Editing Dialect (section)

=== Terminology<span class="anchor" id="languoid"></span> ===
By the definition most commonly used by linguists, any linguistic variety can be considered a "dialect" of ''some'' language—"everybody speaks a dialect". According to that interpretation, the criteria above merely serve to distinguish whether two varieties are dialects of the ''same'' language or dialects of ''different'' languages.

The terms "language" and "dialect" are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although they are often perceived to be.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/|title=There's No Such Thing as a 'Language'|last=McWhorter|first=John|date=2016-01-19|website=The Atlantic|language=en-US|access-date=2019-10-24}}</ref> Thus there is nothing contradictory in the statement "the ''language'' of the [[Pennsylvania Dutch]] is a dialect of [[German (language)|German]]".

There are various terms that linguists may use to avoid taking a position on whether the speech of a community is an independent language in its own right or a dialect of another language. Perhaps the most common is "[[variety (linguistics)|variety]]";<ref name=finegan>{{cite book |title=Language: Its Structure and Use|edition=5th |last=Finegan |first=Edward |year=2007 |publisher= Thomson Wadsworth|location=Boston, MA|isbn=978-1-4130-3055-6 |page=348}}</ref> "[[lect]]" is another. A more general term is "'''languoid'''", which does not distinguish between dialects, languages, and groups of languages, whether genealogically related or not.<ref>[http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Languoid "Languoid"] at ''Glottopedia.com''</ref>