What does your language sound like? Does your language use tones? How many? Is vocal inflection used with questions? When?
Did you know that English has 44 different sounds? Did you know English has 20 different vowel sounds? If you are a native English speaker like me, then that answer is probably, no. Nor did you likely know that these sounds are called ‘Phonemes’. Phonemes are the legos of the language, the parts that are put together to transmit information. We humans were talking long before we were writing so these, rather than letters or characters are really the way a language is built.
The brain is adapted to learn a language via sound. This is how you did it. That is why I am starting our journey with sound.
So what does your language sound like? Does it have dialects?
A language is a living thing. Like all living things it is constantly changing. People move and their languages move with them. Their nicknames and abbreviations came along too. Just like in biology, separation causes a sort of ‘speciation’. First you may have a regional accent, the rules and words are all the same but the particularly the vowel sounds may change a bit. With accents the changes are technically minor. People from Wisconsin have no troubles understanding people from Alabama but they can both likely hear the differences in the others’ speech
After accents a language may develop dialects. Groups have been separated long enough that some words have changed, word order and other grammar rules may also be different. The sound of the language may be noticeably different. At this point native speakers will notice the differences but are unlikely to be unable to understand each other. Dialects can be tricky for learners, to us the “small differences” do indeed sound like another language. If I have learned “Conas atá tú?” in one Irish dialect and someone asks me “Cén choai bhfuil tú? in another dialect I may have no idea that they both mean, “How are you?”. A native speaker would have no difficulties but they would recognize that one speaker comes from the southern part of Ireland and the other from further north.