dialect

A dialect is a specific variety of language — a particular form used by a community. A competent speaker would call it 'a language' (e.g. 'a dialect of English'). Files against the nearest kind per Law 9.

Law 9 pinned sense: dialect is a specific kind of language-variety at the group level. Dialect's own accepted definition opens 'A dialect is a variety of a language distinguished by systematic differences in phonology, lexicon, and grammar, associated with a particular geographic region or social group' — it IS a variety, and region/social-group association is exactly the group-level cell the board's language-variety definition carves ('distinguished from other forms of the same language by the population or situation that characterizes it — a region, a social group'). A competent speaker calls a dialect a language variety. Nearest kind: language-variety is more specific than language (a variety of a language is a kind of language); dialect's accepted INSTANCE_OF language becomes derivable through this ladder (Law 11e).

Vernacular IS a specific kind of dialect: the everyday, colloquial form of a language used by a particular community. A competent speaker calls vernacular 'a dialect' — specifically the non-standard, native variety. Law 9: specific→general.