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> its social status. Link? I've found dislike for dialects spoken by poorer people (chavs for example), richer people (valley talk) and completely normal aver

> its social status. Link? I've found dislike for dialects spoken by poorer people (chavs for example), richer people (valley talk) and completely normal average people of a wide range (bavarian) in myself. In my experience how much i dislike a dialect has always been about how difficult it makes it for me to understand it, in both english and german, and there's literally no pattern to the social status in it.

foldr 12y ago
This kind of proves the point. There isn't any single dialect of English spoken by "chavs", so it must be that you dislike the various dialects that those people speak because they're spoken by those people. Of course the claim is not that people's dislike will always be targeted at groups with a low socio-economic status. E.g. as a British person, I quite dislike "posh" dialects. And that is entirely my problem -- not the problem of people who happen to speak that way.
- Mithaldu 12y ago
  There's a certain specific londonish dialect i'm thinking of, but don't know the name for, so i abbreviated it to chavs, but feel free to extrapolate my thoughts. My problem also isn't the people, my problem is that i cannot fucking make out the words they are trying to form, but i guess you can ignore that too despite me literally saying that in my previous post.
  - foldr 12y ago
    I'm not ignoring it, but the whole point is that the reasons that people give for liking/disliking a particular dialect are often not the real reasons. I think it's pretty telling that you chose to identify one of your example dialects using "chav", which is basically a term of abuse directed at a certain social group which isn't dialectically all that homogenous.
    - Mithaldu 12y ago
      So i didn't want to leave you hanging, and i figured out thanks to the help of gaius below that i wasn't talking about chavs, but cockney, as exampled in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQJrBSXSs6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQJrBSXSs6o It's an accent i hate not because it sounds different, but because i literally cannot understand what they are saying for over 2/3 of the words (using the term words loosely here, i have trouble distinguishing their words in the first place).
      - foldr 12y ago
        I'm not sure why you'd hate an accent just because you find it difficult to understand as (I'm guessing) a non-native speaker. It's probably just a matter of getting more practice at listening to it.
        Mithaldu 12y ago
        Because generally these people are perfectly capable of using the standard version of their language just fine. I make exceptions for people who were alive at the times of WW2, but most people who speak in heavy accents do it because they have no courtesy for their fellow humans. As for more practice: I already spent 16 years learning english to a near-native degree (among others). I'm not gonna bother trying to learn the accent of someone who probably only speaks a single language and is simply too lazy to use the standard language of their own country.
        foldr 12y ago
        >most people who speak in heavy accents do it because they have no courtesy for their fellow humans. People speak in their native dialects, and there are a lot of different dialects in Britain. I'm sure it's frustrating a as a second language speaker sometimes. However, the idea that cockneys are simply refusing to speak in Received Pronunciation is just laughable to any British person. You might as well ask a Belgian to speak French with a Parisian accent, or an Australian to speak like an American news reader. People can modulate their dialect to an extent, but beyond a certain limit, people would feel as if they were doing a silly impression rather than speaking naturally. Your attitude is shitty. If you are learning a second language, dealing with dialectal variation is part of that. I am learning Spanish and I find Mexicans, for example, easier to understand than Cubans. I don't blame that on Cubans.
  - gaius 12y ago
    You might be thinking of "mockneys" rather than chavs.

foldr 12y ago

This kind of proves the point. There isn't any single dialect of English spoken by "chavs", so it must be that you dislike the various dialects that those people speak because they're spoken by those people. Of course the claim is not that people's dislike will always be targeted at groups with a low socio-economic status. E.g. as a British person, I quite dislike "posh" dialects. And that is entirely my problem -- not the problem of people who happen to speak that way.

Mithaldu 12y ago
There's a certain specific londonish dialect i'm thinking of, but don't know the name for, so i abbreviated it to chavs, but feel free to extrapolate my thoughts. My problem also isn't the people, my problem is that i cannot fucking make out the words they are trying to form, but i guess you can ignore that too despite me literally saying that in my previous post.
- foldr 12y ago
  I'm not ignoring it, but the whole point is that the reasons that people give for liking/disliking a particular dialect are often not the real reasons. I think it's pretty telling that you chose to identify one of your example dialects using "chav", which is basically a term of abuse directed at a certain social group which isn't dialectically all that homogenous.
  - Mithaldu 12y ago
    So i didn't want to leave you hanging, and i figured out thanks to the help of gaius below that i wasn't talking about chavs, but cockney, as exampled in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQJrBSXSs6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQJrBSXSs6o It's an accent i hate not because it sounds different, but because i literally cannot understand what they are saying for over 2/3 of the words (using the term words loosely here, i have trouble distinguishing their words in the first place).
    - foldr 12y ago
      I'm not sure why you'd hate an accent just because you find it difficult to understand as (I'm guessing) a non-native speaker. It's probably just a matter of getting more practice at listening to it.
      - Mithaldu 12y ago
        Because generally these people are perfectly capable of using the standard version of their language just fine. I make exceptions for people who were alive at the times of WW2, but most people who speak in heavy accents do it because they have no courtesy for their fellow humans. As for more practice: I already spent 16 years learning english to a near-native degree (among others). I'm not gonna bother trying to learn the accent of someone who probably only speaks a single language and is simply too lazy to use the standard language of their own country.
        foldr 12y ago
        >most people who speak in heavy accents do it because they have no courtesy for their fellow humans. People speak in their native dialects, and there are a lot of different dialects in Britain. I'm sure it's frustrating a as a second language speaker sometimes. However, the idea that cockneys are simply refusing to speak in Received Pronunciation is just laughable to any British person. You might as well ask a Belgian to speak French with a Parisian accent, or an Australian to speak like an American news reader. People can modulate their dialect to an extent, but beyond a certain limit, people would feel as if they were doing a silly impression rather than speaking naturally. Your attitude is shitty. If you are learning a second language, dealing with dialectal variation is part of that. I am learning Spanish and I find Mexicans, for example, easier to understand than Cubans. I don't blame that on Cubans.
- gaius 12y ago
  You might be thinking of "mockneys" rather than chavs.