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A Map of British Dialects (2023)
- hermitcrab 1y agoI find it surprising that regional dialects are still quite strong given how much everyone is exposed (via TV and Internet) to other dialects (US expecially).
- pessimizer 1y agoIn my experience, there's only a small subset of people who will get their accent from the mass media rather than their parents and the people around them. That accent will also almost always be an vapid pseudo-American one, mysteriously bicoastal, combining LA valley girl, 90s NY highly-commercialized hip-hop regionalisms, and barely enough of their local accent to keep from getting punched. Also, since 2008, the word "folks." This is mostly I think wealthy and upper-middle class people, but there are also definitely a lot of strivers who just think they're better than everyone local, and don't want to sound like they come from where they come from, but like American surfer-artist-activists. Same thing happens in the US, through. A lot of Americans relating to the television more than their neighbors. Even worse, since the accents in US media have become terrible and authentic local accents rarely heard, young US media addicts are often imitating British and Australian people who are imitating US accents. I honestly rarely hear any authentic southern US accents in TV and movies, only imitation ones. Imitation of the representations created by a highly centralized media might ultimately and gradually turn all of us into caricatures, even of ourselves.
- desas 1y agoStrong is relative. The regional differences in my generation (40) and younger mostly come from accent and not from the vocabulary, whereas for my parents and grandparents it would be both. There is still local vocabulary: nesh, mardy, cob, duck being obvious answers, but more of it is dying out: tuffee, sile, causie.
- russellbeattie 1y agoThe weirdest British accent is the one where they pronounce the R sound as a W, like a child who hasn't mastered it yet. It honestly took me many YouTube videos of different people with the accent to realize it wasn't a speech impediment. How does something like that persist? Everyone has their ignorant opinions, of course, and mine is simply that this goes beyond "different" into straight up wrong.
- throaway2501 1y agoisn’t that the upper class accent? probably mimicking or conserving former latin pronunciation or maybe german
- craigdalton 1y agoAnyone interested in the history of English dialects will love The Story of English, BBC 1986. Some snippets of recorded speech showing the evolution of the language and proximities.Highlights include comparing an elderly Norwegian and Yorkshireman say the same sentences and hearing the descendents of East Anglian UK emigrants to Chesapeake Bay in the USA centuries later speak with a mixed E Anglian/US accent.https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh06URz4IJQ4aI0A-xjXOtx2OnApu2SNn&feature=shared https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh06URz4IJQ4aI0A-xjXOtx2O...
- CharlesW 1y agoReminds me of the classic "One Woman, 17 British Accents": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyT2jmVPAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyT2jmVPAk
- zeristor 1y agoCorbyite. Sounds like a mineral formed when Iron-Bru percolates through sandstone.
- timrichard 1y agoAnd is then finished in a trouser press…
- zeristor 1y agoOr indeed the Star Trek episode: “The Corbomite Maneuver“ Perhaps it was inspired by a day out to Corby?
- devrandoom 1y agoIrn-Bru, the national soft drink of Scotland. Their ads are brilliant. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1lcuZoYiuVs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1lcuZoYiuVs
- n4r9 1y agoLove seeing Pompey on there. Ryan Starkey is no dinlo.
- hermitcrab 1y ago"roight"
- PastorSalad 1y agoI know right? Lot of squinnies on here bemoaning the accuracy but I’ve spent my whole life being told my dialect is just half cockney, half bristonian by the rest of the country. I feel so seen.
- memsom 1y agoPompey is less strong on the island these days, but Leigh Park people sound like I remember from childhood still.
- n4r9 1y agoI don't live there anymore but I was at Victorious festival a few years ago watching an American band (can't remember which). The front man told a story of when they recorded their first album in Portsmouth. Someone in the crowd lifted up their pint and shouted "Yawrigh' mush!". And the screen ads said "Don't be a din - put it in the bin". Those words feel like they're from some dreamworld until you hear them again in person.
