Dialects

Peter Trudgill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134292356
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Routledge Language Workbooks provide absolute beginners with practical introductions to core areas of language study. Books in the series provide comprehensive coverage of the area as well as a basis for further investigation. Each Language Workbook guides the reader through the subject using 'hands-on' language analysis, equipping them with the basic analytical skills needed to handle a wide range of data. Written in a clear and simple style, with all technical concepts fully explained, Language Workbooks can be used for independent study or as part of a taught class.
This second edition of Dialects:
*has been revised throughout
*introduces the many dialects of English spoken in the United Kingdom
*reveals the key issues that dialectology engages with
*uses both the international phonetic alphabet and simple representations of sounds to explain pronunciations
*involves readers in collecting data
*contains numerous illustrative maps
*is written in a lively and engaging style, with information on 'posh and less posh' dialects and spotting your dialect area.

STUDYING ENGLISH DIALECTS

1

Like all languages, English is very varied. It comes in many different regional and social varieties, All these varieties are linguistically equivalent No variety of the language is linguistically superior to any other.

Some English words

sidewalk, chiyack

rone, ashet, faucet

sophomore, dreich

We are very used to talking about our language as if it were a single, clearly defined entity: the English Language. Looked at in one way, this is only sensible, particularly when we think of the written language. English is a language which has its own literature, its own grammar books, and its own dictionaries. It is also a language which is quite clearly not French, not German, not Chinese – or any other language. To talk about the English language does actually mean something.

This view of English can be rather misleading, though. It is equally sensible, looked at in another way, to claim that there is no such thing as the English language, if by that we were to mean that there was only one way to speak or write English. The point is that English – like all other languages – comes in many different forms, particularly when we think of the spoken language – and in this book we are concentrating on spoken English. Anyone can tell that the English of the British Isles is different from the English of the United States or Australia. The English of England is clearly different from the English of Scotland or Wales. The English of Lancashire is noticeably different from the English of Northumberland or Kent. And the English of Liverpool is not the same as the English of Manchester. There is very considerable regional variation within the English language as it is spoken in different parts of the British Isles and different parts of the world. The fact is that the way you speak English has a lot to do with where you are from – where you grew up and first learnt your language. If you grew up in Liverpool, your English will be different from the English of Manchester, which will in turn be different from the English of London, and so on.

Where you are from, of course, will not be the only thing which influences how you speak. People speak different kinds of English depending on what kind of social background they come from, so that some Liverpool speakers may be ‘more Liverpudlian’ than others, and some Manchester people may be easier to identify as Mancunians than others. Some speakers may even be so ‘posh’ that it is not possible to tell where they come from at all (we shall discuss this further in Unit 2).

These social and geographical kinds of language are known as DIALECTS. Dialects, then, have to do with a speaker's social and geographical origins – and we are talking here about all speakers. It is important to emphasise that everybody speaks a dialect. Dialects are not peculiar or old-fashioned or rustic ways of speaking. They are not something which only other people have. Just as everybody comes from somewhere and has a particular kind of social background, so everybody – including you – speaks a dialect. Your dialect is the particular combination of English words, pronunciations and grammatical forms that you share with other people from your area and your social background, and that differs in certain ways from the combination used by people from other areas and backgrounds.

Dialect

It is also important to point out that none of these combinations – none of these dialects – is linguistically superior in any way to any other. We may as individuals be rather fond of our own dialect. This should not make us think, though, that it is actually any better than any other dialect. Dialects are not good or bad, nice or nasty, right or wrong – they are just different from one another, and it is the mark of a civilised society that it tolerates different dialects just as it tolerates different races, religions and sexes. American English is not better – or worse – than British English. The dialect of BBC newsreaders is not linguistically superior to the dialect of Bristol dockers or Suffolk farmworkers. There is nothing you can do or say in one dialect that you cannot do or say in another dialect.

