dialect

1. (linguistics, strict sense) A lect (often a regional or minority language) as part of a group or family of languages, especially if they are viewed as a single language, or if contrasted with a standardized idiom that is considered the 'true' form of the language (for example, Bavarian as contrasted with Standard German).Examples: "The question could be put: 'Is there anything inherent in a dialect which gives it a negative stigma or is it that the status of the majority of the speakers is transferred to the dialect?' — something that occurs in many regions in different countries."; "Bloomfield, for example, noted that “local dialects are spoken by the peasants and the poorest people of the towns” (1933: 50) though he also thought that the lower middle class spoke 'sub-standard' speech."; "Among common errors still persisting in the minds of educated people, one error which dies very hard is the theory that a dialect is an arbitrary distortion of the mother tongue, a wilful mispronunciation of the sounds, and disregard of the syntax of a standard language."Synonyms: patoisstrict-sense

2. (linguistics, broad sense) A variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular area, community, or social group, differing from other varieties of the same language in relatively minor ways as regards grammar, phonology, and lexicon.Examples: "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"broadly

3. (derogatory) Language that is perceived as substandard or wrong.Examples: "Well, those children don't speak dialect, not in this school. Maybe in the public schools, but not here."; "[…] 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.""; "Many even deny it and say something like this: "No, we don't speak a dialect around here."derogatory

4. (colloquial, offensive) A language existing only in an oral or non-standardized form, especially a language spoken in a developing country or an isolated region.Synonyms: vernacularcolloquialoffensive

5. (computing, programming) A variant of a non-standardized programming language.Examples: "Home computers in the 1980s had many incompatible dialects of BASIC."

6. (ornithology) A variant form of the vocalizations of a bird species restricted to a certain area or population.Examples: "A curious question, which has as yet attracted but little attention, is whether the notes of the same species of Bird are in all countries alike. From my own observation I am inclined to think that they are not, and that there exist "dialects," so to speak, of the song."