- memsom 1y agoThose words are used, but a lot of people on the island use a massively watered down version of the dialect now. When I was a kid we said "baw" for "ball" "vis,va' 'n fing" for "this, that and thing" and "dinny/din/dinlo" (simpleton/idiot), "mush/musty" (a person, you may know, but don't want to name - a bit like "mate"), "kark it" (died), "lairy" (as in cheeky, obnoxious, pushy - hard to describe.), "lakes" (originally "cool" but started to be ironic), "wew X" as an emphasis ("wew" being "well", so "wew smar'" (really "smart", as in really good), "wew lairy" (really "pushy/cheeky/whatever it means"). "Giving i' aw va'" ("Giving it all that", being lairy/trying it on.) "kushty" (great/good). And much more. I can't write down everthing unfortunately. As I said, you still here all this when Parkies speak, but on the Island it is a lot less heard these days.
- thinkingemote 1y agoI like Kent and Sussex accents. Rod Hull (carer of Emus) had a good one. "We wunt be druv" is the Sussex motto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_wunt_be_druv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_wunt_be_druv
- b800h 1y agoWhen is this map from? 1955? Essex accents had travelled well into Hertfordshire by the 1970s. Cockney has evaporated and the condensate largely landed in Essex and Hertfordshire. Do people really speak Kentish in most of Kent? Or is it a mix of Modern Estuary, MLE (multicultural London English) and RP (received pronunciation)? I know the author says that the map will always be wrong, I understand that, but this map is badly out of date.
- countrymile 1y agoThere are two sorts of Essex, the countryside version that straddles south Suffolk and the London imported one that has become the stereotype, that appears to be estuary on the map. Both have massive crossover depending whether you're in town or village. A rather difficult mapping task!
- whoistraitor 1y agoYeh it’s strange it includes cockney so prominently. It isn’t really very present unless you spend time around the various gentlemen frequenting sports pubs and pie and mash shops in east London, or if you take a black cab very often. I’d say the “roadman” dialect, mixing cockney and Jamaican patois, plus grime vibes, is FAR more common. I’ll hear it everyday wandering around South and east London. I guess it’s a London dialect so it’s in that umbrella,… but how come cockney gets such a fat slab of land?
- KaiserPro 1y ago> pie and mash shops p-aye an mashhhh, bruv
- simonh 1y agoYou used to be able to get pie, mash and liquor round me in the Bexley area until about 10 years ago, but the ones I knew have closed now and I don’t know where the nearest place is. Not sure if you can still get Jellied Eels in Eltham, which would be a shame if you can’t.
- smitty1e 1y agohttps://cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/ https://cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/ is the chicken dinner!
- dijit 1y agoAccording to this I am from one of the smallest Dialect regions (Coventry)- I really wonder why it could be a dialectical enclave; I am aware that the Forest of Arden divided Coventry from Birmingham and the Black Country making them distinct, but I had no idea that it was such an isolated dialect.
- KaiserPro 1y agoCov is pretty distinct. for example the apple's siri british voice 3 I would argue is light Cov accent. Given how close beeer-ming-um is, you'd think they'd be similar.
- tankenmate 1y agoIt's because so many malcontents were sent to Coventry *wink*
- beardyw 1y agoIt is quite distinct in the pronunciation of "ing". The N and the G are strongly emphasised. "Singing" is a good test word. The Gs jump out at you.
- martinrue 1y agoWhy are there so few on this map? Seems wrong to me :)
- gregorvand 1y agoToo specific for this map but there's also an intriguing case of town in England called Corby, where people speak mainly with a Scottish accent https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28225325 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28225325. Pretty fascinating.
- n4r9 1y ago[edit - Corby is on the map! It refers to the accent as "Corbyite" in the middle of "Northants".] The TV programme "Toxin Town" is set in Corby, about birth defects caused by mishandled environmental waste. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg7pvl59wxo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg7pvl59wxo
- davedx 1y agoRight! They also explained in that series that the Scots were economic migrants there for the steelworks work. Great series too.
- gregorvand 1y agooh thanks!
- amiga386 1y agoFa says aat? Fowks dinnae spik "Grumpian" up in Aiberdeen, they spik'i Doric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_%28Scotland%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_%28Scotland%29
- gregorvand 1y agoThe article mentions not covering Doric or Scots since they are considered virtually second languages
- devrandoom 1y agoI love it, have listen: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/ZrJMVPQyxvg https://m.youtube.com/shorts/ZrJMVPQyxvg
- dfawcus 1y agoNot 'virtually', Scots is a different language to English, and Doric is a dialect of Scots. English and Scots are sibling languages, c.f. some of the geographically close Scandinavian languages. If you want a quick guide to languages in Britain, the site has an additional article which the original links to: https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-and-irish-language/ https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-an...
