Talk:Variety (linguistics)

Lect
I merged "Lect" here. It was a stub about an apparent synonym for "language variety".

"Lect" is also a neologism.
 * It is not used in the recent introductory textbook on linguistics that I read (Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use third edition, 1999).
 * It is not in the reasonably good English dictionary that I have at hand (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 9th edition).
 * There are no independent results for Google search "define:lect".

However, I don't have any sources in sociolinguistics. If anyone finds out that in fact a "lect" is not the same as a "language variety", please revert this merge. In that case, please add information to differentiate the terms from each other. --Hoziron 09:08, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Use of Conditional Mood
"For instance English journalists or lawyers often use grammatical moods such as subjunctive mood or conditional mood, which are no longer used frequently by other speakers." Subjunctive is fairly rare, but is that really true for conditional? Ardric47 04:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Were you to ask, I'm not sure most English speakers could identify the conditional mood. Cnilep (talk) 15:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Name change
Variety (linguistics) → Lect

The word "Variety" is very ambiguous, and is often used interchangeably in linguistic circles for a dialect. While it would still be benefitial to mention that a lect may also be termed as a "variety", it is best to clarify, and use the most accurate description. Mingeyqla (talk) 13:45, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

External link
There is currently an external link to http://www.pojkfilmsklubben.org/cgi-bin/langtools/whichVariety.cgi which is a web widget that attempts to estimate whether a text is written in British or American English. I removed this link on 23 June, since it doesn't contain any discussion of language varieties or other information relevant to this page. It was restored by IP User:83.42.6.168 on 16 July using WP:Undo, but the user offered no explanation as to why. Can we reach consensus as to whether or not the external link belongs here? Thanks, Cnilep (talk) 22:23, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Move reverted
Sorry, I accidentally proceeded with reverting the move without entering the reason. The bold move to "(sociolinguistics)" seems unnecessary precision. The concept (and I believe the term too) predate the field of sociolinguistics. Unless "variety" can refer to multiple things in linguistics (as is the case with "accent" and "register"), I don't think it's warranted. Nardog (talk) 13:15, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Isolects
Isolect redirects here, but right now isolects aren't mentioned in the article. Does anyone want to discuss a good place in the article to raise the subject rather than leave the reader hanging? Maybe in a greater discussion of work done to map dialect communities. Largoplazo (talk) 19:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * hi, I just added the term in the text, with a reference. -- Womtelo (talk) 20:26, 1 September 2020 (UTC).
 * Ah. OK, funny story: I was thinking of maps showing the boundaries between language variants, and was thinking "isolect" denoted those boundaries. My mistake. If I'd realized "isolect" referred to the variations themselves, I would have figured out where to add it on my own.
 * Now I realize I was thinking of isogloss. Largoplazo (talk) 21:45, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Odd item in the page description
I did a search on DuckDuckGo for "lects and dialects" and came up with:

Variety (linguistics) - Wikipedia

Search domain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics)

khmer lottery, a variety, also called an isolect or lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster.This may include languages, dialects, registers, styles, or other forms of language, as well as a standard variety. The use of the word "variety" to refer to the different forms avoids the use of the term language, which many people associate only with the standard language, and the ...

It looks like somebody snuck "khmer lottery" in where it doesn't belong. I don't know what to do about it, but I thought I should report it as some kind of vandalism.

Mourningdoves (talk) 16:46, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Apparently DuckDuckGo crawled the page in the 10-minute window between the vandalism and revert that took place a few days ago. There's nothing we can do, it'll be gone soon when the search engine caches the page again. Nardog (talk) 16:52, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

More on the free form lect and the suffix -lect
These two articles should be listed and maybe also quoted from:

Gold, David L. 1981. "Lect: A New Productive Suffix and Free Form." Leuvense Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor Germaanse filologie. Vol. 70. Pp. 49-52.

Gold, David L. 1982. "More on lect." ''Leuvense Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor Germaanse filologie. Vol. 71. No. 4. Pp. 443-445.

In connection with Hoziron's comment above:

lect indeed means 'language variety'.

Since it predates 1981 (see Gold 1981), it is no longer a neologism.

In connection with Mingeyqla's remarks above:

Variety'and lect have become the preferred terms in objective discourse because dialect has become tainted as a result of its use as a pejorative in lay circles ("Oh, it's really not a language; it's just a dialect").

In connection with this comment: The word "Variety" is very ambiguous, and is often used interchangeably in linguistic circles for a dialect.''

Variety and lect are not synonyms of dialect. A variety or lect can be at any level: an idiolect is a lect and a language can be considered a lect.S. Valkemirer (talk) 23:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

[User:S. Valkemirer|S. Valkemirer]] (talk) 22:45, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 25 September 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover)  The Night Watch     (talk)   14:18, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Variety (linguistics) → Lect – The term "variety" is very ambiguous, and is often used interchangeably in linguistic circles for a dialect. The article should mention that a lect may also be termed as a "variety", but the more precise term should be used as the article title to prevent any confusion that the term "variety" might cause. – Treetoes023 (talk) 13:47, 25 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. "Lect" is not a frequent term in literature. And dialects are varieties, there's no ambiguity to resolve here. Nardog (talk) 14:21, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * There is ambiguity. While dialects are lects, lects are not dialects; dialects and lects are not the same. The ambiguity is that the term "variety" is often used as a synonym for dialect, but it is sometimes also used as a synonym for lect. The term "variety" has two possible definitions in the context of linguistics, while the term "lect" only has one. – Treetoes023 (talk) 15:42, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * so s. stricto and a s. lato definition?
 * And if Variety could mean dialect(specifically) as well, then why redirect to lect?
 * I oppose it
 * Webclouddat (talk) 04:06, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose. Variety is the more common term in specialist literature. The word is ambiguous – as are speech, accent, blend, and any number of words used in specialist and non-specialist contexts – but that's what the disambiguator (linguistics) is for. Cnilep (talk) 04:34, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I'm not an expert but I see variety way more often than lect and lect doesn't seem to me significantly less ambiguous. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:36, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The fact that variety is ambiguous between dialect and lect is not a problem, it is actually a strength: this means that variety is the proper cover term for both (a hyperonym). This is precisely why wikipedia needs an entry “variety”, a concept that encompasses both dialect and other types of lects. Finally, variety is way more common than lect in the literature (both scientific and popular), so let's keep it. -- Womtelo (talk) 09:08, 26 September 2023 (UTC).
 * Oppose. "Variety" is often used as a synonym for lect, but often also in a broader manner, e.g. when Scots and Low German are called "varieties" even though they are clusters of dialects and thus include multiple lects. This is not how I ever would use "variety" in my own writing (I strictly use it in the same way as "(iso)lect"), but common usage covers the broad concept, and this is also what this article reflects. –Austronesier (talk) 18:30, 27 September 2023 (UTC)