Sociolinguistics and Dialects

[@bilinguitos]

Dude you're the man thank you! I'm teaching High School Linguistics and I use your videos all the time to help explain concepts when the students need a break from my voice hahaha

[@sultanyousefabdullahabdull6124]

Wow!

[@dresdi]

what country do you live in that has high school linguistics lol

[@katieseymour98]

This is such amazing revision for my A level English Language exam! I've been looking for something like this! :-D Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[@elizabeth199002]

I'm glad I came across your channel. Your explanation of linguistic issues is really coherent, comprehensive and professional. Thank you !!

[@thelingspace]

Elizabeth León We're glad you're enjoying them! Thanks for the kind words.

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

I told a friend that AAVE may have come out of a 19th century slaves' cant, combining late colonial English with elements of African dialects. He tried to tell me that AAVE is somehow less legitimate than standard English, and takes it as a sign of stupidity and laziness. I quickly pointed out that although the public education system in the US does tend to leave the most vulnerable members of society in the lurch (mostly low-income inner-city black people), and that is a very real and very serious problem, education and speech have almost nothing to do with each other.

[@MarionFiedlerMusic]

Thanks for sharing. I am in interested in sociolinguistics from the perspective of a student and songwriter. Your overview was very helpful.

[@laracroftvideos]

So in IPA, it's 4:08 /miɹəkɫ/ vs. 4:16 /mɪɹəkɫ/? EER vs. IHR?

[@Gyroglle]

At 4:27, you said that Spanish or French 'literally' have hundreds of dialects. Do they actually, or did you use the word as an intensifier? I'm honestly curious.

[@thelingspace]

Bolino Thanks for the question! This depends on how you're defining dialect, really. If you want to define it just in terms of geography, then they wouldn't have hundreds of dialects, although each would have a pretty impressive amount - colonial empires did end up producing a lot of dialects as they mixed with the different indigenous people in the places they'd occupied.But if you think about the varieties that go beyond geography, like age, race, class, gender, religion, etc., and you apply these across the geographical versions language, you can certainly get to the point where you can have hundred of different dialects, between those intersections. And sociolinguists do look at these different factors, too! So in that sense, there are literally hundreds of dialects that we could look at. And this is before we get to the point where everyone has their own specific idiolect. Just within the smaller groups, we could get to hundreds. Hope this helps!

[@Myrkvi_]

I'd like to add that in Norwegian and Swedish there are dialects that are as different (if not more) as Standard Eastern Norwegian and Rikssvensk, and that some dialects might be more similar to another across the border than the "standard dialect" of the language. The orthographies are also interesting, with Norwegian bokmål looking more similar to written Danish than Swedish.

[@BoxCubeSquare]

I wholeheartedly believe that no language is more correct than another and that widespread ignorance of that fact entrenches prejudiced attitudes. At the same time, a linguistic barrier in its own right can impede social cohesion. Being able to speak the standard version is a basic requirement for assimilation into the mainstream. So I think it makes sense from a policy standpoint to promote universal competence in the standard version.

[@thelingspace]

BoxCubeSquare Thanks for the question! This is definitely a thorny one. It's definitely true that, regardless of the science behind it saying all dialects are equal, there is a social benefit to being able to converse in the prestige dialect. Preparing people to speak in that dialect is useful, certainly, but we have to approach it in a way that doesn't degrade their own linguistic and cultural identity, which can be challenging. We also need to continue to raise awareness that all versions of a language are equally valid.This is one of those areas that it's difficult to navigate, and it's worth noting it's a common problem for widespread languages everywhere - when I was studying in Japan, the top level in my program had Japanese people who spoke dialects that were considered sub-standard, and they couldn't get jobs, for example. We don't want to lose the dialects, and we don't want to make people feel bad for speaking them, but we want those people to also be able to do what they want in the world, and often, the reality of the situation means that that points at speaking the "standard" version of the language. It's a very hard topic!

[@plerpplerp5599]

Paul Merrill ...But who says what is standard?

[@slimboyfat9409]

Rikki Sjoeberg Usually groups that have s large amount of power or influence in a society will be perceived as having the preferred accent or dialect and other people may in time (even without the slightest hint of coersion)gravitate to such accents-or if not them ,their children will very possibly adopt such perceived "desirable" accents/dialects.