- gregorvand 1y agoThanks. I am Scottish originally and understand a lot of Scots. I guess I said 'virtually' since Gaelic is probably the only 'official' other language in Scotland but I agree Scots and Doric should be recognised as such.
- bradley13 1y agoI rented a room for a few months, from an elderly couple in the countryside outside Aberdeen. It took a solid week before I could do more than nod politely at whatever the heck they were on about.
- _fw 1y agoThis is good but it’s not diverse enough for North West England. In ‘Wigan’ (as shown on the map) you’ve got the Oldham/Bolton accents (book - bewk; first - fussed) which are similar but as distinct as Brummie/Black Country. In Merseyside you’ve also got Wools/Scousers, each with different patter and pronunciation. Not to mention Warrington and its accent further East.
- zeristor 1y agoPerhaps it’s gone out I can remember a Leytonstone accent, and a Barnet one. But that’s accents not a dialect.
- kreyenborgi 1y agoThose are dialects. An accent is what you have as a second language speaker. (Of course reality is more complicated; creoles and pidgins etc )
- KaiserPro 1y agothats the thing, norfolk dialect had about four main strains, but most of the dialect as disappeared, leaving only the accent
- dmurray 1y agoIs that true? I think a dialect needs to have at least some of its own words. If people in your town use the same words as the town across the river, but you pronounce your R's and the others do not, I would say you speak the same dialect but with distinct accents. Maybe the point is moot because any two populations separate enough to develop distinct ways of pronouncing words inevitably also create words of their own.
- PaulRobinson 1y agoThe accent and dialect changes every 20 miles or so, so this is obviously a bit vague. We can’t even agree on what to call a bread roll [0] never mind how some words should be pronounced [1]. My mother was brought up in Liverpool, but her (Irish immigrant) mother hated the Bootle accent so much that she taught her, and her older sister, to speak something closer to RP. That washed off, and like her I got bullied at school in North Derbyshire for speaking “too posh”. Yet locals in my new home of London clearly place me as being from the North but can’t place where. To be honest neither can most Northerners. I think I’m broadly “South Pennine”, so a bit of High Peak, a bit of Manchester, the odd spot of Lancashire or even West Yorkshire - reflects where I grew up, went to Uni, lived, and socialised with. My partner has a similar accent despite growing up in a part of Manchester with a distinct accent and dialect of its own. The point is, it’s complex and it’s changing. And it’s not just the UK. It seems to have sped up in recent years. When I hear Canadian voices from 70 years ago, I can hear Scottish tinges. Likewise the US East coast of the mid-20th century had more West Country in it than today. It was only a friend’s grandfathers generation that could tell what street someone grew up on from their voice alone, and today we are increasingly homogenised - I wonder what “English” will sound like in 200 or 500 years. [0] https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/bread/ https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/bread/ [1] https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/class-farce/ https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/class-farce/
- franticgecko3 1y agoI'm from West Yorkshire, the dialect is slowly fading. My grandfather would speak with a strong accent and with spatterings of Norse words. I notice now that, yes, dialects in the UK are becoming homogenised but there is also some American influence seeping in. The American way of pronouncing a double t as a d "better" => "bedder" is increasingly more prevalent in the UK, it's slightly saddening.
- joeross 1y agoI agree, it’s very sattening
- NikkiA 1y agoThere really isn't one 'west yorkshire' accent, nor one 'north yorkshire' accent, there is much much more variety than that. A leeds resident sounds different from a wakefield or dewsbury resident, and even then there can be variation where some people exhibit less of their locale accent than others, depending on how much they rebelled against sounding 'local' in their teens.
- dogman1050 1y agoI find this fascinating. Didn't see it in the article, but I wonder how many people speak each dialect. Since of those areas are very small.
- pat_springleaf 1y agoThe thing is, this sort of thing can never be represented with borders. A more accurate map might be ones akin to wildlife population maps, with splodges dotted around the country. Many accents exist in the same place and depend on a huge range of factors like class, immigration statistics, and geographic isolation.
