Dialects

Abstract

The average upper-class Englishman of the older school is as reluctant to believe that he speaks a dialect as he is to believe that he can be a native. He assumes that natives come from Asia or Africa and that dialects are spoken by picturesque countrymen belonging to the lower income groups. The unfortunate pejorative associations of the word ‘dialect’ make it hard to give it a precise meaning that will be generally accepted. The question what is the difference between a dialect and a language does not admit of a clear-cut solution. Whatever criterion is applied, one finds instances where the conclusions that we reach on theoretical grounds conflict with those of common sense or with popular usage. A political test has been suggested: that a language is officially accepted as a national form of speech, whereas a dialect is not. This test breaks down by reason of what it excludes. For political reasons the language of a minority group may have no official recognition, but it would be absurd for this reason to treat as a dialect a form of speech belonging to a different family of languages. Welsh and Gaelic are languages, whatever recognition the British Government may give them.