Analyze my dialect

[Starchild]

How does Dauphin know my accent? :hmm:

[Dauphin]

I've met you you fool.

At least I was told that 'funny sounding person over there' was you.

[MRT144]

dude, im hella tired cause i hella walked up a hella big hill. it had a hella good view from the top though.

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed

krossmakronur, yoktetakk

???

Kokosmakroner, hjortetakk? Typical Christmas biscuit-thingies.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Starchild


I think my ten years spent in the States plus my four years in Canada plus my four years in the UK gives me some insider brownie points.

Well then what can I say, you must just be dialectally deaf

Seriously though, there are alot of people like that. My girlfriends father has a thick Newfoundland accent and to him, he sounds just like a Southerner.

But come on, the UK certainly has alot of accents, especially considering its size, but to say North America doesn't have at least as many, if not more, is just blatantly false.

[Buck Birdseed]

To an impartial observer they're nowhere near as differentiated. The english have had, like, a thousand more years to grow appart than you have...

[Al B. Sure!]

umm... The US and Canada have also had far more foreign immigrants influencing the language than England had... the US and Canada have far more territory over which people spread and lost contact with speakers in other parts of the country. we no doubt have more dialect variety than england.

[Buck Birdseed]

Doubt it. But then I haven't heard a broader range of US accents than we get off TV, and I can guarantee you've certainly not heard some of the more extreme accents of the british isles. The only solution is for someone to dredge up a dialect archive with sound samples.

[Al B. Sure!]

you're wrong... dialects form due to population movements. a group of people from one region travel to another region and with time and minimal contact with the old region, they develop an entirely new dialect. foreign language also greatly influences the formation of new dialects. America, by being several times larger than england (and thus, having more space between dialects) and having a huge immigration influence, is no doubt more diverse linquistically than england. i dont see why the hell it would be the other way around. a 19th century man from York could take a train and be in London the very next day... a 19th century man from NYC couldn't do the same to get to San Fran. the immense size of america alone causes us to have more disparity between dialects. most americans will never be exposed (in person) to dialects across the country. all a londoner has to do is take a short drive north and he'll get exposed to other peoples.

[Buck Birdseed]

Oh, dialects in very close proximity to each other can be very different. In sweden some dialects with a couple of dozen miles appart are barely similar at all, due to geographical/class/regional reasons. People hardly move at all in some places, you know - the movement thing only makes things smoother as it has continued and the exchange has continued. The US is less culturally stratified with fewer tiny islands of population, and its accents are way more similar, believe me.

[Gangerolf]

I dare to say that the difference between my dialect and the dialect of people living only an hour's drive north is greater than the difference between any dialects of American English, or even English in general

Mobility doesn't necessarily mean squat.

[Buck Birdseed]

I was gonna say - there are some recordings I've heard out of dialect archives here in Sweden that are almost completely unintelligible to me. I mean, there are several dialects that, like scots to english, used to be a separate language before being reformed in...

[Gangerolf]

I heard a sample of Ôsterbotten-Swedish (in Finland). It didn't sound like "normal" Finland-Swedish. It was just... weird. And almost unintelligible.

The differences between some German dialects are pretty extreme too. Might as well be separate languages.

[Buck Birdseed]

Oh they are. High German and Low German are totally, totally different, they're only the same language for political reasons.

[Brent]

Well, I guess I'm not very good at this, so the answer is that I live in Northern California and the only parts of my heritage that should show in my samples should be Rogaland county in Norway, and possibly Utah, and having formerly lived in Texas. Kinda embarassing how badly I spelled hjortetakk.