Dialect's Key Language in Society All speakers of English can talk to each other and pretty much understand each other. Yet, no two of us speak exactly alike. Some differences are the result of age, sex, social situation, and where and when the language was learned. The language of an individual speaker with its unique characteristics is referred to as the speaker’s idiolect . Like individuals, different groups of people who speak the same language speak it differently. Bostonians, New Yorkers, Texans, blacks in Chicago, whites in Denver and Hispanics in Albuquerque all exhibit variation in the way they speak English. When there are systematic differences in the way groups speak a language, we say that each group speaks a dialect of that language. Dialects Greetings in different languages. Dialects are mutually intelligible fo...