: a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language
They speak a southern dialect of French. The author uses dialect in his writing. The play was hard to understand when the characters spoke in dialect.
Recent Examples on the WebTausz Ronai — who is fluent in Italian, Fiumano (a dialect of Venetian), Hungarian, German, French, English and Portuguese — would become an accomplished architect and write three books, including one on her life story and another for children. Marcus M. Gilban, Sun Sentinel, 7 Sep. 2022 Officially, Beijing designates Cantonese as a dialect. Mary Hui, Quartz, 5 Sep. 2022 Svevo spoke Triestine, a dialect that borrows from Slovenian, Greek, and German, and is unintelligible to other Italians. Nathaniel Rich, The New York Review of Books, 24 Aug. 2022 Each first-person story is written in vivid dialect, through which the characters’ backgrounds and personalities—and to an affecting degree, their destinies—are revealed. Sam Sacks, WSJ, 19 Aug. 2022 The Presbyterian church in Taiwan is known for its support of pro-independence causes, and the Laguna Woods congregation conducts services in the Taiwanese dialect, rather than Mandarin. Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 19 Aug. 2022 The locals speak in a weird German-sounding dialect and eat apple Strüdel and Canederli (knödel) dumplings. Silvia Marchetti, CNN, 11 Aug. 2022 The children sing songs in an old African American dialect of English that can be found in Negro spirituals. Scott Dalton, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 July 2022 Among the middle-class families were a few garrulous groups of men with tattooed arms, roaring genially in dialect and dispatching huge plates of calamari with messy gusto. Maria Shollenbarger, Travel + Leisure, 20 June 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle French dialecte, from Latin dialectus, from Greek dialektos conversation, dialect, from dialegesthai to converse — more at dialogue