Hooray!
The reason, in case anyone cares, that you see Realtor!!!1!! capitalized is that the Realtor!!!1!!s went and got the world “Realtor” trademarked. So now nobody who isn’t a Realtor!!!1!! is supposed to use the word, and they capitalize it to make sure it really stands out.
Of course, the hoi palloi still call them “real estate agents,” “agents” or “theives,” depending how far along in the transaction you are.
Oh crap. You’d better duck and cover, Rick.
I’m sure what your point here was, since the definitions you cite match what both of us said.
It matched what you said, and I wasn’t intending to criticize your post. It was jimpatro’s reply that I was gunning for, with the claim of “Nope”. This attempted correction of you was incorrect, as a quick dictionary check would’ve shown.
I suppose it might’ve looked like I was trying to correct both of you instead of just jimpatro, since I quoted both of you and then bitched about dictionaries without specifying what my point was. But I only quoted you to provide the context for that “Nope”, which was really a hideous blunder that could’ve been avoided with a mere 30 seconds of research. Instead of having two separate quote tags, I prolly should’ve nested the quote tags inside each other so it would’ve been more clear.
Ah, makes sense now.
Jeez, you can’t read. My definition is the same as that from American Heritage.
And Californiaspeak just doesn’t cut it for the people who say the before route numbers. That’s too broad a term when it was definitely implied that some Californians speak it but not all.
And Pleonast backed me up on the definition to boot.
Thanks, Pleonast!
Idiolect is a technical term that describes something that every single person with basic language ability has. Saying that some people don’t have an idiolect is like saying that some countries don’t have dialects, because their language use is too similar to that of neighboring countries. How, exactly, do you define “similar”?
Except that yours implies there exist people whose speech patterns don’t differ from those around them, something the AH definition carefully avoids. You find us two people who talk exactly the same, and maybe your definition can be taken seriously.
He said it’s a California dialect. Not the California dialect. Indefinite article. This is much of the point, after all; there exists a bewildering array of dialects, entirely resistant to glib categorisation and the enforcement of black-and-white norms.
Seems like if you have two people that talk exactly the same you have a dialect.
You really think there are not multitudes of people who speak exactly the same?
In fact, there are none.
The AH definition implies that there would be no need for the word to even exist if it didn’t imply a unique situation.
“unique among speakers of his or her language or dialect” means that they(speakers) must be speaking similarly to each other or the unique speech pattern (idiolect) wouldn’t even stand out as different.
I’d like to hear more about that.
People pick up the language intuitively. They construct their own internal set of rules based on the language they hear around them. Broadly, most people in America pick up the same sorts of rules that make English English, allowing folks to be mutually intelligible. However, when you get into the fine details, things get fuzzy.
Consider that a boy in California grows up listening to his father and mother speak. He also listens to his teachers, one of whom is a transplant from Chicago, and his friends. He grows up, moves to North Carolina, and has a kid of his own, who listens to his father and mother, but also to his friends in school. The kid is going to sound different from the father.
Even if there’s no moving involved, the simple fact is that you learn the language from different people from whom your parents learned it, or your friends, or your teacher, or anyone else. Even if the differences are only one word in every 5,000, or some grammatical rule you never heard your parents use but did hear from your teacher, your speech is never going to be 100% exactly the same as someone else’s.
I don’t.
Aren’t you glad you started this, Dolores? 
What really drives me nuts is when people can’t pronounce their own profession. I hear radio commercials all the time for “relators” and people who sell “joolery.” Why would you do business with someone who’s so ignorant about what they do for a living that they can’t even say it correctly.
And both words are EASY! Especially jewelry. Just say “jewel” and put a “ree” on the end.
No, it’s a “greater Los Angeles area” dialect. People in central and northern California drive on 101, not “the” 101.
Don’t have an idiolect or don’t have an accent? Or are you just joking?
Ssh! Don’t let them hear you! (That was my entire point.)
Oh, fuck off. Just because others share in your bigotry doesn’t make it copacetic. People speak differently, and no dialect is more ‘correct’ than another. People who say “real-a-tor” are not wrong, they are just speaking as others around them do.
I’m just goofing around.