- bjackman 1y agoI think something important to explain about British English dialects is the class factor. It's easy to forget because the classic RP accents have largely died out, but the way I was brought up to speak (actively! My parents would "correct" my speech patterns) is much more reflective of class than locality. This is the case throughout England at least. Brits take this for granted but it's not the global norm! In many British cities there is also a major race axis to dialects too. Just like how American English has black and white accents, you could make a better-than-chance guess at a modern Londoner's ethnicity from a recording of their voice. (See Multicultural London English).
- foldr 1y ago>Just like how American English has black and white accents, you could make a better-than-chance guess at a modern Londoner's ethnicity from a recording of their voice. (See Multicultural London English). The whole thing about MLE is that it's multicultural, i.e. not stratified along ethnic or racial lines. I do not think I would be able to judge the ethnicity of a Londoner aged under (say) 30 in this way.
- thebruce87m 1y ago> This is the case throughout England at least. Brits take this for granted but it's not the global norm! England and Britain are not interchangeable, unless you specifically mean that all Brits take it for granted that this is only the case in England or something like that? Edit: for the downvoters: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/difference-between-britain-england-and-the-uk https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/difference-between-britai...
- bjackman 1y agoThat's exactly what I mean. It's not entirely the same in e.g. Scotland. But Scottish people will understand English class signals. Hilarious that you'd read my comment explaining British class and linguistics dynamics and assume I don't know what Britain is lol
- 1y ago
- smackay 1y agoA somewhat public thank you to Donald Omand from Aberdeen University for all the work he did in documenting the dialect of Caithness - that purple-ish bit at the far top right of the Scottish mainland. https://www.wickvoices.co.uk/voices_listen.php?id=0806202309220920295 https://www.wickvoices.co.uk/voices_listen.php?id=0806202309...
- fossgeller 1y agoI was just thinking about the variety of british dialects, have been consuming more UK media recently. It would have been even more interesting to have an interactive map that also has audio files linked to it.
- pyb 1y ago"You will find the same thing in [...] France". Actually, you don't. Strong regional accents are pretty rare compared to the UK or Germany
- rjsw 1y agoWhat about Ch'ti [1] or Savoyard? The article is about dialects not accents. Even just considering French accents, I find the Marseille one distinctive. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picard_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picard_language
- pyb 1y agoThere are a couple of light accents in France (Toulouse,Marseille) but not many. Stronger accents are found outside France: Quebec, Africa...
- sevensor 1y agoNot unrelated to a longstanding policy of suppressing regional languages: > Depuis plus de deux siècles, les pouvoirs politiques ont combattu les langues régionales https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France
- pyb 1y agoExactly. My grandfather was punished in school whenever he spoke Breton
- auxbuss 1y agoYears ago, I went to live and work in Strasbourg. My French was… rudimentary, school-level, but after a few weeks I was picking up the rhythm and following along. Then the grand chef came up from Paris. During the night out entertaining him, I asked him to slow down a bit as I was struggling with his accent. He completely lost it, insulting the locals as peasants, and claiming the accent was theirs not his. Kind of put a damper on the evening. Obviously the Marseille “dialect” is recognisable, but otherwise, travelling throughout France, and even the French-speaking parts of Switzerland, I could understand folk.
- rob_c 1y agoIf you find cockney over that area over something non British I would be impressed. Source, have lived in said area. Interesting, but more of a measure of what has been lost in some parts of the country to change.
- coffeeking001 1y ago[dead]
- beardyw 1y agoWaze has decided I need a London accent to find my way. Kate now says "Go strai on". Kate used to sound like a genteel granny. I miss her.
- fy20 1y agoI had a really interesting situation a couple of decades ago when I was studying. I grew up in a rural part of the UK in the South West. The nearest train station was just over the county border, around 20 miles away. One day I was waiting for the train, and there were two men talking: a vicar and his friend - both in their 50s. Clearly from that area. Even though I'd grown up in an area with a similar accent - less than 20 miles away - I could not understand a word they were saying.
- paulnpace 1y agoWhich is the accent where 80% of consonants and 1/3 of vowels are pronounced like a hard "ff"? I associate it with Manks, but I'm just a Yank so what do I really know.
