dialect

Noun

1. A lect (often a regional or minority language) as part of a group or family of languages, especially if they are viewed as a single language, or if contrasted with a standardized idiom that is considered the 'true' form of the language (for example, Bavarian as contrasted with Standard German).
   • The question could be put: 'Is there anything inherent in a dialect which gives it a negative stigma or is it that the status of the majority of the speakers is transferred to the dialect?' — something that occurs in...
   • Comparative wordlists of two dialects of Yoruba with Igala. - 2007 February 5, Roger Blench, “The Ayere and Ahan languages of Central Nigeria and their affinities”, in rogerblench.info, page 25:
   • Bloomfield, for example, noted that “local dialects are spoken by the peasants and the poorest people of the towns” (1933: 50) though he also thought that the lower middle class spoke 'sub-standard' speech. - 2010,...

   Synonyms: patois

2. A variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular area, community, or social group, differing from other varieties of the same language in relatively minor ways as regards grammar, phonology, and lexicon.
   • And in addition, many dialects of English make no morphological distinction between Adjectives and Adverbs, and thus use Adjectives in contexts where the standard language requires -ly Adverbs - 1988, Andrew Radford,...
3. Language that is perceived as substandard or wrong.
   • Well, those children don't speak dialect, not in this school. Maybe in the public schools, but not here. - 1975, H. Carl, Linguistic Perspectives on Black English, page 219:
   • […] 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." - 1994, H. Nigel Thomas, Spirits in the Dark,...
   • Many even deny it and say something like this: "No, we don't speak a dialect around here. - 1967, Roger W. Shuy, Discovering American Dialects, National Council of Teachers of English, page 1:
4. A language existing only in an oral or non-standardized form, especially a language spoken in a developing country or an isolated region.

   Synonyms: vernacular

5. A variant of a non-standardized programming language.
   • Home computers in the 1980s had many incompatible dialects of BASIC.
6. A variant form of the vocalizations of a bird species restricted to a certain area or population.
   • A curious question, which has as yet attracted but little attention, is whether the notes of the same species of Bird are in all countries alike. From my own observation I am inclined to think that they are not, and...