Languages with Many Variations

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I'm no expert on language, but thanks to the internet, I've started to notice that some languages have dialects that differ wildly from each other. American English isn't like British English, American Spanish isn't like European Spanish, and Canadian French isn't like European French. Are there any other languages like this?

Yes, basically any language spoken by separate populations will diverge into distinct dialects at some point.

Even within a country they diverge naturally, especially if that country is a big one I think.

Wisconsin and Minnesota are the only places I know of, where they call numbskulls "doorknobs."

Dialects and accents vary massively within the UK, a relatively small country.

E.g. Liverpool and Manchester are a 30-minute drive away from each other but their accents are totally different. Likewise Edinburgh and Glasgow. Each of these local dialects also have a few words that would not be understood by people from other parts of the UK. Where I'm from (Devon) we call tourists "grockles", and right next door in Cornwall, they call them "emmits" (literally Cornish for "ant").

Belgian Dutch and Netherlands Dutch use the same words but they have nother meaning alltogether

poepen (verb)

Netherlands Dutch it means to empty your bowels
Belgium Dutch it means to have sexual intercourse

poep (noun)

in Netherlands Dutch it's excrement
in Belgian Dutch it is your bum

Kleed you either put on the floor or wear it
Kop you drink from or is your head
Botten are bones in NL but boots in BE

If you go far enough back in time, you find those ?variations? everywhere: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc., are all dialects of Latin; English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Icelandic, etc., are dialects of Proto-Germanic, and so on

One thing I've noticed about Belgian Dutch is that it uses the word 'terug' where we use 'weer' (for 'again').

I'm also listening to a Belgian comic book fan podcast now, and I've heard the word 'bangelijk' which means something like 'cool, awesome', and which I also never encountered in Netherlands Dutch.

Then there's another word for 'again', 'weeral', where in the Netherlands you'll find its opposite 'alweer'.

interesting. us americans (or all new worlders for that matter) tend to underestimate the regional variation in languages that have occupied a region for centuies or millenia, like most long inhabited places in the old world, compare that to the new world where our majority languages (english, spanish and some french) were introduced relatively recently, american english is pretty much uniform compared to british english, those examples you described, intriguing!! i'm in southern california, i can communicate with someone from rural Missouri rather easily yet the same may not be the case in the old world.


it's pretty cool how tribal and nomad languages/tongues have so many different registers, channels and sounds and writing systems that confound eurocentic minds.

also, sometimes people tend to regard big cities (like the capital) as where the "pure", "standard" form of a language is based but the reality is that since these are basically melting pots and centers of changing culture, the language there is MORE susceptible to rapid change and lots of slang and colloquialisms and such. just something i noticed.

Vanzelfsprekend. But the Belgians would say dat is evident.

I know a few
Arabic has a lot of different dialects, as well as the modern standard and the classical form. Not only do they pronounce certain sounds differently, but there are some words that are totally different in the different dialects.

Norwegian. As Norway has a lot of valleys and mountains, some areas were difficult to get to before there was cars and nice roads. Therefore, there are some areas that speak dialects that are closer to Norse. They might use words that aren't close to the written language. Sometimes, there's also just a different way of pronouncing words in depending on the dialect. Also, we have two written languages (Nynorsk, which is based on a combination of the Norwegian dialects. Bokmål, which is based on Danish).

Swedish. First of all, there are two kinds of Swedish; Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish. Finland Swedish sounds a bit like Finnish when you only listen to how they pronounce the words. But the words themselves are Swedish (which is totally different from the Finnish language). Also, in the country of Sweden, there's a lot of regional dialects as well. But there's only one written language.

I think it only makes sense that variation in a language is greater in the country that spawned it, it is just like biology. For humans the area with the greatest genetic variety is Africa by far, and genetic variety is much lower in Europe and Asia. The same way there are many more dialects in the Old World because English and Spanish and such languages have been spoken there for a much longer time. There have been Anglo-Saxons in England for nearly 1600 years, but only 500 years in the New World. Also there was not much literacy and less contact with people from other regions in the past, and there was often no standard language until after the invention of the printing press and sometimes much later.
The Netherlands + Flanders is only a tiny area, but I've met lots of people whose accent/dialect I could not understand at all. They often subtitle Flemish speakers here even though it's only 200km away from where I live.