Accent vs Dialect

People often get confused between Accent and Dialect because they are similar terms, both describing how our speech changes in relation to where we live.

Accent vs dialect definition

Accent is a broad term that Dialect falls under. Accent refers to how voices sound as a result of geographical location. Accents have developed throughout history by people conversing in isolated communities and adopting their speech habits. This took place before it was easy to travel around the country, meaning everyone in a particular community only had contact with other people who sounded like them, thus developing regional accents.

Dialect derives from accent, but rather than describing how our voices sound, it refers to how where we live impacts our grammar and lexical choices. Dialect is a mode of speech that differs from Standard English. Our dialects are dependent on our geographical location, as where we live impacts the words we use.

For example, 'chuddy', and 'chewy' both mean chewing gum in various Northern dialects. These words derive from the Standard English term 'chewing gum'.

Fig. 1 - Different dialects may have different words for things - such as 'chuddy' and 'chewy' for chewing gum.

Other Relevant Definitions

Slang is a specific type of colloquial language featuring Abbreviations such as 'innit' or 'ain't'. It also encompasses phrases predominantly used by young people that are not in the dictionary, such as 'peng' (meaning something highly appealing) and 'bare' (to have or be something in vast quantities).

Sociolect is a dialect dictated by your class/position in society. Examples include school Jargon used between school children, criminal jargon, office jargon, etc.

Jargon describes particular words and expressions used by groups of people (generally in the context of the workplace) that are difficult for others to understand. For example, most people would find legal jargon difficult to understand unless they work in the legal sector.

Dialect and accent

This is a table showing the differences and similarities between accents and dialects:

We can tell the difference between accent and dialect by observing how far the words deviate from standard English, looking at the grammatical/lexical choices, and the way the voice sounds (or we can imagine how it sounds if the words are written Phonetics). If the sentence would be understood by most people in the country, it is likely a result of an accent. If the meaning of the sentence is hard to decipher, it is likely a dialect. This is because different dialects use different words to say things, which can be confusing for people from a different region, whereas accents only influence how we sound.

'Ay up duck can ya bring me some chuddy?'

'Ello luv can ye bring mae some chewing gum?'

The second example is written in a northern accent. The phrase itself is the same as standard English in that none of the words used are different words for 'hello, can you bring me some chewing gum?', but rather just alternative ways of speaking standard English.

Slang vs accent vs dialect

It's easy to become confused when so many linguistic terms are used in one article, so we'll break down each different comparison to make things clearer.

Slang vs dialect

Whilst Slang and dialect are very similar because they are both versions of non-standard English that dictate your lexical and grammar choices, they are also different from each other:

Let's compare some examples of slang from the 21st century and the 90s to highlight just how much slang changes.

90s slang

21st century slang

Now we have looked at some examples of slang, let's have a look at some examples of dialect to see how they differ from each other.

Dialect

Newcastle - 'goon oot on tha toon' - going out on the town

Notice how this sentence contains variations of English words such as 'toon' meaning town, and 'goon' meaning 'going', rather than entirely made-up words like 'peng', or words used in completely different contexts to their original meaning, such as 'bare'. This is the difference between slang and dialect. Whilst dialect and slang are variations of English language, slang is more inventive and strays further from Standard English.

Slang vs Accent

Let's have a look at some differences between slang and accent.

Accent

People with a Scouse accent would pronounce 'what's that?' as 'woss tha?'.

Dialect

The Essex dialect (like many Northern dialects) involves missing out words. For example, they might say 'let's go shops' instead of 'let's go to the shops'.

We can tell that the first example is an example of an accent because the actual words they say sound different from standard English, whereas the dialect example doesn't change how the words sound but instead the word order (grammatical choices).

Accent and dialect: A-level English Language

As a bit of a summary, and to round up the reasons why accents and dialects are so important, let's look at each one in turn:

The importance of dialects

Dialects are important for a number of reasons:

The importance of accents

Accents are important too: