What's the difference between a Dialect and an Accent?

Question

I read the passage below* on the net, and I'm still rather confused. Reason being, does someone speaking British English (BrE) have a British 'accent' or would it be referred to as a British 'dialect'?

* "A dialect is usually spoken by people who live in a certain region of a country. Those people speak their mother tongue in their own individual way. For example, many Scottish people have a dialect.
An accent usually describes the way people pronounce words of a language that is different from their mother tongue. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks English with an Austrian accent."

Okay, so what I've gathered from this passage is that a person raised in Britain would be speaking their mother tongue, so the 'accent' we perceive here in the United Stated should not be referred to as such--it should therefore be referred to as a British 'dialect' instead. Is this right?

Bottom line, does someone speaking British English have a 'British Accent' or are they speaking with a 'British Dialect'?

Answer 1

A dialect is a version of the language that usually not intelligible if you don't know it. Usually many words and pronunciation will be different. An American can understand a British person except for maybe a few words.

Chinese has many dialects - The main two are Mandarin and Cantonese. Both sounds and words are different so its hard to understand. For example in Mandarin I love you is Wo Ai Ni. In Cantonese its Ngo Oi Ney. Whole sounds are replaced by other sounds making it very hard to communicate (except the writing is the same so Mandarin Friends can communicate with Cantonese Friend via IM!

Answer 2

A dialect is the same as the language spoken in a respective country and or region of that country.
A accent is the sound made when a person translates their native dialect/language into another.Such as the accent of a person from Texas is different than say someone from/native to New York,our a person from Asia speaks english you hear a deflection/accent difference in their spoken words.
Hope this helps you.

Answer 3

A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists: Cockney is a dialect of English.
A variety of language that with other varieties constitutes a single language of which no single variety is standard: the dialects of Ancient Greek.

Accent can be used to describe many things. One of which means dialect.

the usage or vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific group of people; "the immigrants spoke an odd dialect of English"; "he has a strong German accent"; "it has been said that a language is a dialect with an army and navy" [syn: dialect]

Answer 4

In my opinion, what determines "dialect" are political or sociological rather than linguistic considerations. For example, each part of Italy has its own form of speaking - sometimes these forms are quite unintelligible to people from other parts of Italy and, in other parts of the world, forms of speech that differ so drastically would no doubt be called separate languages, but in Italy they are called dialects of Italian. In the case of Serbian and Croatian, however, or of Urdu and Hindustani, where both pairs of languages are essentially the same but with differences influenced by religious or cultural rather than linguistic distinctions, they are held to be separate languages (although Serbian and Croatian used to be lumped together as one language - Serbo-Croat). Scots English is known as a dialect whereas American English, which probably differs in terms of syntax and vocabulary from Standard British English equally as much as, if not more than Scots English, is generally referred to as an "accent" (without taking account of the fact that American English has many different forms and accents of its own).

The answer, then, seems to depend on which part of the world you live in and what language(s) you have in mind rather than a fixed definition.

Answer 5

Both.

A dialect is a sub-language. If it helps, think of it as a language.

An accent is a pronunciation of said language.

Everyone speaks with an accent. Everyone speaks a dialect.

However, some languages have only one accepted dialect and a consistent "official" accent.

Answer 6

British accent! Dialects are differentiated branches of a language

Answer 7

I think for something to be a dialect, it needs at least a few unique words.