My Reflection

It is hard to know how many languages exist all over the world and how many dialects the English language has. It is also not easy to draw a distinction between dialects and languages on linguistic grounds because they reflect the way their speakers were taught to speak and write. We need to be aware that languages and dialects are fundamentally social and they depend of the region they are spoken in and they are not a linguistic matter as people sometimes think they are. The English language has many dialects, the most known ones are the regional and social ones. The regional dialect is associated with a place and talks about where we come from and the social dialect says who we are.

They are both concerned of the variation in a language. The style depends on the range of the situation from informal, social context, relationships, sex, age, among others. The important of social factors is crucial because they decide what counts as a language or dialect. Pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary vary from other dialects of the same language. In the regional factors, it all depends of the different accents as the distinctions are made from phonological and phonetic points of views. The existence of a language depends on the speech community and the communicative competence, and it depends on the availability of a social group in a region who claims a variety as their own.

By creating this blog, I had the opportunity not only of finding out how the system of dialects in the English language came into existence and the many doors they have opened to if not hundreds then to millions of idiolects and people that speaks the same language but differently depending of where they come from and the social status they represent. The movement called dialect leveling being one of the principle results of listening to the international radio and television instead of tourists and media is an accomplishment that surprises me given the fact that they should depend on a variety of other factors. Indeed, the process of creating this blog has been an experience that has let me understand that English is a language that depends on generally distinguishable pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar but so are other similar ones and even the ones that are the complete opposite and may not be as certain in investigations as English is.

By: Ceslie Fernandez