Task Key

TRY IT OUT!

Dialect is defined as a regional or socially conditioned variant of a language. Dialects may vary in their phonological, lexical, grammatical, and pragmatic conventions, but are generally mutually intelligible and often spoken by people who live in the same general geographical region. The difference between a dialect and a language is not clear, however. For example, Italian and Spanish are two different languages that are nonetheless mutually intelligible. Mandarin and Cantonese are not, although they are both considered dialects of Chinese. One whimsical linguist argued that a dialect becomes a language when its speakers get their own army (Foss and Hakes, 1978, p. 5).