[@pumpkingrantaire3861]

i think its interesting how in england there are so many different accents/dialects that if you go to another city people speak totally differently. but in russia which is much bigger you dont really have any dialects at all? is there any explanation for that?

[@thelingspace]

+Silver Phoenix Hmmm. I can't claim to be an expert in Russian dialects, but digging around some, I do find some discussion of different dialects in Russian, which suggests there are at least three varieties. For example, here's one with a bunch of IPA examples: therusblog.com/2012/12/17/dialects-of-the-russian-language/ But I also wouldn't be surprised if the Russian spoken in the far east, like in Vladivostok or Khabarovsk, is different, as well. That's a lot of geography to cover. But I hope this still helps, though! ^_^

[@pumpkingrantaire3861]

The Ling Space Thank you very much!! ^.^ well i asked my mom, who is russian, about accents and dialects in russia and she said that people speak a little differently in some parts, but there aren't any extreme differences like in some parts of england (where i'm really having difficulties understanding some people!) however there are some peoples in siberia that speak very different to "normal russian", although i am not sure if that's because they're really speaking a different language or if that is an example of a dialect thanks again for the link, i'll have a look at it!:D

[@thelingspace]

+Silver Phoenix Yeah, England has a lot of variety, and it can be hard to understand people. I've talked with British friends online or in person where I've just been lost. Japan was similar, I found, for dialects - where I lived, in Yamagata, the dialect was strong enough that friends from Tokyo had a hard time understanding it. And there is sufficient variation across parts of North America for that, too, I find - friends from Canada who went to Shenandoah in Virginia had some challenges talking with the locals, for instance. Just poking around a bit more, there are people who say there's not much variation, and then those who say there's more significant variation, both in terms of pronunciation and word usage, particularly once you start looking at some of the Russian spoken outside of Russia itself, like in some of the other countries that used to make up the USSR, like Armenia as compared to Kazakhstan, etc. But again, this isn't my area of expertise! I'm inclined to go more with the idea that there is variation than not, between the positions, but I don't know enough to say for sure. Hope this helps, though. ^_^

[@pumpkingrantaire3861]

The Ling Space oh i hadn't thought about coutries outside of russia! well yes then of course there are definitely differences :D still i think its fascinating how in such a small country as england you find SO MANY different dialects and then if you look at russia there are comparatively less differences in language, at least if you just look at the european part of russia. for example people in moscow talk exactly like people in saratov (which is a 12 hours train journey away!) even if you go visit a small village far a away from any cities people there still speak exactly like the people in the city! (at least these have been my experiences) like you probably have to go really long distances to find different dialects in russia, whereas in england you don't need to go far at all. its the same in germany bc here you also have lots of dialects but we also have "hochdeutsch" which is a sort of "official german" and everyone can speak it or at least understand it, which is kind of weird when you think about it... i thought maybe it's similar in russia: someone decided on "official russian speech" and made everyone speak it? maybe they had lots and lots of dialects in the past... this is such a fascinating topic! dialects are amazing! i really like your channel btw it's really helpful and thank you for replying:)

[@thelingspace]

+Silver Phoenix Thanks for the comments! Glad you like the channel. ^_^ Again, I don't know enough about Russian history to say for 100% sure, but it does seem to be the case that there was an attempt to level out all the dialects in Russian during the Soviet era in compulsory education using the Moscow dialect. So that could account for the relatively low variation. Again, German (or British English) is much more the norm, I think - I have friends from Switzerland and Austria who definitely have a lot to say about the attitudes of people towards their accents, and the amount of variation that can be found within it. ^_^

[@whereisamine]

It's always nice to hear about ourselves sometimes! Greetings from Montréal, Québec Tsé qu'j'aime pas mal vos vidéos à vous? Lâchez-pas ;)

[@thelingspace]

Amine Bouzidi Merci! Glad you liked it. ^_^

[@dianedavidson5283]

Oh, and I know what else I want to ask.... I'm reading _Teaching English Language Learners" by Wayne Wright, to study for my license to teach ESL/ELL.... and he says we speak Standard English. But I have always maintained that we (educated dominant culture in the US) speak Standard American, or Cronkite-ese (After the speech of "Uncle" Walter Cronkite). How do you weigh in? Thanks!

