Accent vs dialect: what's the difference

Accent vs dialect: what's the difference?

People use accent and dialect as if they meant the same thing. They don't, and the difference is easy to hold on to once you have seen it.

An accent is how you sound. A dialect is what you say and how you put it together, and it includes the accent too.

The short answer

Your accent is your pronunciation: your vowels, your consonants, the rhythm of your sentences and the way your voice rises and falls.

Your dialect is the whole package. It is your accent plus your vocabulary and your grammar: the words you reach for and the way you build a sentence.

Two people can share a dialect and have different accents. Two people can also share an accent and still use different words.

What counts as accent

Accent lives entirely in sound. Take three words that almost every English speaker uses.

• Bath. In the south of England it has a long "ah", like father. In the north of England, and in most of the United States, it has the short vowel of cat.

• Car. In much of England, Wales and Australia the r at the end is silent. In Scotland, Ireland and most of North America you hear it.

• Water. In American English the t in the middle is often a quick tap, close to a d. In much of Britain it is a clear t, or a short catch in the throat.

The word is the same and so is the meaning. Only the sound has changed, and that is accent.

What counts as dialect

Dialect is where the words and the grammar come in.

Some differences are words. A Scottish speaker might call something small wee. In the southern United States, y'all is the everyday plural of you.

Others are grammar. In Irish English, "I'm after eating" means "I have just eaten". In parts of the American South, people say "I might could help you", with two helping verbs in a row. In many English dialects, "we was" is the normal past of "we are".

None of these is a mistake. Each one follows rules as regular as the rules of the standard, and speakers learn them as children in the same way.

Everyone has an accent

The most useful thing to know about accents is that nobody is without one.

People sometimes say a newsreader or a teacher "has no accent". What they mean is that the accent is the one they are used to hearing, so it doesn't stand out. Received Pronunciation, the accent long associated with the BBC, is still an accent. So is General American, the one you hear on most American national news.

Standard English works in the same way. The linguist Peter Trudgill has long pointed out that Standard English is a dialect, the one used in writing and in most education, and that it can be spoken in any accent. A Glaswegian and a Texan can both speak perfectly standard English and still sound nothing alike.

Where dialect ends and language begins

If dialects can differ in words, grammar and sound, when does a dialect become a separate language?

There is no line that linguists agree on. The decision is often political as much as linguistic. A well-known quip, popularised by the linguist Max Weinreich, says that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

Scots is a good example. Some people think of it as a dialect of English, while the UK government recognises it as a regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Both views exist, and the argument is mostly about history and identity, not about vowels.

Why your own accent is hard to hear

Here is the strange part. The accent you know least well is often your own.

You have heard your own voice every day of your life, so it sounds neutral to you. Other people notice your accent straight away, because it differs from theirs. That is why a holiday abroad, or a move to a new city, is often the first time people realise they have an accent at all.

There are two easy ways to hear yours. The first is to record yourself reading a paragraph and play it back a day later, when it sounds a little less familiar. The second is to ask a listener with no idea where you are from. If you would like that outside opinion straight away, an accent test can listen to you read a short passage aloud and name the accent it hears most.

How to tell them apart in practice

When you hear someone and wonder which one you are noticing, ask one question: would this still stand out if it were written down?

• If the difference disappears on paper, it is accent. "Bath" with a long or short vowel looks the same in writing.

• If it shows up on paper, it is dialect. "I'm after eating" looks different from "I've just eaten", even in print.

That test works for almost every case you will meet.

The takeaway

An accent is the sound. A dialect is the sound plus the words and the grammar. Everyone has both, and every one of them is a real, rule-governed way of speaking English.

Knowing the difference won't change how you speak. It does make it easier to listen to other people with curiosity instead of judgement, and to hear your own voice as one accent among many, all of them worth having.

Accent vs dialect: what’s the difference