian: ,
 * Macedonian: дијалект, ,
 * Mongolian: аялгуу
 * Norwegian:
 * Persian: لحجه
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese: ,
 * Russian:, ,
 * Santali:
 * Scottish Gaelic:
 * Serbian: ,
 * Slovak:
 * Slovene:
 * Spanish:
 * Swedish:
 * Turkish:
 * Volapük: dialeg
 * Welsh: tafodiaith

Anagrams

 * citadel, deltaic, edictal, lactide

Noun

 * 1) dialect
 * 2) slang