[@kojayeoja]

Wait...I'm from Utah and I don't hear the difference between the two ways he said "miracle." O_o

[@thelingspace]

Thanks for the comment! The two differences are that in the first one, I pronounced it like "meeracle", with the [i:] "ee" sound you get in a word like "neat." In the second, I pronounced it like "mihracle," with the [ɪ] sound you get in a word like "knit." Some dialects of English don't have this distinction before that r sound, though, so in that case, it would be pretty hard to hear the difference between them. I didn't try to point it up too much in how I pronounced it, because I thought that'd make it sound unnatural. We have a copy of the map related to the two pronunciations back on our website, if you want to look at it! According to that dialect survey, Utah mostly has the second pronunciation, although the color isn't 100% dark, which suggests there's some variation in what people said in the survey, as well. Hope this helps!

[@kojayeoja]

The Ling Space Hmm...after saying the word to myself over and over and probably sounding like a weirdo, I've decided that it sounds like a mix of the two.

[@thelingspace]

JomoWhore Saying things over and over and sounding like a weirdo is a big part of linguistics! I've definitely done it a whole bunch of times. And if it's a mix, it may mean that for you, they are part of the same underlying category. That'd be my guess, but I'd trust your instincts. ^_^

[@33312evil]

I'm a Utahn too and I had the same reaction xD

[@sunnyvalentine6066]

Hello! Thank you for sharing your knowledge! You bring up very interesting topics and information. Do you have any sources from your presentation that you could share? Thanks again!

[@danidejaneiro8378]

I didn't really perceive a massive difference in your two pronunciations of "miracle" - was it between a short and long first vowel?

[@joaodoia2071]

Great class man. Congratulations!

[@商嘉琦]

Really inspiring and helps a lot to my lecture reading. Thank you

[@zinebasiya]

This helped me a lot to understand my course , thank you so much 👏

[@thelingspace]

Sure! Very glad to be of service. ^_^

[@InezAllen]

This was really interesting to me. My uncle spent a couple of years in Quebec, previous to this, he'd learned European French. He says that it took him an embarrassingly long time to be able to understand Quebec French, but almost all of the Quebecois could understand him. I don't know much about the Quebecois educational system (or French), so I have no idea if they study European French in school or not or like anything about spoken v written French, but is this normal? Do speakers of a less common dialect form usually have an easier time understanding the "correct" dialect, or is it usually the other way around?

[@thelingspace]

Valkiro Allen Thanks for the question! I'd say it is normal, and the answer to this actually comes down to exposure. The more exposure you've had to other dialects, the more likely it is you'll be able to understand what's going on in them. In the Quebec education system, you do get exposure to European (or International, as it's often called) French in the schools, largely in writing, but also in some spoken, because that's the dialect with the most prestige. Of course, you also get lots of exposure to regular Quebec French.And beyond the classroom exposure to European French, a lot of the French media that's available in Quebec - books, TV shows, movies, music - is in European French, too. So you get a lot of opportunities to know what that variety of French looks like! Quebec French, on the other hand, doesn't get as much exposure in France, and as a less prestigious dialect, it's viewed negatively and thought of as hard to understand.I wouldn't say that it's a "correct" dialect issue, but the prestige one is more likely to be available to lots of people even in areas that use the less common dialects, and so that exposure will make it easier for the speakers of those dialects to understand, rather than the other way around. But if you got a group of people using the less common dialect that didn't have that exposure, and you gave them the prestige dialect, they'd be expected to struggle just as much.It's a very interesting question! Thanks again. ^_^

[@InezAllen]

thanks The Ling Space ! my mom and i were talking about this last night, and that's what we were thinking - the less common dialects have more exposure to the main dialect or the one endorsed by whatever council defines the "right" dialect. i also find it interesting to look at when uncommon dialects meet uncommon dialects. for example, my dad once translated two pretty much mutually unintelligible dialects - south californian and philly jive. although i wasnt alive at the time, he says that was quite an experience.

[@thelingspace]

Valkiro Allen I can imagine! I've had to translate between Osaka and Yamagata dialects of Japanese before, which don't have a lot in common, either. It's weird to be treating things that you're used to thinking as one language as things that require translation to go back and forth! But it just goes to show, these concepts really exist along a continuum.

