Language vs Dialect vs Accent: Letting The Differences Speak For Themselves

Language vs Dialect vs Accent: Letting The Differences Speak For Themselves

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When we communicate with others using words, we're using language. We also use a dialect and an accent, whether or not we know it. But what do all of these words mean? How are languages, dialects, and accents different from each other?

This article will discuss the differences between languages, dialects, and accents while providing examples.

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dialect vs language

The word language describes a body of terms and the systems we apply to those words, such as grammar and spelling, to communicate with each other. A language includes the words and systems' spoken, written, and signed forms. Some examples of languages include English, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Hindi.

The word dialect describes a particular variety of a language. A dialect often follows most of the rules of its respective language, but it may have different vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciations. Most dialects are recognized by their usage in a specific geographic area, but other criteria, such as social class, may determine dialects. Some examples of dialects include Australian English, Chilean Spanish, Egyptian Arabic, and Jamaican Patois.

The word language is more general, while the word dialect refers to a particular variant of one language. Additionally, a language includes the written form of communication, while the word dialect is often used to refer only to a spoken variety of a language. The many dialects of English, for example, all use the same Latin alphabet but will often sound very different from each other when spoken aloud.

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dialect vs accent

While a dialect can include differences in pronunciations from the language it comes from, it also has differences in vocabulary and grammar.

The word accent, however, describes a distinct way of pronouncing a language. It does not include differences in vocabulary and grammar. Like dialects, accents are often distinguished based on geographical area, social class, or other standard features among speakers.

Often, an accent is described as being a subset of a dialect in the same way that an idiom is a subset of a language.

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Examples of dialects and accents

Let's examine examples of dialects and accents to help explain the difference. In the United States, English is the most commonly spoken language; the specific version of English Americans say it is American English. American English is considered a dialect of English because Americans often use vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation differently from English speakers from other places, such as Canada, Britain, or Australia.

American English is often further divided into different American dialects, usually based on location but not always. Examples of specific American idioms include Cajun English, African American English, and Southern American English.

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In the United States, people also pronounce English words in many ways. They have different accents, often depending on where they live in the US. Some well-known examples of American accents include the New York accent every day in and around New York City, the Boston accent spoken in New England and originating from the city of Boston, and the Southern accent found across the southern part of the country.

Let's look at some examples of both dialects and accents.

Examples of dialects:

Canadian French

Connacht Irish

Wuhan (Chinese)

Gyeongsang (Korean)

Examples of British accents:

Cockney

Yorkshire

Scouse

Estuary English

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What Makes Accents Appealing?

https://www.dictionary.com/e/accents/

What makes certain accents sound sexy and others harsh?

"The RINE in SPINE Fawls MINELY on Tha PLINE!" In the song "The Rain in Spain" from the musical My Fair Lady, phonetics professor Henry Higgins ("'Enry 'Iggins") pleads with Eliza Doolittle to say, "Ay not I, O not Ow." By the song's end, Eliza's "AY-ing" and "O-ing" pronounce all her H's. The guttersnipe is on her way to becoming a fair lady.

What makes Eliza's native cockney accent sound harsh, and her newly-acquired standard English accent (called Received pronunciation) sound lovely and genteel?

The study of accents reveals that sounds don't possess inherent beauty or ugliness; how one perceives accents largely depends on social and cultural associations. The same message is good or bad, pretty or ugly, depending on how the news is packaged and whose ears are receiving it. My Fair Lady demonstrates this with different regional varieties of native English. Still, the same principles apply when looking at English spoken by a non-native speaker, with a French, German, or Chinese accent, for example.

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What is an accent?

An accent is how a person shapes their mouth, moves their lips, and flaps their tongue while forming words; it's how they speak. Everyone has an accent, and don't let anyone tell you differently. If you talk, you have an accent.

A ton of social information is wrapped up in how a person pronounces their words and how the listener perceives them. Among other things, accents give away information about age, social status, ethnicity, and whether or not the language is the speaker's native tongue.

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Do we prefer our accents over others?

Being able to hear differences in accents might be biological. Babies as young as five months can tell the difference! Scientists discovered that infants pay more attention to people speaking in their native accents than those in a foreign accent. Kids are more likely to accept toys from native speakers and befriend other children who speak the same way.

This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, given that the baby is being socialized to join a community of like-speaking people who share values and can communicate with each other. This also means that from an early age, people develop what's called own-accent bias, or (in terms of the wee baby) a preference for the accent used by all the others in the environment.

That also means accents distinguish who's in the in-group and who's in the out-group. Depending on how the out-group accents are treated by the in-group, this can have several effects—from viewing an out-group (or foreign accent) as exotic and alluring to perceiving it as ugly or inferior.

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How do language sounds affect accent perception?

When it comes to languages in general, the sounds of any language aren't inherently sexy or stupid. According to linguist Guy Deutscher, author of Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, some sounds might be perceived as harsh or weird simply because they are unfamiliar. Moreover, languages using rarer sounds are "more likely to be perceived as less alluring" to those who aren't accustomed to hearing them.

