Current Events > Why does every other language than English seem like it has so many dialects?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Dialects as well as closely related languages, like the different varieties of German.

In English it's not really dialects IMO, it's mostly just accents and an occasional difference in vocabulary, and sometimes a minor difference in spelling. Oftentimes you can't even pick out where someone is from just by reading text until you see words like "colour" or "ass".

The only closely related language to English that is mutually intelligible to some degree is Scots. The next closest language is Frisian, which is completely unintelligible.

So is this something that's kind of unique to English or does it only seem that way as a native speaker? Or as an American, am I not realizing the distinct differences in the varieties of English spoken in England?
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? There's a boat load of English dialects.
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Try and understand Cajun lol
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There's a ton of English dialects
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english has lots of dialects. most are written in standard english, though. trust me, you aren't going to understand someone speaking yorkshire english as easy as you're going to understand someone speaking with the standard american dialect

a dialect is just a variety of a language that has different pronounciation, grammar and/or vocabulary. if it was more different than that, it'd be a different language, not a different dialect
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There's probably more dialects of English than a lot of other languages considering how widely spread its usage is
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weapon_d00d816 posted...

So is this something that's kind of unique to English or does it only seem that way as a native speaker? Or as an American, am I not realizing the distinct differences in the varieties of English spoken in England?

Your familiarity with English makes you more likely to either understate the many dialects of the English language or just chalk them up as accents, because you can still ultimately understand what is being said.

When you aren't familiar with a language the dialects feel much larger because you are still learning the in's-and-out's of a single dialect.
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