Dialects, Dialects, Dialects

The United States is a nation of immigrants. Although some people in the United States have heritage in the US for generations, others have much newer ancestry from recent immigration. My family heritage falls somewhere in between. My father was the first generation of his family born in the United States. His parents were from Drummondville, Quebec, and his two sisters were also born in Quebec Province.

My grandparents and my two aunts all speak French as their first language. In fact, when they all immigrated to Southern California in the early 1960s they spoke no English, but slowly my family learned to speak English, and then my father was born. Unlike his sisters, my father didn't grow up speaking French by itself but instead learned to speak both French and English, together, in a form of Frenglish. My dad is, of course, fluent in English, and he is perfectly proficient in Canadian French as well, but sadly he never taught me any of the French he knows.

That being said, I still learned a deal of French while studying it in Highschool. I might not have perfect French, but I never had any difficulty understanding the French my teacher spoke or the French spoken in the French language audio recordings we used in class. That being said, when my father or my grandparents try to speak with me in French I often struggle to understand even simple phrases. But how could this be? I was taught French, and my family can speak French.

The difference stems from a difference in dialect. I was schooled in Metropolitan (or Parisian) French, whereas my family, obviously, doesn't speak this variety of French. Dialectical differences make communication difficult amongst speakers of most languages: A Bavarian German speaker will likely struggle to understand a German speaker from Cologne; an Italian speaker from Sicily won't be able to understand someone from Milan; and a speaker of perfect Oxford English will likely struggle to understand a Scots speaker from Glasgow.

Dialects are tricky. Dialects are probably one of the features of languages that make communication the most difficult, which is why so many different nations have put in the effort to issue 'standard' varieties of their languages. We have a 'Standard' form of German, of French, and even of English (Oxford English is generally considered to be Standard English).

But language standardization is also dangerous. When languages are standardized, it can often result in local dialects being lost as the standard variety slowly takes on more popularity. Additionally, standardization is often associated with the supremacy of one part of a country over the other parts, as standard varieties are often structured around a prestigious dialect of the language (i.e. Metropolitan French or Standard German which is built around Berlin German). For those of us interested in preserving linguistic diversity, standardization is not a good thing. That being said, standardization makes learning languages easier for a foreigner and allows for easier communication amongst the people of a country.