Analyze my dialect

[Al B. Sure!]

what the hell? accents form due to prolonged seperation... how the hell are people living mere miles from each other and having constant contact going to have more distinct accents than people living hundreds of miles from each other and having no contact?

there's a dozen different dialects in American Southern alone... Plantation Southern, one of the many dialects, itself can be broken down into different versions depending on where you are (georgia vs. s. carolina, etc.)

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Buck Birdseed, you most certainly have not been exposed to the wide variety of accents we have here as you most likely only hear whats on TV. On TV you hear basically a neuterd midwestern accent, the equivalent of BBC English in North America. No other accents really make the cut on TV and alot of people with other accents will change them before going on TV. A good example are Canadians who want to make it in Hollywood (ie, Michael J Fox, etc...).

And its uninformed to assume we don't have at least as much variety here in North America as in the UK, regardless of distance. I grew up in Boston and I can tell which outlying town or neighborhood of the city people come from based on their accent and they words they use. My father can even tell which part of which neighborhood someone comes from.. sometimes even narrow it down to an individual project building. I can also tell which part of New England people come from based on their accent, each region is very distinct. I can probably name about 30 or 40 different accents in New England alone, and I probably haven't even heard half of them. This is one region. North America is an immensly huge area (alot of Europeans don't have a proper concept of just how big we are) and we have a range of accents to match it.

Just because you don't hear it doesn't mean its not there. But anyways, no one is saying the UK doesn't have alot of variety (it has a ton and its very interesting) we're just saying North America has just as much.

[Al B. Sure!]

and don't forget the huge influence foreigners have had... certain regions of the US have entirely different words and pronounce things far different due to contact with foreigners (the southwest due to contact with mexicans)... the dozens of italian accents (italian being unintelligible between north and south) have had a profound influence on the way even non-italians talk in cities like NYC and Philly... Polish Jews have influenced the way many non-Jewish New Yorkers talk... england doesn't have that foreign influence.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Yeah, I'm guessing Appalachia or rural South.

Wherever it is, he ought to get to civilization soon.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
and don't forget the huge influence foreigners have had... certain regions of the US have entirely different words and pronounce things far different due to contact with foreigners (the southwest due to contact with mexicans)... the dozens of italian accents (italian being unintelligible between north and south) have had a profound influence on the way even non-italians talk in cities like NYC and Philly... Polish Jews have influenced the way many non-Jewish New Yorkers talk... england doesn't have that foreign influence.

This is true.

Wherever it is, he ought to get to civilization soon.

Accent or dialect is in no way an indicator of ones level of "civilization", but you know that.

[Kuciwalker]

I didn't say he wasn't civilized, I said he needed to get to civilization.

I managed to escape from Nashville to Northern Virginia

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I didn't say he wasn't civilized, I said he needed to get to civilization.

I managed to escape from Nashville to Northern Virginia

Hey, whats wrong with Nashville? Nashville's a great town...

[mrmitchell]

Wherever it is, he ought to get to civilization soon.

Y'all Yankees should all com'on down an' have a stay in the South. Oughta do you all some good.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
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

Britain had the Empire, which involved lots of people leaving Britain and staying in foreign lands for long periods of time. They returned and tended to bring back others from all over the world.

Its not just accent that it changed, but the words of the language. The English language has absorbed innumerable words from other languages and cultures.

[Al B. Sure!]

more than America... not likely. we have had far more immigration.

[Provost Harrison]

We've had far more years.

[Al B. Sure!]

but you also had a small amount of territory where people from Manchester would have much contact with people from London... someone from Seattle is not likely to have much contact with people from Atlanta. this seperation is what causes different dialects. people living mere miles from each other with constant contact do not develop dialects; if anything, they merge and have a single dialect.

[Dauphin]

You've obviously never heard a Mancunian, Cockney, Geordie or Scouser talk.

[Al B. Sure!]

obviously you've never heard of the two causes of dialect variety... foreign influence and prolonged seperation (linguistic drift)...

in terms of the science of linguistics, tell me how did it come to pass that a small area like England would have more dialects than a massive area like the US?

[Starchild]

I'd wager that until relatively recently, a person from Seattle would have had more contact with a person from Atlanta than a Mancunian would have had with a Londoner. Speer, being an American, fails to appreciate the British sense of distance.

For example, Colchester and Ipswich are about half an hour away by car. To go from one to the other is considered a long journey.

For example two, there are people who have never left their village in this country. Also, it is entirely possible for someone to have never spent significant amounts of time outside their London borough. A friend of mine who lived in Brixton did not know anything of London past her local tube stations.

Example three, only recently have broad accents like Esturay English or a common Scottish accent emerged. This is directly in line with the new flexibility in population movement seeping into the British consciousness. Though I doubt we'll ever be as mobile as the Americans due to our attachment to house buying for long term investment.