- croemer 1y agoThe names of dialects aren't super useful to people who aren't from the UK. Also, dialects often are continua, so drawing borders without any sort of hierarchy to indicate closeness is quite pointless. What would be cool if one could click on each dialect/region and hear a few words spoken in that dialect.
- abm53 1y agoI agree. In my view many of these small regions (that blend into one another) could be combined to give a much more useful map with more sharply distinct accents. Such a map may be less precise, but far more useful to most.
- _oyks 1y agoTbh I was worried when I saw this title but its not bad
- croemer 1y agoHere is the equivalent map for German: https://language.mki.wisc.edu/essays/high-and-low-german/ https://language.mki.wisc.edu/essays/high-and-low-german/ Here's a similar one from Wikipedia that includes Dutch dialects as an example of dialect continuum: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialektkontinuum#/media/Datei:West_Germanic_dialect_continuum_in_1900_(according_to_Wiesinger,_Heeringa_&_K%C3%B6nig).png https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialektkontinuum#/media/Datei:... probably based on this historical map: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/11kvga1/an_1894_map_of_german_dialects_note_the/#lightbox https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/11kvga1/an_1894_ma...
- Tijdreiziger 1y agoThis Wikipedia page also has some interesting maps: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_dialecten https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_dialecten
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jimnotgym 1y agoThe West Midlands Region needs some serious sub division. Herefordshire has nothing of the brummie and Shropshire fades out from the black- country yam-yam into a border talk that is sadly dieing out due to the amount of migration from the South. It is still destinct in rural communities. Man pronounced 'mon', cold pronounced 'cowd' and sheep pronounced 'ship'. I could barely follow my father speaking to his father, due to the amount of local words they used. They were 'upper wommers' though (people who live in the hills!).
- ZunarJ5 1y agoWhere's Doric in Aberdeenshire??
- nkurz 1y agoThe article has a section "Why Scots/Doric are not included" that covers this: "This map is specifically of the English language, and Scots (and its subset, Doric), are not English." It then links to another article that discusses Doric: https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-and-irish-language/ https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-an...
- ksec 1y agoI am not sure if it is still on but there is a TV series in UK called The Only Way is Essex. Which got quite famous when Chris Pratt [1] did its accent on The Graham Norton Show. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af7UD-IxzZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af7UD-IxzZI
- countrymile 1y agoThe accent attempt is at 1m30s but that's an Essex accent from the towns, and largely the result of Londoners moving out to Essex, if you head into the countryside, Essex sounds like this: https://youtu.be/1xxRdiiyT70?si=PlBnim1PW_y8nh5I https://youtu.be/1xxRdiiyT70?si=PlBnim1PW_y8nh5I
- treyd 1y agoHow did you find this video from 2013 with (as of writing) 290 views, and with it not mentioning Essex or accents at all?
- countrymile 1y agoI know that part of the world quite well, it's from a local historical society, I just searched for them. They don't advertise well!
- lordnacho 1y agoMy first year at uni: Me: "How about that James guy, huh? He's obviously fought his way past disability, what a great guy, an example to all of us." "What do you mean?" "Well, he's a professor at Oxford, that's quite some achievement" "So what?" "Well, I mean, you know, he's gotten past his handicap. You can kinda hear it on him, right?" "He's Brummie..." "Is that like a palsy or something?" "No, there's nothing wrong with him, he just comes from a certain area near Birmingham" "Ah. I'm gonna go find a rock to hide under." A few years later, around when I got married: "Hey Nacho, where are your in-laws from? Your mom and I tried to talk to them" "They're from Scotland" "What language do they speak?" "English" "What, really? I tried to talk to your father-in-law, I couldn't understand anything!" "..."
- narag 1y agoI had the opposite confusion. I asked the sysadmin where he was from, I had guessed Germany. He told me he was from Madrid, just had to relearn speaking after he had a brain tumor removed a few years before.
- hermitcrab 1y agoThere is also a strange thing called 'foreign accent syndrome': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome
- karaterobot 1y ago> This is pretty normal in any large region that has been speaking a language continually for 1600 years. Large! The thing that gets me is that, geographically, all of the UK would fit easily into the state of Oregon, but you'd have to be a linguist to describe even one distinctly Oregonian accent, let alone dozens. It's not surprising to me that a very old country would have so many accents, but it's surprising that they would still perpetuate into the present, after mass media, travel, and mass communication seems to have flattened or homogenized so many fine distinctions based on geographic isolation.
- mikelevins 1y agoOf course the dialects are not so densely distributed in North America, and English has only been evolving in the Americas for a few hundred years, but there are a bunch of dialects, and I find them super interesting. My paternal grandparents were honest-to-goodness Ozark hillbillies who spoke Ozark Midlands (also called South Midlands), which is very close to, and sometimes conflated with, Appalachian English. I'm in the Ozarks now and at least in the region where I live, this dialect seems to be disappearing. I still hear traces of it, but I don't think I've heard anyone really speaking it in years. That's too bad. I love that dialect--perhaps because it was the language that my grandparents spoke. If you're curious about it, you could listen to some of Terry Gross' interview with Ralph Stanley. He spoke Appalachian English, but it's indistinguishable to my ear from the language my grandparents spoke. Here's the interview at NPR: https://www.npr.org/2016/06/24/483428938/bluegrass-legend-ralph-stanley https://www.npr.org/2016/06/24/483428938/bluegrass-legend-ra...
- leoedin 1y agoI think social media is reducing local accents in a way mass travel or media never seemed to - probably because it exposes people to “cool” accents in a way that old media never did.
- pessimizer 1y ago> you'd have to be a linguist to describe even one distinctly Oregonian accent, let alone dozens. You could definitely describe two or three, but you picked a new, far flung, low-population state as an example. Britain has 14x the population of Oregon. If Oregon had two accents, you might expect Britain to have 28. Going to older eastern parts of the country, you can usually tell where people are from within probably 100 miles. You can tell Chicago from Milwaukee from Detroit from Pittsburgh from Boston. You can tell Northwest Arkansas accents from Western Arkansas accents. You can hear a parent's Texas in the accent of somebody you grew up with in Kansas. You can even tell south Jersey accents from Baltimoreans if you ask them both to say the word "Orioles." Literally impossible for a Baltimorean to say. Orirols? Orals? California has hella accents too.
- BrandoElFollito 1y agoI am French so obviously not the best to discuss dialects but I would be curious to know what key reason would bring so many of them. We have dialects in France, a few are very distinct but I would not call a dialect when someone pronounces a few things differently. I know that this is subjective, but still. There are out course some mad places where they ("they" means, you know, they) call chocolatine a pain au chocolat (a French private joke, see https://www.legorafi.fr/2013/03/20/toulouse-il-se-fait-abattre-de-46-balles-dans-le-corps-pour-avoir-demande-un-pain-au-chocolat/ https://www.legorafi.fr/2013/03/20/toulouse-il-se-fait-abatt... - in French from a leading national newspaper)
- memsom 1y agoIn the UK, some traditional dialects are almost different languages. It is not really like that anymore, but people do have whole swathes of vocabulary that outsiders do not understand. I think in France you got rid of the diversity in a lot of ways by having the French Language Academy.
- BrandoElFollito 1y agoYes, we have a few different accents (and not a lot) but the world are basically the same, except for a few. You do not expect to not understand someone in France, it may just be more difficult because of the accent.
- rconti 1y agoprobably related to the policy of suppressing regional languages discussed in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43735946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43735946 It seems likely that regional languages impact accents in the "primary" language, and even if that's not the mechanism, the cultural attitude of discouraging "different" dialects might have the same damping effect on accents.
- tianqi 1y agoOddly enough, I've always been fascinated by Australian accents. It somehow made me particularly happy especially after I watched this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QCgqQdmr0M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QCgqQdmr0M) where I couldn't understand a single sentence. I then tried to learn this accent in Sydney and was discouraged by many of my Aussie mates. Now I just have a little bit of the Sydney accent, which is roughly /ai/ -> /oi/ (bike -> boi-ke), /ei/ -> /ai/ (day -> die). I don't know why, but I like this accent, it sounds and feels warm, open and full.
- Scrapemist 1y agoYou seriously couldn't understand a single sentence?
- tianqi 1y agoNo, unfortunately. English is not my first language.
