Editing Encyclopedia:Naming conventions (languages) (section)

==<span id="DIA">Dialects, [[register (sociolinguistics)|registers]], and other varieties</span>==
{{shortcut|WP:DIALECT}}
{{redirects here|WP:DIALECT|the guideline on which dialect of English should be used in articles|Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English}}
The choice of "language" or "dialect" should follow the [[WP:COMMONNAME|most common usage]] in relevant [[WP:RS|reliable sources]]. The term "[[language variety|variety]]" is neutral, and the fact that a particular source uses this term cannot be used to help decide between "language" or "dialect" (i.e. the fact that the term used is "variety" rather than "language" does not imply it is not a language, or vice versa).

The word "language" is used for varieties which have standard forms, per common usage, even if they are not distinct languages by other criteria, as for example [[Serbian language]] and [[Croatian language]] alongside [[Serbo-Croatian language]], or [[Indonesian language]] and [[Malaysian language]] alongside [[Malay language]].

The term [[dialect]] should only be used for distinct but mutually intelligible varieties of a language, such as the [[Suzhou dialect]] of [[Wu Chinese]], or [[Bukusu dialect (Luhya)]]. For local differences in pronunciation, [[accent (sociolinguistics)|accent]] is preferred. Varieties can be titled either using the bare name (provided they are the primary topic), or by prepending a modifier to the name of the parent language, as at [[Standard German]] and [[African-American English]]. This is useful when there is disagreement as to whether a variety is an accent or a dialect, as at [[Estuary English]], or a dialect or a separate language, as at [[Egyptian Arabic]] and [[Mandarin Chinese]], or whether it constitutes a single dialect or several, as at [[Southern American English]].