[Swizec]

Oh you think that’s rough?

Non-english languages are way better at this. In Slovenia, for example, we have about 2 million speakers. Those are divided into 32 dialects. Many of them mutually unintelligible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects

Germany has a similar problem with regional dialects.

That’s why these languages have a standard official version. Because they need one.

The fact English doesn’t have such a standard is fantastic evidence to the relative lack of strong dialects.

Then again, we do have BBC English and American Movie English which act as de facto standards.

Oh and air traffic control english is also heavily standardized from what I’ve heard. Defined with the rigor of an API.

[zorked]

Basically any language has that many dialects - or many more. English has a ton of unintelligible dialects but you won't hear them on CNN/Hollywood and speakers of those dialects will adjust to a more standardized form of the language to talk to outsiders. Remember that the Caribbean, Africa, etc. all speak English and it's not American/British that they speak. Even traveling in (super-small and birthplace of the language) Great Britain will expose you to a lot of dialects even if locals will swap to a regularized language to talk to you...

[Swizec]

Yep. My point isn’t that Slovenian, German et al are special in having many dialects. Slovenian has way many for such a small language, but all languages have them.

What’s interesting about English is the relative lack of dialects outside the UK. It’s already a very standardized lingua franca because of how it spread.

And what’s left is solvable with the BBC/Hollywood English. Similar to how germany has hoch deutsch – an invented standard dialect everyone learns in school.

You can have a standard form of English taught in schools without demanding say-to-day stabdardization in common use. And we kinda already do. Just unofficially.

[com]

Airspeak and her sister Seaspeak. Fabulous reduced grammars and controlled vocabularies.