A dialect of a language... An accent of a language... Are we talking about the same thing? Or these words mean different things? Read this article till the end if you get confused when talking about dialects and accents!
The definitions dialect and accent are very often confused and actually used as synonyms which is not correct. However, both dialect and accent are associated with a usage of a specific language in a particular country or region, sometimes social class as well.
DIALECT
Dialect is a form of a language that people speak in a particular part of a country. It is a variant of a language that has many differences in grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation.
Dialects usually differ one from another depending on specific geographical locations and even on each person's education or social class.
Dialects are usually divided into 2 groups:
Standard dialects (the ones that are taught at schools and other institutions. Standard dialects have so-called "higher social status", that's why such dialects are spoken by educated and high-class people).
Non-standard dialects (the ones that are not supported by institutions and are often considered to be of low social classes).
There is also another division of dialects - they can be regional and social. The first ones represent those differences in a language that we can notice while traveling from one region to another where one specific language is used; while social dialects show us the differences in speech of people that belong to different social classes.
EXAMPLES
Let's have a look at some dialects of English. There are in fact so many! In the picture you can see only a little part of those dialects you can find in Britain:
And here are some dialects that you can find in Spain and some other Spanish-speaking countries:
ACCENT
Accent is the way in which someone pronounces words, influenced by the country or area they come from, or their social class. So, if a dialect deals with, let's say, grammar and vocabulary of a language, then an accent is about pronunciation, phonology of a language. An accent depends on a person's nationality, native language, social class and some other things.
For example, a person who is from Spain speaks English. He/she can speak English with Spanish accent because some of the sounds can still be pronounced in a "Spanish way". A perfect example of accents maybe will be American English, British English and Australian English.
Remember, an accent is a part of a dialect. An accent is always about a specific way of pronunciation.
It may be a complicated when it comes to naming the accents because they usually take the name of the region in which they are used, just like dialects! For example, there is the Welsh dialect that is used by the people who live in Wales, but there is also the Welsh English accent. How to distinguish them both? Just remember that when you talk about the way people speak, you more likely talk about accent. But when you mean the vocabulary they use or you notice there are some differences in grammar, then you should definitely call it a dialect.
So, I hope now your confusion disappeared or at least you understand better the differences between accents and dialects. If you found this article useful and helpful, don't forget to share with your friends! And give a like to this post :)
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