Is Azerbaijani a dialect of Turkish or is it an independent language? Is Calabrian a dialect of Italian or an independent language?

What distinguishes dialects from language? What does dialect mean?

No definition exists! At least it would be hard to explain what a dialect is without saying what it is not!

Let’s take a look at the explanation that could bring us closer to the truth!

 

“If you can understand it without training, it’s a dialect of your own language; if you can’t, it’s a different language.” So, it is a variety of a language which may differ with its pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. Fine! But what about Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian speakers conversing with each other? Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese are classified as dialects. However, only the same writing system is what makes them dialects instead of independent languages.

Let’s try looking at this from a linguistic point of view. Language is written and has body of literature, a dialect is oral without literature. Ok, but what about the Iliad and the Odyssey? Aren’t they oral literatures? And, are not ancient languages which lacked of any form literature, languages? And the tongues in small tribes where speakers do not have an alphabet?

Ok, found! It is the level of sophistication and complicated grammar. It simply means that dialects are supposed to be less sophisticated than languages. Ok, then we have to ask a ‘sophisticated’ question! Why is English considered a language with its I walk, you walk, he walks, etc. while Archi, a Caucasian dialect is not where a verb can occur in more than 1 500 000 forms?

Enough of linguistics! There must be something else!

Standardization. One dialect gets standardized not because one dialect is better than other; but, because somebody somewhere decided that one has to be the standard one! But how, who, and why?

"A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot"  “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. A famous statement by Max Weinreich, a linguist of Yiddish can explain the reason precisely. It means that a dialect attains the status of language when its speakers have power. It is when a dialect (usually spoken by the elite) gets standardized because of its institutional support.

So, now it is clear why Calabrian is a dialect and not a language. And why is Azerbaijani an independent language and not a dialect?

Of course, political reasons again. Because it is spoken in a different country and earned the status of a    standard language. Therefore, a dialect is a regional or social variety of a language.

 

Have you noticed that linguistics fails to give a definition in its own field?  

Language variants spoken by entire groups of people are referred to as dialects. Dialects are often less changeable than the standard; their speakers tend to live in stable communities and to preserve forms of the language which are ‘older’ in terms of the development of the standard.

Ok, but how to determine what language a dialect belongs to? For this, we have to rely on a sociolinguistic definition. According to this definition, two varieties are considered dialects of the same language if they would refer the same language to use more specific terms like the name of new inventions, or an unknown foreign species of plant. For example, speakers of Westphalian and East Franconian German might each consult a German dictionary or ask a German-speaking expert on the subject. In contrast, speakers in the Netherlands of Low Saxon varieties similar to Westphalian would instead consult a dictionary of Standard Dutch.

Let’s sum up what we have learned about dialects!

We can state that a language variant can be called a dialect

If it differs from the standard language with its pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary,

if it is rarely or never used in writing,

if it is a non-standardized variety of a language,

if the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own,

if it is spoken by an entire group.

And there is politics beyond linguistics!