[@thelingspace]

***** That seems quite likely to me, as well - how many opportunities do you have to get exposure to other dialects? The more schooling and educational resources you have, the greater the likelihood you'll get more exposure to the prestige dialects.

[@saadiaaab3985]

Thank u for ur explanation

[@imthebossmermaid3648]

Thanks for this video!

[@AsmaaPurity]

That was enlightening Thank you very much

[@SMATF5]

I'm from Southern California, where we pronounce exit as "eggs-it" (people in Seattle do the same), and I have a lot of family in Utah, where instead of "Tuesday", they say "toosdee".

[@thelingspace]

Yeah, I've definitely heard both of these, too. Once you start listening for things like this, it just starts jumping out at you everywhere. ^_^

[@SMATF5]

+TheJman0205 Haha, yeah -- it's mainly my grandparents' generation that I hear it from.

[@sugarfrosted2005]

How do you say anxious? Is it like "Ainchiss"?

[@SMATF5]

sugarfrosted "Angshiss"

[@abdulrazzaq9726]

Upload complete videos lecturers course of sociolinguistics for postgraduate classes.

[@RosieParent7]

Love the videos. :) Thanks! But, in case you didn't know or were not aware, there are huge francophone (Canadian French) populations *outside* of Québec... And we have similar dialectical differences in our language to France French. It is a common mistake to assume all francophones live in Québec, but they are not the only Canadian French. ;)

[@space_asylum]

I was just kind of curious. Where does the Midwestern accent come from? I recently learned that the southern draw originally came from England somewhere and I was curious how the Midwestern accent came to be.

[@thelingspace]

Evillepandas So this is a bit of a complicated question, in that the Midwest is a pretty big area, and there are a couple of different dialects around there. For a bunch of the Midwest, like the upper Midwest, the dialect has been influenced by the large numbers of German, Swedish, and Norwegians people who moved to that part of the country. That influence shows up both in pronunciation and in grammatical structures. If you want to read more about that dialect, take a look at this piece from Joe Salmons at the University of Wisconsin: @79 But maybe you mean the Great Lakes sort of Midwest, in which case, perhaps you are thinking of the vowel changes there. There's an ongoing vowel shift in that region, which likely started off with [æ] moving towards [ɛ], but once things start shifting around, there can be a lot of consequences, and a lot of the vowels in the dialect have shifted as a result. The earlier piece talks about this some as well, and there's an accessible discussion on Slate here: @19 Hope this helps! Thanks for the question. ^_^

[@thelingspace]

Evillepandas Sigh. Since the links are being weird, let's try this: csumc.wisc.edu/?q=node/79 for the Salmons piece, and slate.me/19nrgk8 for the Slate one. ^^;

[@space_asylum]

返事してくれてありがとうございました！！！　今まで返事してくれたことに気付けなかったんですが。。（笑）

[@thelingspace]

Evillepandas 心配しないで！時々KZbinからのコメントを見つけるのが難しいですね。僕も失う時があります。 ^^;

[@johno.7791]

@@thelingspace wow!!!

[@zoroarkking18]

I never realized that "mairacle" was one of my Georgia-isms lol.

[@blackpearl232]

is there a difference between low class and high class in dialect?

[@thelingspace]

+BLACK PEARL Well, in practice, there are markers in terms of accent and vocabulary that we use to assess class boundaries in conversation, often. But those are arbitrary - there's no deep reason behind why a given marker is associated one way or another. But if you're asking whether people can try to work out class distinctions from language usage, then yeah, definitely. ^_^

[@sashakindel3600]

It was kind of disconcerting that the sociolinguistics class I took in college remained totally unjudgmental toward the countless cases of dialect-based discrimination it covered. Perhaps that's the properly academic treatment, but it's much more comfortable for at least one "and we shouldn't do this, agreed?" to come with it, as here.

[@GregSanders]

As a political scientist, I found this fascinating. The equality of all dialects scientifically makes me wonder about a fairly famous fictional example, Newspeak from Orwell's book 1984. That fictional language had intentionally been stripped of diversity and had been meant to make dissenting speech simply impossible. Given that we've had a few examples of totalitarianism since then, and presumably linguists have studied the way refugees speak between the two Koreas and the like. So was Orwell wrong on this and do their languages maintain their richness despite any best effort of ruling regimes?

[@thelingspace]

Greg Sanders Thanks for the interesting question! I think the thing to note here is that you can try to get rid of language diversity, but people will still want to be able to talk about whatever they want to. Trying to police thoughtcrime and language use 1984-style requires way more control over language than we've seen.The Korean case is interesting, and I suggest this discussion on Language Log if you're curious: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15534. What we can see is that the North Koreans have succeeded in pushing the languages apart, and changing the meaning of some words. If they keep pushing it down this road, they may succeed in making North Korean and South Korean mutually unintelligible, and thus two languages. But it's not that they've made the language less able to talk about things, from the looks of it; they've just changed the meanings of some words, and introduced a lot of new ones, etc. I don't think it's less rich; it's just different. And that's sort of what we'd expect, I think. But we'll have to see where it goes!

[@GregSanders]

Cool. That may well be what linguists had expected though I do see a various George Orwell essays discussed on language fairly often. So I think for a good number of people it actually is news that even the DPRK doesn't have that level of control despite epitomizing modern totalitarianism. In the larger sense, I do think Orwell's Politics and the English Language ( www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm ) is still a touchstone for many of the more political writers who like to talk about language. Based on past Ling Space episodes, I think Orwell is trying to diagnose what are in essence violations of Paul Grice's Cooperative Principle, albeit without use of that theory to help avoid conflations of dialect and style.

[@slimboyfat9409]

I vaguely remember hearing once that Serbs and Croatians may have made attempts to distinguish their shared language, in little ways for political reasons,so as to emphasise difference between the two nationalities.

[@shaguftaiqbal550]

Thank you sir

[@liamgoldbeck]

I'm a bit angry. Danish wasn't mentioned alongside Norwegian and Swedish.

[@dianedavidson5283]

So, I get that one dialect is not more proper than another, that different dialects are linguistically equal, both being a robust language. BUT, would you say one language is simpler than another? Is Spanish easier than Latin? I suspect I am thinking of this in terms of how long it takes a person to pick up those languages as an additional language. I just watched your video on UG and it seems any kid will pick up Latin or Spanish equally fast, so that might be an indication that neither is more simple. Still, Latin has all those declensions and cases, surely it's empirically true that such trappings are less simple??

[@felipevasconcelos6736]

Spanish wasn't born because Latin was different. It was born because they were Germanic with high romance influence. So, they had Latin and mixed it with various Germanic languages. This mix happened not because Latin was too complex, but because it was too different. Actually there are no natural languages that are simpler than others: what is simple for you seems so because it's similar to what you are used to.

[@ronaldonmg]

Which ones are harder/easier for YOU depends on which ones you already know and how well. But for most non-native-speakers, Esperanto is a lot easier than any national language not related to their own native one

[@teacherdkennedy]

Great. It's cool that you brought in so many non-African-American examples, which at least for Americans are less hot-button. Question: someone told me a while ago that a lot of the complexities of French, orthography I think was the main point, were basically invented as class gatekeepers, explicitly and purposefully. Is this true? Thanks as always.

[@thelingspace]

Thanks for the question again, as always! We thought using examples other than AAVE would also perhaps be fresher for people, but Quebec French is also quite different from European French, and we thought the local colour would be nice! So I've done some research into the history of French orthography, which required some work into older French, and it's more complicated that I think your friend made it out to be. Much of the spelling in French doesn't match the way that we pronounce things now, but it does match the French of several centuries ago. And we can see this in how a lot of these letters are actually still pronounced in other Romance languages around modern French, where the course of how the phonology developed was different. Take a look at "ils sortent", or they leave, in French. That verb gets pronounced [soʁt]. But in Catalan, it's "ells sorten", and the verb is [sortən]. So we can see the conjugation still living a full life in the pronunciation there. But there definitely was a portion of this that is from gatekeeping. There've been a number of attempts to reform French spelling to better match the pronunciation of the times over the past few hundred years, since the mid-1500s. But while some elements have taken hold, like regularizing spelling for singular and plurals or adding accent marks, most of the other reforms aimed at matching spelling to pronunciation haven't, as you can tell from looking at modern French. Some of those working in the Académie Française during the early period of dealing with orthography in a prescriptive manner, in the late 1600s, were very explicit regarding the goal of being gatekeepers. The official policy was that "La Compagnie declare qu'elle desire suiure l'ancienne orthographe qui distingue les gents de lettres dauec les ignorants et les simples femmes, et qu'il faut la maintenir par tout hormis dans les mots ou un long et constant usage en aura introduit une contraire." Or, basically, that the old orthography should be kept so as to distinguish between men of letters and ignorant people and simple women. They had to maintain the words of old to accomplish this. Some of the participants felt that the body should not be making declarations of this sort, and if they were, it should be phrased instead: "qui distingue les gens de lettres dauec les autres. Cela est plus-simple et n'offense personne." So, to distinguish men of letters from others, since it's simpler and won't offend people. But the basic underlying sentiment doesn't seem to be in dispute - part of the role of keeping the orthography as it was was to allow for some class distinctions to be made. So overall, it seems like the orthography in French is reflective of how it used to be pronounced historically, but much of it was explicitly kept in place when standardization occurred for dictionaries and printing so that those with prestige would still be set apart. Hope this answers your question! ^_^

[@teacherdkennedy]

The Ling Space Yes. Thank you. I guess the French are just more comfortable with their class-based society than Americans, who try to hide it and generally will do anything to pretend that grammar is neutral and objective and not at all about gate-keeping. I'm actually surprised French orthography wasn't "democratized" during the French revolution. Hm...Thanks.

[@JonathanBeagley]

There are even differences in how we speak based upon sexual orientation!

[@thelingspace]

+Jonathan Beagley For sure! And that's both in terms of outright argots that people have made, and also just language usage itself. I try to keep track of this a bit myself - I've got a pretty diverse group of friends and colleagues on this front. But it's definitely interesting. ^_^

[@plerpplerp5599]

Jonathan Beagley ...eh?😩

[@colaocha1115]

I thought the saying was a 'language is a dialect withe an army and a flag'

[@thelingspace]

+CÓLaocha There have been other versions of it changing it to "flag", but it's thought to originate with Max Weinreich, who used "navy", albeit in Yiddish. There's a good discussion of it on Wikipedia here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy

[@ronaldonmg]

Esperanto has a flag, but no army. It's still a language

[@efrenreme5749]

great meaningful info

[@flaviospadavecchia5126]

I don't know man, English has small variations that are totally intellegibile even though you call them dialects. But think about Italy's dialects. There are a lot, and often if one from the South speaks in his dialect, one from the North will have to struggle a lot even to understand something. Example: my grandpa could say: "Ce sté a ffè ddo?" While in standard Italian that would be: "Cosa stai facendo qui?" ("What are you doing here?"). And yet it's just considered a dialect, and not a language. Funny isn't it?

[@thelingspace]

+Flavio Spadavecchia Yeah, that's the way it goes. Political boundaries matter a lot more for deciding what's a language vs. a dialect. I think the criterion of mutual intelligibility should matter more on that front, but yeah. Linguists aren't the ones making these decisions.

[@fabiosahadewabrigida9053]

Actually, that sentence is In Apulian Dialect of Southern Language of Italy (also know as Neapolitan) which IS NOT ITALIAN. In Italy many idioms that are considered "dialects of Italian" are instead languages that come directly from Latin.

[@treasuredwisp]

I couldn't even tell the difference between the two miracles. Can anyone write them out using the phonetic alphabet?

[@benjaminabel8596]

I had to listen to the two pronunciations of "miracle" a couple times to hear the difference.

[@TheRumgee]

Cantonese and Mandarin use the same writing, they are only spoken differently. So doesn't this still mean that the two dialects are intelligible to each other? They use different words in different situations but I'm pretty sure it can still be understood in writing. I personally wouldn't say they are close at all to being different languages but that's just me.

[@cccEngineer]

Cantonese is formally written exactly the same as Mandarin is written. Cantonese is informally written completely different from Mandarin.

[@thelingspace]

***** Let's try this again...Bit of a long reply coming here! As cccEngineer said already, the writing is the same for more formal stuff, but informal writing often ends up being different. Chinese writing is pretty amazing in that it does allow people from different languages to be able to understand each other more easily, though!But that being said, there's still a lot of difference between the two languages: their vocabulary is pretty different for how you actually pronounce things, and so the words themselves; they have a different number of tones, with Mandarin having 4 and Cantonese having at least 6 (depending on your analysis, it's somewhere between 6 and 9); the shape of the syllable in the two languages is different; a variety of different syntactic properties, etc. You can look here for some comparisons: ja.scribd.com/doc/45193450/A-Brief-Comparison-of-Cantonese-vs-Mandarin, or at the Cantonese grammar page on Wikipedia, which has a good discussion: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_grammar#Differences_from_Mandarin_grammar The bottom line is, though, that linguistics gives primacy to spoken language over written language: normally developing kids will all learn to speak, but not all will become literate, and we still want to say they have language; also, a hefty number of languages have no written form, but we still want to say they're languages. And if you had a Cantonese and Mandarin speaker in the same room, and each didn't know the other language, they'd have a real hard time understanding each other.We're going to do an episode in the future about reading and why linguists prefer to talk about speech (or sign), but if you want some interesting reading in the meantime, I suggest Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf. Thanks for the question!

[@TheRumgee]

The Ling Space I was mostly just confused as to why Linguists prefer speech/signing. I guess you'll be explaining that later.

[@thelingspace]

***** We'll definitely be coming back to that! But it does have to do with acquisition (how kids learn language), dealing with languages that have no writing systems but are still clearly languages, looking at parts of language that are far more prevalent in speech (like phonology), etc. Writing is very interesting, and there's a lot of research that goes into that, too, but we're really wired for speaking and listening in a way we're not for reading and writing. We can even see this in how things go wrong - dyslexia or illiteracy is far more common than the various aphasias or other disorders that specifically effect language. But I'm definitely happy to talk about this more once we come back around to this in the main video series. Thanks again!

Fantastic. Thank you so much for the video. *-* I was familiarized with almost everything you said after I read a book by Marcos Bagno - I f*cking love him!

[@thelingspace]

L. Érick Thank you so much for the comment! I looked up Prof. Bagno, and he does look really great - I haven't had a chance to read any of his stuff, because sadly, I don't speak Portuguese, and it doesn't look like his books have been translated to any language I do speak, but if they do get translated, I'll keep an eye out. ^_^

The Ling Space Wooooooow! Thank you so much for the feedback on my comment! I was so happy that I did find a video (a fresh, and recent video) about this subject that I just love and often talk about with my students. Mr. Bagno sounds a lot like you. His two books about this subject are VERY, VERY popular among college students who study Languages here in Brazil. No wonder it is, because in Brazil you have no idea how strong it is the linguistic prejudice, and his books helped me a lot 'cause I used to discriminate against people because of their accent or because of a non-standard variety. And today I realized how stupid I was, and how happy I am now because I've learned how the differences can be beautiful. If one day, for some reason, you decide to learn Portuguese, I do recommend you to read his stuff 'cause he's amazing - just like you. Guess his books aren't translated into English or any other language 'cause it mostly talks about Portuguese, although he does mention examples in other languages. *By the way, by watching your video, I could FINALLY learn how to pronounce varierty properly. Thank you so much for your comment, and a huge hug from Brazil.

[@thelingspace]

L. Érick Thanks again for the comment! And glad we could help. I did look, but I don't see any of his books in English. But if he's working against language prejudice, that's definitely a good thing! Even if most of the examples are about Portuguese, I think having the books in English would still serve as a useful resource for us.I wasn't aware of the extent of linguistic prejudice in Brazil, but given the extent of such prejudice in other cultures, it makes sense to me that it would exist there, too. I hope you and your students help work against prejudice there! Best of luck. ^_^

[@eltondiassis]

Hey man, my native language is a variant of Portuguese in Brazil (it's really not Brazilian Portuguese). We have tones, words e vocabulary much different. However European-Portuguese and Brazilian-Portuguese are completely intelligible to me, nevertheless, this is not the same thing between Brazil and Portugal. For exemple, Portuguese movies don't come in Brazil, cos people can't understand what they speak, but Brazilian movies and music are completely intelligible in Portugal. By writing we can understand each other - our grammar is the same.