In an interview with The Guardian, phonetics and speech expert Dr Patti Adank suggested "languages such as Thai or Mandarin can sound harsh because they are using tonal distinctions. It sounds unnatural and unexpected" to English speakers.

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Dr Lisa Davidson explained to the Huffington Post, "When people talk about 'harsh-sounding' languages, they usually refer to languages that have sounds made in the back of the vocal tract." These sounds are known as uvular and pharyngeals, made by contracting the tongue against the back of the throat. To English speakers, German—a very uvular language—is notorious for sounding rough or "like gagging" because of these unfamiliar throat sounds.

But French, widely perceived as beautiful, is also a uvular language! How can the same sound be harsh in German and beautiful in French?

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Accents and stereotypes

According to sociolinguists, a specific language or accent's appeal depends on how people categorize the language speakers. People often use an accent to group speakers into categories based on general attitudes and behaviours representing those speakers (and, more broadly, the countries they come from). In other words, people believe certain accents sound attractive because of stereotypes. And, of course, stereotypes depend on the culture doing the stereotyping.

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So, the sexiest accents are subjective?

When you look at Western online polls about "the sexiest" accents in the world, the results usually show the accents of Western languages front and centre (because those are more familiar and have more prestige… for Westerners). It might also have something to do with the history of colonization of the rest by the West.

On these polls, French and Italian vie for the "most attractive" accents, as their countries are stereotypically associated with romance and lovey stuff like poetry, good food, and fine wine. The tropes of the sexy French coquette (Brigit Bardot, for example) or zesty Italian bella donna (like Sophia Loren) likely also contribute to those accent stereotypes.

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So, while French and German accents share uvular sounds, German doesn't usually appear at the top of the "sexiest" list. And the reason is likely because of English speakers' cultural stereotypes about Germany. They associate German culture with the studiousness and discipline required of scientists (like Einstein) or auto engineers (for German brands like Audi and BMW). Also, it's hard not to disregard Germany's history. If more Heidi Klums and Michael Fassbender hit the scene, the German accent would be smoking at the top.

Other sexy accents include southern Irish, considered especially pleasing to the ear by people in England and the UK. It must be that beautiful rolling green countryside.

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A British accent is the hottest for American ladies, according to a survey by travel dating website MissTravel.com. This isn't surprising, given the accent's associations with educatedness and posh status. For decades in the Golden Age of Hollywood, actors spoke in an accent that blended what they considered the best of both accents (and, of course, this is a biased point of view): the Mid-Atlantic accent, popularized by Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, comprised aspects of Standard American and Standard British to evoke high class and breeding.

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On the other hand, ranking lowest on Babbel's list of sexiest accents in the world are Russian, Dutch, and Turkish. Babbel doesn't describe poll-takers specific reasoning behind these subjectively "less sexy" accents. Instead, it offers the same explanation that sociolinguists suggest drives such judgments: social evaluation of the speaker and not the speech per se. But, for every stereotype of the Russian alcoholic villain and the stoned Dutch guy in clogs, there's a Milla Jovovich and Michiel Huisman (Danaerys's hot Dutch lover on Game of Thrones—who's not blonde and blue-eyed, thus shattering another of our stereotypes about Dutch people).

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Are all British accents the same?

OK, so we know many American females swoon over British blokes. But, when they clicked "British" on MissTravel's poll, which British accent were they referring to? According to one linguist's estimate, there are at least 56 varieties!

A few exciting studies show how subjective and culturally- and regionally-dependent accent perception is. A British Airways poll questioned American preferences about regional UK accents. The Americans thought the accent from Glasgow was the sexiest. Still, according to a separate linguistic study, British people think the Glaswegian accent is one of the worst in social attractiveness. In reverse, British people considered a New York accent sexy, but Americans associated it with "impatience, money, and trouble."

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One person's trash is another person's hottest accent, broadly generalized accents from one country or another or regional—even neighbourhood—varieties. These examples show that accent hierarchies exist only because individuals create them to suit their subjective preferences based on their stereotypical understandings (or lack thereof) of the cultures associated with those accents.

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Can discrimination happen because of accents?

Of course, this means that accent hierarchies do exist. When enough people in an in-group community agree on particular stereotypes of out-group communities—and on what counts as allowable and non-allowable, or attractive or non-attractive accents—it can lead to accent discrimination.

Even though nothing in the language is inherently (un)attractive, language is a social institution used by imperfect social beings who bring a lot of judgments to the table, and those judgments create myths about attractiveness. As sociolinguist Dr Vineeta Chand told The Guardian, "We spend a lot of time in linguistics dispelling myths and the notion of hierarchical languages in terms of attractiveness…." In the scope of research on accents, there are fewer rigorous studies on accent attractiveness than one might expect. That's because, according to Chand, labelling languages as attractive or not is "a dangerous game" that "open[s] a can of worms you don't want to encourage."

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So, while it's OK to drool over Sofia Vergara's Colombian accent or drip to the floor like butta when Liam Hemsworth opens his mouth, be aware that our language biases might also unintentionally put others at a disadvantage. In a globalized world, it's more important to become familiar with and practice listening to diverse speakers so that what you hear is the content, not the accent.