Svea

What's the difference?
I can make an educated guess and since Google didn't give me what I was looking for in it's first 3 results, naturally, I gave up on it

Thanks.

felipealonso

Uff... a hard question!!! Drawing the line between a language and a dialect is really complicated, and sometimes not even scholars are able to give the answer.
But, for me, an accent in the "tone" you give to pronounce a language, your voice's inflection. So? You can have many accents, but the language is still the same, and I think that happens with all the languages that have many countries in which are spoken.
Besides, all of this "Dialect and Language" issue, depends on several things, including political, historical, regional, national... reasons. What about Egyptian, Morocan, Algerian... Arabic v/s Classical Arabic? What about Swiss German and "Standard" German? or Catalan and Valencian? Serbian and Croatian? This is a matter of constant debate.

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Svea

Yes.. but there must be some clear-cut definition of both... or else they'd be the same.

sflor

Hello Svea and Felipe,

I guess this will help you to understand the meaning of those words... here´s my briefly definition of both concepts:

For instance, someone who speaks with a particular accent pronounces the words of a language in a distinctive way that shows which country, region ou social class they come from.

A dialect is a form of language spoken in a particular area.

If you want a more exhaustive and comprehensive definition... Merriam Webster Dictionary tells us :

Accent:

1 : an articulative effort giving prominence to one syllable over adjacent syllables; also : the prominence thus given a syllable
2 : a distinctive manner of expression: as a : an individual's distinctive or characteristic inflection, tone, or choice of words -- usually used in plural b : a way of speaking typical of a particular group of people and especially of the natives or residents of a region
3 : rhythmically significant stress on the syllables of a verse usually at regular intervals
4 archaic : UTTERANCE
5 a : a mark (as ´, `, ^) used in writing or printing to indicate a specific sound value, stress, or pitch, to distinguish words otherwise identically spelled, or to indicate that an ordinarily mute vowel should be pronounced b : an accented letter
6 a : greater stress given to one musical tone than to its neighbors b : ACCENT MARK 2
7 a : emphasis laid on a part of an artistic design or composition b : an emphasized detail or area; especially : a small detail in sharp contrast with its surroundings c : a substance or object used for emphasis
8 : a mark placed to the right of a letter or number and usually slightly above it: as a : a double prime b : PRIME
9 : special concern or attention : EMPHASIS <an accent on youth>
- ac·cent·less /-l&s/ adjective

Dialect:

1 a : a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language <the Doric dialect of ancient Greek> b : one of two or more cognate languages <French and Italian are Romance dialects> c : a variety of a language used by the members of a group <such dialects as politics and advertising -- Philip Howard> d : a variety of language whose identity is fixed by a factor other than geography (as social class) <spoke a rough peasant dialect> e : REGISTER 4c f : a version of a computer programming language
2 : manner or means of expressing oneself : PHRASEOLOGY

I hope it helps!

See you,

sflor

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Svea

Thank you!

Tienus

Hi
sorry to be so late but i suggest you to check wikipedia when you didn't find on Google

I'm a wikipedia addict since i know this "encyclo-dictio-everything website"

Here some links to help you... I hope
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dialect
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/accent

See you

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