What is the denotation of 方言？


I learnt that it means dialect. During a presentation at university, someone
asked a question about whether my topic was possibly influenced by a
misunderstanding of the word "hougen" i.e. that it could also mean regional
variation, or something else. He even said that Korean had been called a
hougen.

How accurate is this?




While you're right that 方言 means dialect, such as 東京方言, it's used slightly
differently in connotation in Japanese. You do get expressions referring to it
by dialect (ie regional grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation to a language),
as pointed out, it can also be used to refer to languages that have split from
a common ancestor.

Kotobank, as cited by Earthling above, states:

>
> 中国の非常に違ったことばが中国語としてまとめられ、ラテン語から分かれたスペイン語・ポルトガル語などが別の言語とされるのは、むしろ言語以外の、政治や文化が基準になっている。この意味で、日本語に関して微妙な位置にあるのが琉球{りゅうきゅう}地方の方言である。かつて奄美{あまみ}・沖縄諸島に琉球王国が成立し、その首都首里のことばが文字に記され、全土に通じた時代には、「琉球語」としての地位をもっていたとみなしうる。

To summarize, it leaves the determination of a "dialect" as very much
political, as in the example of Chinese, which is internally viewed as having
many dialects, some of which aren't even mutually intelligible, but all share
a writing system and political nation. Equally Okinawan holds similar status
in Japan; it's not mutually intelligible, but often seen as a dialect of
Japanese because they have common ancestry, and are still politically united.
The same loose definitions exist in English, too (and _for_ it, but that's a
different topic).

In the case of Korean, some people argue that they share a common ancestral
language (see
[here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Japonic_languages#Korean_hypothesis)
for more) . Maybe calling it 方言 is a stretch, but not _entirely_ alien to some
definitions of 方言, which are already quite loose, and very political.

