FACTORS AFFECTING DIALECT FORMATION

What factors speed up or hinder the formation of dialects?   

Since language naturally changes all the time, a language spread out over a large territory or over a geographically diverse territory such as a series of mountain valleys is prone to differentiate into dialects.  Language unity can still be maintained by a unified system of education, by the influence of the mass media, by the social mixing that occurs within a highly mobile population.  Common culture and political institutions also tend to resist the emergence of new dialects. 

Some languages are very homogenous, showing little dialectal variation.  Political unity over a wide area for a long period of time tends to minimize the formation of dialects.  Russian is a good example:  there are only three dialectal areas over a vast territory.  Other languages have very many dialects, some of which are not mutually intelligible.  These dialects are the result of speech communities being isolated from one another over long periods of time.  As a rule, the less groups communicate, the more their language forms will diverge.  A good example of this is the Basques, who inhabit a tiny territory of northeast Spain.  Since villages and regions are separated by mountains, the Basques speak at least half a dozen very different dialects.  German has so many dialects today because of centuries of political disunity, during which time each province or town developed its own way of speaking; the main division today is between High and Low German.

Because dialects very often emerge because of language spread and subsequent isolation, they may often be described in terms of geography.   In such cases linguists usually find a dialect continuum.  The difference between one regional dialect and another is often a gradual series of changes, not an abrupt change in any one location, such as the gradual transition from High to Low German.  Instead of marking the boundaries of dialects on maps, linguists often mark the distribution of various features with maps called isoglosses (such as the pronunciation of greasy [s] vs. [z] south of Pennsylvania.)  Main dialects tend to be separated by coincidences of isoglosses.  (e.g., New York and New England vs. the rest of the country; or the South vs. the rest of the country.) More on isoglosses coming up.

In addition to geography, other factors may lead to dialectal change.  One is ethnicity, the cultural, religious and racial differences that separate groups of people.  The dialect of an ethnic group within a larger speech community is often marked by certain unique features.  This process also is apparent among various ethnic groups in the United States today.  The lingo of American teenagers is another example of intentional and deliberate language divergence. 

Another factor in the development and perpetuation of dialects is social differentiation.  In England the upper classes speak different dialects than the lower classes.  Usually, dialects developed on the basis of several interacting factors.  The classes of Britain, for example, originate in large part from historical differences in ethnicity.  Even today, Britain's lower classes tend to trace their ancestry to the original Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles who were defeated by the Anglo-Saxons.  Many upper class British families trace their ancestry back to the Norman French who conquered England in 1066.