- arrowsmith 1y agoTry this Scottish accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZyNLZZjMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZyNLZZjMs Or this MLE (Multicultural London English) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5bqYlsXDdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5bqYlsXDdg
- dfawcus 1y agoAn amusing anecdote, especially the Superman comparison at the end... "but I had nothing on bar me jocks"
- trollbridge 1y agoSlight pet peeve: Northern Ireland dialects of English are not "British English"; they're Hiberno-English dialects. Northern Ireland is not part of Great Britain, nor is it British.
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago'British' is [also] the adjective for people from the United Kingdom (UK). The full name of the UK is the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.
- trollbridge 1y agoWell, the English spoken in Northern Ireland is essentially the same as the rest of Ireland and is more distant from what’s spoken in Great Britain.
- Eavolution 1y agoA lot of northern accents have heavy Scottish influences, but I will agree they're far from an English accent and more similar to Donegal and Scottish accents.
- dfawcus 1y agoThe English may be the same, but the accents are different, and often so are the speech patterns. Folks in GB can generally distinguish someone with a Northern Irish accent from someone with a more southerly Irish accent. e.g. Belfast, or Derry accent vs Dublin accent.
- trollbridge 1y agoYes, they're distinct _within Ireland_, but overall the English spoken in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is all considered by linguists to be Hiberno-English, and is its own distinct dialect family vs, say, North American English. And Ulster English is even spoken within the Republic of Ireland, which is obviously not part of the UK and is not British at all.
- SeanLuke 1y agoIf you think this is dense, try Italy some time. Huge numbers of highly distinct dialects, because until the mid-1800s Italians spoke huge numbers of entirely different languages, complete with their own full literature traditions. During unification the country settled on Florence's language (the language of Dante) as the "official" language: but everyone still proudly speaks their own language. To my knowledge, Italy is regarded as the densest diverse dialect region in Europe. How different? What Americans call arugula the British call rocket. Because the British word is derived from the French roquette, which is from ruchetta, a word in italian dialects along the French border. But Americans got their word from aruculu in the southern Calabrese dialect, a result of immigration. The Italian word is rucola, from the Latin eruca. Americans think "Capeesh" is an Italian word because they heard it in The Godfather. But it's not: it's Sicilian, as is much of the film.
- dogmatism 1y agowait what? I always thought "capeesh" was just "capisce" with the end swallowed? Is "capisce" not standard italian?
- robocat 1y agoStandard Italian: capisci [Capisce is] borrowed from the spoken Sicilian and Neapolitan equivalents of Italian capisci, the second-person singular present indicative form of capire (“to understand”). See: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capisce https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capisce
- troad 1y agoCapisce, pronounced with a distinct 'eh' at the end ('capeesh-eh'), would be standard Italian for 'he/she understands' or 'you (polite) understand'. But 'capeesh' tends to be used differently in American mob films, meaning either 'Got it, pal?' or 'Yeah, I got it' ("Capeesh? Capeesh."). Those would be different in standard Italian: capisci ('capeesh-ee'), and capisco ('cap-is-coh'), respectively. It's that final example that makes it obvious that the mobsters aren't speaking standard Italian - there is no 'sh' sound in capisco, so eliding the final vowel wouldn't get you to 'capeesh', but to something more like 'cap-isk'. However, the corresponding forms in Sicilian are capisci and capisciu. Eliding the final vowel yields the observed 'capeesh' in both cases. It makes perfect sense that the mobsters would be speaking Sicilian rather than standard Italian. Italian immigrants in the US were overwhelmingly from Italy's south, which is generally poorer than the north. (The Mafia, in particular, is an organization with its roots in western Sicily.) Most of these immigrants came before the advent of standardized/centralized schooling in Italy, and so were never taught modern standard Italian. Instead, they spoke their native Romance languages, generally dialects of Sicilian and Neapolitan. Even today, most Italian-Americans will be able to tell you which 'dialect' their grandparents spoke.
- ks2048 1y agoHas anyone seen models (free or paid) to detect accents from audio?
- Anon84 1y agoA few years ago I worked on an empirical (twitter data) look at how English dialects change from place to place and how British and American evolved separately (based on Google Books): https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0197741 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... </ShamelessPlug>