the vernacular of his family = the dialect？
John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family.

Q: those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family. = those words are taken up into vernacular of his family

what does take up into mean? and the vernacular of his family = the dialect？

Question

the vernacular of his family = the dialect？
John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family.

Q: those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family. = those words are taken up into vernacular of his family

what does take up into mean? and  the vernacular of his family = the dialect？

Answer

Taken up into means added to. Vernacular means dialect, way of speaking or word usage. 
A child may say 'getti' instead of spaghetti and the family may start using 'getti' too.

Answer

Taken up in this context means 'adopted' or 'used'.
Vernacular is the spoken language, so he could be referring to the 'dialect' (even if it is limited to only that one family I suppose the term dialect would not be used incorrectly in this context.

Answers · 2

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