I tend to read/hear things about other languages suggesting they have different dialects that are not mutually intelligible with each other, but there seem to be very few or no cases like this in English. Someone who only understands English might have difficulty envisioning the concept of dialects with deeper divisions between them.
Like, from what I've heard, the difference between the dialects of Chinese are like the difference between Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. And I heard the situation is the same with Arabic. The difference between Latin American Spanish and European Spanish is apparently so great that games have to be localized for each individual one. I even hear that there are different forms of French within France itself.
Sure people speak English differently in different regions, but we don't even call them dialects, but rather accents. The main differences between those accents are in pronunciation. A person from Texas should still be able to have a conversation with someone from Scotland. There was that one recent news story about those two British politicians in parliament who couldn't understand each other, but that's certainly not common.
I guess it all depends on the difference between a dialect and a language. Some people like to say that a language is just a dialect with an army. The only case of the muddy distinction I can think of in English is the classification of Scots (not Scottish English, but Scots). It has its own standardized system supposedly, but if you parse the text enough it's still possible for a native English speaker to comprehend Scots.
If English is indeed more homogenized than many other languages, why? Did the worldwide spread of English-language media have a heavy standardizing effect on the language, or has English been relatively homogenized for longer?
Like, from what I've heard, the difference between the dialects of Chinese are like the difference between Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. And I heard the situation is the same with Arabic. The difference between Latin American Spanish and European Spanish is apparently so great that games have to be localized for each individual one. I even hear that there are different forms of French within France itself.
Sure people speak English differently in different regions, but we don't even call them dialects, but rather accents. The main differences between those accents are in pronunciation. A person from Texas should still be able to have a conversation with someone from Scotland. There was that one recent news story about those two British politicians in parliament who couldn't understand each other, but that's certainly not common.
I guess it all depends on the difference between a dialect and a language. Some people like to say that a language is just a dialect with an army. The only case of the muddy distinction I can think of in English is the classification of Scots (not Scottish English, but Scots). It has its own standardized system supposedly, but if you parse the text enough it's still possible for a native English speaker to comprehend Scots.
If English is indeed more homogenized than many other languages, why? Did the worldwide spread of English-language media have a heavy standardizing effect on the language, or has English been relatively homogenized for longer?
Sup y'all. I have a master's in sociolinguistics.
Obviously people in here have suggested as much already, but language vs. dialect (vs. accent) is primarily a sociopolitical distinction, not a technical one. Linguists tend to use "variety" to skirt around that debate. In terms of varieties of English being homogeneous: not especially or anything! English is, in spite of the media apparatus that broadcasts it to every corner of the planet, still diversifying, and rapidly. Even just within the United States, African American English is a massive, flourishing variety with its own phonology and a very distinct set of syntactic and morphological rules. If there is one remarkable thing about English here, it's that it has a very consistent consonant inventory across varieties in a way that a lot of languages don't. Our phonetic variation is generally restricted to vowels, which helps English speakers understand each other.
We also have to think about this diachronically (across time). Many varieties of English, especially American varieties and global Englishes, came into existence relatively recently, so they haven't had as much chance to diverge. It's not at all impossible that some varieties may continue to change to such an extent that they'll begin to lose their intelligibility to non-speakers. (And yes, naturally you can give it a thousand years or so and end up with entirely new languages a la Latin--it's the linguistic circle of life, baby!)
Last edited: