A dialect is a variety of a language spoken by an identifiable subgroup of people. Traditionally, linguists have applied the term dialect to geographically distinct language varieties, but in current usage the term can include speech varieties characteristic of other socially definable groups. Determining whether two speech varieties are dialects of the same language, or whether they have changed enough to be considered distinct languages, has often proved a difficult decision.
Linguists usually cite mutual intelligibility as the major criterion in making this decision. If two speech Cartier Replica(http://www.imitatewatch.com/GoodsBrand/Replica-Cartier-Watches-26.html) varieties are not mutually comprehensible, then the speech varieties are different languages; if they are mutually intelligible but differ systematically from one another, then they are dialects of the same language.
There are problems with this definition, however, because many levels of mutual intelligibility exist, and linguists must decide at what level speech varieties should no longer be considered mutually intelligible. This is difficult to establish in practice. Intelligibility has a large psychological component: If a speaker of one speech variety wants to understand a speaker of another speech variety, understanding is more likely than if this were not the case. In addition, chains of speech varieties exist in which adjacent peach varieties are mutually intelligible, but speech varieties farther apart in the chain are not. Furthermore, sociopolitical factors almost inevitably influence the process of distinguishing between dialects and languages.
In ordinary usage, the term dialect can also mean a variety of a language that is distinct from what is considered the standard form of that language. Linguists, however, Breitling Replica(http://www.imitatewatch.com/GoodsBrand/Replica-Breitling-Watches-19.html) consider the standard language to be simply one dialect of a language. For example, the dialect of French spoken in Paris became the standard language of France not because of any linguistic features of this dialect but because Paris was the political and cultural center of the country.
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Dialect, language spoken, identifiable, Linguists, intelligible, definition
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