Scientists who study dialects – DIALECTOLOGISTS – start from the assumption that all dialects are linguistically equal. (We will discuss the issue of social equality in Unit 3.) What dialectologists are interested in are differences between dialects. The task of dialectologists is to describe different dialects, to note differences between them, and, importantly, to try and explain how these differences came about. We shall be looking at different aspects of the dialectologist's work in subsequent units.

Dialectologist

Most people who have grown up somewhere in the English-speaking world are already rather good English dialectologists, even if they have never studied English dialectology. During our lives, we become familiar with a wider and wider range of varieties of English and are usually able to tell quite a lot about a person we meet for the first time simply from the way they speak. Their words, grammar and pronunciation tell us things about their regional and social background. In the following exercises, you are asked to say what you can about the origins of the texts in question.

EXERCISES

1.1   What is the regional origin of the following poem?

The wuid-reek mells wi the winter haar

And aa the birds are gane;

They’re burnan the leaves, the treen are bare,

December rules a dour domain.

The wuid-reek draws a memorie

Frae some far neuk in the brain

When I was a loun and hadna loed

And never kent the world's bane.

Och, burn the leaves and burn the branch

And burn the holly treen!

O winter, burn the hairt I want –

And syne burn mine again!

1.2    What is the regional origin of the following passage? Make a list of the words and spellings which led you to make this identification.

She must have felt me staring at her, for she turned around, and her eyes, which were an astonishing color, now looked at me with an open small-town concern. And now I realized the detective had seen me chatting with nothing less than a blonde. We stepped into a squad car, the siren was turned on, and we drove to an exit, and then turned back to the apartment. By the time we arrived, there were two more squad cars in the street. Our silence continued as we rode up in the elevator, and when we got to the apartment, a few more detectives and a few more police were standing around. There was a joyless odor in the air.

1.3    What is the regional origin of the following passage? Make a list of the features which led you to make this identification,

I’ve lost my pal, ’e's the best in all the tahn,

But don’t you fink ’im dead, becos ‘e ain’t.

But since he's wed, ’e ’as ter nuckle dahn,

It's enough ter vex the temper of a saint,

E's a brewer's drayman, wiv a leg of mutton fist,

An’ as strong as a bullick or an horse.

Yet in ’er ‘ands ‘e's like a little kid,

Oh! I wish as I could get him a divorce.

1.4     The following words mean different things in American and British English. Find out what the differences are:

nervy, scrappy, pavement, homely, momentarily, cheap

1.5     The following English words have at least two different pronunciations in different varieties of the language. Say what they are:

dance, butter, bath, off, card, head, plant, one, supper, girl

1.6    Watch an American TV programme, for example, a comedy or crime show, and an Australian TV programme, for example, a soap opera, and make a note of all the words and expressions which strike you as being distinctively American and Australian. Discuss these words and expressions.

POSH AND LESS POSH DIALECTS

2

Dialects are both regional and social The dialect with the greatest prestige is Standard English, which has slightly different forms in different parts of the English-speaking world. It can be spoken with any kind of accent or pronunciation.

Some English sentences

She don't want none of that.

We ain't got none of them sweets.

He's the one what done it.

Social and regional dialects

In the first unit, we saw that what sort of dialect you speak depends on your social and regional background. In this unit we look at the relationship between SOCIAL AND REGIONAL DIALECTS, which in Britain Social and is a rather complicated one.regional dialects

Standard English

There is no dou...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• DIALECTS
• LANGUAGE WORKBOOKS
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Using This Book
• 1 Studying English dialects
• 2 Posh and less posh dialects
• 3 English in many shapes and forms
• 4 Dialects – the old and the new
• 5 Dialect maps
• 6 What dialect maps can tell us
• 7 How dialect boundaries get to be where they are
• 8 Spot your dialect area
• 9 Present-tense verbs
• 10 Different dialects, different grammar
• 11 Dialect grammar – the old and the new
• 12 Overdoing things
• Further reading
• Answers to exercises
• Index