Introduction

In the course of a number of trips to North East India, I have come to realize that people there often use the words “language” and “dialect” to mean something quite different from the meanings that I usually give them. In some cases, their usage and mine are close enough to let us understand one another, but occasionally we run into trouble. In fact, “language” and “dialect,” are used in three different ways in North East India, each one emphasizing different aspects of communication. I will describe these varying usages in the hope that we can learn to understand each other better.

The linguist's meaning

First is the linguist's definition, and as a linguist this is the definition that I find most useful. Linguists are usually clear that by a “language” they mean the collection of spoken dialects that are mutually intelligible. For example, my native speech is a dialect of North American English, but I can understand people who speak British English and people who speak Indian English, so all of these ways of speaking count as “dialects” of a single language. It is the collection of all these dialects that we call “English.” On the other hand my speech is not mutually intelligible with Assamese, Angami, French, or Japanese, so these count as “languages” that are different from the English “language”. When I use my native speech, I am using a language that is different from Assamese, but I am, at the same time, using a dialect when compared, for example, to the English of London.