Dialects—Spoken Style, Written Style

We often see the written style of language as how it really “is” or “should be.” But in fact, writing allows uses of language that are impossible when a language is only a spoken one, which all but about 200 of the world’s languages effectively are. Writing allows the preservation of a massive vocabulary in dictionaries: spoken languages have some tens of thousands of words at most. Writing allows longer, more elaborate sentences than are typical of speech anywhere in the world. Early writing, such as the Hebrew Bible with its brief phrases, represents speech rather than the artifice of writing.

A main reason that standard varieties appear to be “realer” than nonstandard ones is that they have a richer vocabulary and more elaborated syntax. But it is important to realize that this trait is an artificial imposition from technology on the natural history of human language.