What do you call variants, then? I'm hitting on the same point again, because at University we're told that there's no dialects in Brazil, only variants (not considering small indigenous groups or some Oriental / European communities that live here and have kept their languages).
Variants are any two consistently different forms of a language that are spoken by two different communities, in two different situations by the same community, in two different times, etc. Dialects, jargon, slang, vernacular, etc. are all types of variants. Variant is a broader category that includes all of them.
I've never been to Brazil but people who have insist that the Cariocas (people of Rio de Janeiro and nearby communities) have a distinct geographical dialect. They pronounce
grande, sete, oito, as donhas as (transcribed phonetically in English) grunjee, sechee, oytoo, azh-donyash, whereas other Brazilians pronounce them somewhat more closely to the way they're spelled. Brazilian is of course a distinct dialect from Iberian Portuguese, where final E and O have become silent, e.g.
sete, oito, nove are pronounced "set, oyt, nov." ("7, 8, 9.")
British and American English are two dialects (and there are sub-dialects within them, especially in the U.K.) but RP ("received pronunciation") is a variant of British dialect. It is not a dialect itself so much as a jargon, because it is spoken by most educated English people (perhaps not Scots and Irish) in formal situations and especially for broadcast. It is not even a natural variant; it was created by synthesizing various dialects specifically for formal circumstances. I suppose it's an unusual phenomenon that could be called an "un-vernacular."
I believe the same happens in the US / UK: different accents make variants, not dialects.
Remember that the definition of a dialect, as a specific type of variant, is based on separation by geography or social class. Therefore, the Southern American spoken in Birmingham, Alabama, and the "Brummy" spoken in Birmingham, England, are dialects. So are the Cockney spoken by working-class Londoners and the "Ebonics" spoken by working-class African-Americans.
German and Dutch are two completely separate and different languages!
Well there is that issue of the spectrum. There are some extreme western dialects of German and some extreme eastern dialects of Dutch that are more similar to each other than either is to the standard speech of its country. Since these are exceptions with small numbers of speakers and since the standard languages are not intercomprehensible, we do indeed call German and Dutch separate languages, but as linguists and linguist wannabes it's important to understand that the distinction is not always easy to make. If you think the decision about German and Dutch is difficult, try Danish and Norwegian, Czech and Slovak, or Catalan and Occitan (the group of cross-national dialects including Provençal).
Most nederlanders I have met would be terribly put out at the idea that Dutch and German are even remotely similar.
Then they're not very well trained in linguistics. To an anglophone, Dutch and German are remarkably similar, especially in writing. Dutch, German and Yiddish are the three surviving descendants of Old German that have not strayed too far from their roots, and the similarities among them are striking. English went through wrenching changes in vocabulary, phonetics and grammar as a result of the Norman Invasion, so it looks and sounds like only a distant relative of those three, even though it is descended from the speech of the Angles and the Saxons, respectable German tribes. Many foreigners look at a page of printed English and insist that it must be a Romance language.
Americans often seem to think that The Netherlands is Germany.
I haven't encountered that. But then my generation is keenly aware that the Dutch were on our side during WWII.
But I also went to a place called Zandvoort which we nicknamed euphanasia town and is truely the weirdest place I have ever been to.....
You must mean "euthanasia," which is the medical term for allowing or assisting a terminally ill patient to die. (In veterinary medicine it also includes animals whose owners can't afford medical treatment or who are simply homeless.) From Greek
eu-, "well" and
thanatos, "death." "Dying well," or as the movement in America puts it, "Death with dignity."