Grandma speaks a dialect, school teaches the standard

Keep using the variety your family actually speaks. That is King and Mackey's advice in The Bilingual Edge, and it is the one part of this topic that a source we read states directly. The sources we read do not cover how one particular dialect relates to one particular school standard, or how a school should handle the difference, so the rest of this article is practical advice from the app, and it says so each time. The other facts here come from the code: the app has an optional variety field that it shows back as typed and uses for nothing else, and its language picker works in the way described below.

What the sources say

King and Mackey state a position of their own in chapter 11. They say there is no agreed scientific line between a language and a dialect. What gets called one or the other is a political and social decision, not a linguistic one. Their examples: Mandarin and Cantonese cannot be understood by each other's speakers yet are both called dialects of Chinese, while Serbian and Croatian are nearly identical yet are called separate languages.

They also say every dialect is as rule-governed and systematic as any standard variety. A nonstandard variety is not a broken version of a standard. Their advice to parents is to use the variety that is really theirs, the one connected to their family and region, and not to feel pressure to switch to a standard they do not speak natively.

Two further points are reported at second hand. King and Mackey cite research finding that children raised with a home dialect (they name Swiss German and a regional Italian dialect) pick up the standard taught at school without real difficulty. They also describe a family in which the relatives in Italy speak Marchegiano, which they call a distinct dialect of Italian, and they advised the parents to keep using it and not to switch to a purer standard. We have not read the research behind the first point, and the second is one family's story, not a test.

What none of this tells us: how long a child takes to move between a home variety and a school standard, whether it differs by dialect, or what a school does well or badly here. We found nothing on those questions in the sources read.

How the language picker treats a dialect

The picker offers the 15 most spoken languages in the world by total speakers, plus an Other option with a free-text box. The ranking comes from Ethnologue's 2026 data as two websites reproduce it, so the speaker numbers are REPORTED: Ethnologue's own page was not read. What the code does with that list:

• A listed language, or a spelling of one that the app recognises, is saved under one canonical name, so one language is never stored two ways.
• The list follows Ethnologue's way of counting. Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic are two entries, and Mandarin is listed apart from other varieties of Chinese. The picker tells families who speak another variety to type its name, and to use the variety field. This is a counting convention, not a ruling on what counts as a language.
• Typing Arabic, Chinese or Pidgin shows a note saying what it was saved as (Arabic (Standard), Mandarin Chinese, Nigerian Pidgin). Anything else is saved as you typed it, trimmed. If you type a dialect name that the app does not already recognise, it is not matched to the standard language.
• Seven languages have curated content: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian and English. For every other entry, the songs, practice phrases and sound guides stay blank, because the app would rather leave them empty than guess, and a note says the plan is generic.

So the choice is yours. If you pick the standard language and it is one of the seven, you get its curated songs and phrases. We found nothing in the app's content that says which regional variety those were written for, so ask your relative whether they sound like her. If you type the dialect, those fields start blank and you fill them in with her help.

Ways to use both

1. Tell the teacher which variety is spoken at home, and ask what the school will teach and how. Treat the standard as a second set of words your child is adding, not as a correction of hers.
2. Keep the calls and visits in her own variety. The plan's goal called talking with grandparents or family adds weight to a family ritual. ILLUSTRATION from running the plan code: for a 4-year-old with 20 minutes a day, some current exposure and a grandparent in the household, it gives 6 minutes of talk, 6 of a call or voice-note ritual with the grandparent, 5 of reading and 3 of song.
3. If your plan has no grandparent in the household, the plan's own tip is to set up a standing call with a relative who speaks the language, even one who lives elsewhere.
4. Ask her to say the practice phrases for the bath, breakfast and shoes at the door in her own words, and write down what she says. The app's Practice moments page starts these fields blank for a language it has no content for, and the Sound check there already asks you to say words aloud to a fluent family member.
5. Keep a short list of her word and the school's word for the same thing, so your child sees both as real. This is our suggestion and no source tests it.

What is still unknown

• Whether the research King and Mackey cite holds for the dialect your family speaks. We have not read it. REPORTED.
• Whether any of the practical steps above help a child move between a home variety and a school standard. They are the app's suggestions, not tested ones. UNVERIFIED.
• Which variety the app's curated phrases and songs reflect. The app does not say.

In short: use her variety, add the school's standard beside it, and fill the app's blank fields with her help. If a teacher or speech and language professional raises a concern about your child's progress, that is their remit and not this article's.