[@thelingspace]

+Emer Browne Yep, it's an actual servbot! One of the Tron Bonne ones. But it definitely did get around to some of the other Capcom games. ^_^

[@dianedavidson5283]

Ooooh. That shit just got real. You have managed to make linguistics interesting in the several videos I've seen, but, in this case, you even got political. Very cool.

[@thelingspace]

+Diane Davidson Thanks! Glad you liked it. It's an important point to make, that from a linguistic perspective, there's no reason to prioritize one language over another. I hope we did it well. ^_^

[@dianedavidson5283]

+The Ling Space Yes, you did. Folks like to think one dialect is more proper than another. That's not the perspective or value of linguists. That was clear. :)

[@thelingspace]

+Diane Davidson Great. ^_^

[@waliyikediro7573]

how to improve my basic skils of language

[@aishanoor3748]

Thanks a lot!

[@thelingspace]

You're welcome! ^_^

[@baloung7622]

To me, and I think to a lot of other French French speakers, Quebec French is not necessarily associated with a lower social status. In fact, I don't think of it as a dialect but more as a variety of French, just like mine. We might just make fun of the way the speakers talk or because of words they use a little bit, but it doesn't go further and I think this is more due to the fact that there is few linguistic and cultural interaction between these "Frenches", for example through movies or TV shows, unlike with Britain and America (in US movies, it's not uncommon to hear British accents, whereas in France, hearing a Quebec accent in a movie is almost unconceivable, and there are even different foreign movies dubbings for each area) than to the belief that Quebec French is "corrupted French". BTW, I never heard anybody say that, and this would sound to me like outright ignorance. On the other hand, some accents do carry huge stereotypes, like the Marseille accent, which is associated to the cliché of the racist and narrow-minded middle-class dumb man. It's a shame, but it's deeply anchored in the French society, so I understand why it can be a real hurdle to integration.

[@sugarfrosted2005]

2:15 Yay Max Weinriech quote. I was hoping.

[@thelingspace]

I mean, how could you do this topic and not have the quote in there? It's such a great quote. ^_^

[@HAVgiraffe]

my eng 302 - grammar class brought me here!

[@snowpixie15]

I don't get the miracle thing... they sound the same!

[@midnightsun40]

This channels videos are really interasting and thought-provoking, but it speaks about UG as if it is fully proven , however, Univeral Grammar is a theory.

[@mariabonilla]

UPNFM 2023 ✌

[@emerbeans7431]

The Dead Rising servbot mask!!

[@romikasingh36]

very smart....

[@katjathesaurus3800]

mamma mia! ... "teachers, leave those kids alone" sudden insight. .. or is it just brought to awareness by language? dialect r adressed refered ..(?) ...

[@ChristopherRivers277]

Im fine with singling someone out for what they believe in, its called argument

[@inesbertoni3466]

I beg you please speak or read more slowly

[@eral6209]

I've been seeing your videos since the first and this is the first with which I disagree, there are good English and bad English, good English has to be learn in schools, and bad english what people speak when don't follow the rules. And nothing has to do with talk like robots. American english is an dialect of English and I think that because they are the only superpower economiclly for ego don´t want to learn to speak well.

[@thelingspace]

Leoxvell López Thanks for watching! I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're grouping together good English and standard English. It's true that there's a standard English that one speaks to present as an educated and well-heeled member of mainstream society. But that's a societal standard, and not a scientific / linguistic one. The other non-standard varieties of English that are spoken in various communities, like the AAVE we discuss in the episode, aren't lesser or worse versions of the language from the perspective of linguistics. They're just as rule-bound and follow the same universal principles as the standard dialect. As a linguist, I want to say that non-standard dialects are, from a scientific perspective, exactly as valid and interesting as the standard one. Thanks again for the comment! ^_^

[@eral6209]

thanks to your response, you're right about the scientific perspective, sorry if Isound rude in the coment before, I read it again now. and I keep watching your videos, I'm watching them in a row up to date.

[@thelingspace]

Leoxvell López Great! Thanks for watching. And no worries. ^_^

[@slimboyfat9409]

era L I'm afraid you'll have to keep studying those rules of English you mentioned :-)