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Dialect vs Vernacular - What's the difference?

dialect | vernacular |

As nouns the difference between dialect and vernacular

is that dialect is a variety of a language (specifically, often a spoken variety) that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group, often with relatively minor differences in vocabulary, style, spelling and pronunciation while vernacular is the language of a people or a national language.

As an adjective vernacular is

of or pertaining to everyday language.

dialect

Noun

(en noun)
  • (linguistics) A variety of a language (specifically, often a spoken variety) that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group, often with relatively minor differences in vocabulary, style, spelling and pronunciation.
  • * A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
  • *
  • And in addition, many dialects of English make no morphological distinction between Adjectives and Adverbs, and thus use Adjectives in contexts where the standard language requires -ly'' Adverbs: compare
    (81) (a)      Tex talks ''really quickly'' [Adverb + Adverb]
            (b)   %Tex talks ''real quick
    [Adjective + Adjective]
  • A dialect of a language perceived as substandard and wrong.
  • * 1967 , Roger W. Shuy, Discovering American dialects , National Council of Teachers of English, page 1:
  • Many even deny it and say something like this: "No, we don't speak a dialect around here. [...]
  • * 1975 , Linguistic perspectives on black English , H. Carl, page 219:
  • Well, those children don't speak dialect , not in this school. Maybe in the public schools, but not here.
  • * 1994 , H. Nigel Thomas, Spirits in the dark , Heinemann, page 11:
  • [...] on the second day, Miss Anderson gave the school a lecture on why it was wrong to speak dialect'. She had ended by saying "Respectable people don't speak ' dialect ."
  • A language.
  • A variant of a non-standardized programming language.
  • Home computers in the 1980s had many incompatible dialects of BASIC.

    Usage notes

    * The difference between a language and a dialect is not always clear, but it is generally considered that people who speak different dialects can understand each other, while people who speak different languages cannot. Compare species in the biological sense.

    Derived terms

    * dialectal * dialectic

    See also

    * dialogue * ethnolect * idiolect * sociolect

    Anagrams

    * ----

    vernacular

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The language of a people or a national language.
  • ''A vernacular of the United States is English.
  • Everyday speech or dialect, including colloquialisms, as opposed to literary, liturgical, or scientific language.
  • Street vernacular can be quite different from what is heard elsewhere.
  • Language unique to a particular group of people; jargon, argot.
  • For those of a certain age, hiphop vernacular might just as well be a foreign language.
  • (Roman Catholicism) The indigenous language of a people, into which the words of the Mass are translated.
  • Vatican II allowed the celebration of the mass in the vernacular .

    Synonyms

    * (language unique to a group) argot, jargon, slang

    Antonyms

    * (national language) lingua franca

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Of or pertaining to everyday language.
  • Belonging to the country of one's birth; one's own by birth or nature; native; indigenous.
  • a vernacular disease
  • (architecture) of or related to local building materials and styles; not imported
  • (art) is connected to a collective memory; not imported
  • Synonyms

    * (of everyday language) common, everyday, indigenous, ordinary, vulgar * (architecture) folk