Dialects of British English, Main points: Diversity of regional dialects in Britain

• The page discusses the diversity of British accents and dialects, emphasizing how the Queen’s English (or Received Pronunciation) is not commonly spoken.
• There are over 37 different dialects in the UK, with a range of regional and social variations.
• The Cockney dialect of London is linked with the working classes of the East End and Rhyming Slang.
• Estuary English is another dialect spoken in London and popularized in Southern England along the Thames Estuary.
• Yorkshire dialect is known as “God’s Own County” and includes notable differences from RP, including the pronunciation of ‘ee’ sounding words.
• Northern Irish accents are strong and beautiful, often with missing letters in words.
• Scottish accents vary significantly by location around the country, with stronger accents more evident in remote areas such as the Shetland Islands.
• Glaswegian accents can be challenging to understand.
• Brummie dialect, from residents of Birmingham, is notable for its soft-sounding quality.
• Scouse dialect, as spoken in Liverpool, is very nasal and can be difficult to copy.
• Geordie dialect is known for not pronouncing ‘r’s at the end of words.
• The British Library website provides an extensive resource on accents and dialects in the UK, searchable by county or map.
• The post recommends trying out different dialects to gain a better understanding of them.
• The author shares that he speaks four languages and is seeking another to learn.
• The post includes links to sample videos and online resources for users to learn and practice accents and regional dialects.

• The post is titled “Why do English native speakers refer to regional variations of their language as accents?” and was submitted to Reddit’s r/linguistics 3 years ago.
• One recommendation states that regional variations of English are largely intelligible which is why they are considered accents and not dialects.
• There is a discussion on the fuzziness of the distinction between languages and dialects.
• Another recommendation claims that Galician is considered a separate language rather than a dialect due to the politics around the region’s history.
• There is a conversation about African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and how it is seen as a dialect due to significant grammatical differences from General American English but it is not considered a separate language since it had a high interaction with GAE in its development.
• The difference between accent and dialect in English is explained, where accent is considered a component of dialect and refers to the phonological and phonetic aspect of the variety, whereas dialect also covers differences in grammar, lexicon, pragmatics, and more.
• There is a personal observation on some educated French speakers in the south moderating their speech differently in different situations such as with southern accent, standard grammar and lexis or approaching standard accent, standard grammar, and lexis, among others.
• One recommendation touches upon the difference between standard French and standard regional French, with the latter being spoken by native speakers who grew up in a particular place.
• There is a dialogue about the regional dialects in France and how they differ in terms of lexical and pronunciation differences.
• Some comments discuss the difference between accent and dialect in terms of formality and solidarity where accent is more informal and indicates high social solidarity, while dialect is formal and infers a situation of high social solidarity.
• Some comparisons are made between languages and dialects in different languages such as Scots as a dialect rather than distinct language due to its level of intelligibility.

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• The webpage explains the different varieties of English in Britain and how British English differs from American and Canadian English.
• The abbreviation RP, or Received Pronunciation, is traditionally considered the standard accent of those living in London, southeast England, and other parts of the UK. It is considered a “prestige” accent that has achieved a higher status than others.
• Other varieties of English are still preserved in spite of the leveling influences of film, TV, and radio.
• Different accents in Northern UK are described where RP / æ / sound in words like ‘laugh’, ‘fast’, and ‘path’ is still pronounced as / a / (sound like ‘a’ in ‘fat’).
• The webpage explains that the Northern dialects still retain the old past-tense singular forms like ‘band’, ‘brak’, ‘fand’, and ‘spak’ instead of using the standard English forms like ‘bound’, ‘broke’, ‘found’, and ‘spoke’.
• RP pronunciation of the vowel sound in ‘run’, ‘rung’, and ‘tongue’ is similar to ‘u’ in ‘but’, while it is pronounced like the ‘oo’ in ‘book’ in some Northern accents.
• The definite article ‘the’ is heard as ‘t’, ‘th’ or ‘d’ in various Northern accents. In those where it is both t and th, it is used before consonants and th before vowels.
• The RP /t∫/ sound of the ‘ch’ in ‘church’ can become ‘k’, like in ‘thack’ (‘thatch, roof’) and ‘kirk’ (‘church’) in some Northern dialects.
• The South Western accents in UK develop the bilabial semivowel ‘w’ before ‘o’ in ‘wold’ for ‘old’ and ‘wom’ for ‘home’, demonstrating a similar development in RP.
• Scots or Lowland Scottish was once a part of Northern English, but they began to diverge in the 14th century. Scots trill their ‘r’s, shorten vowels, and simplify diphthongs.
• The webpage provides a few Scots words such as ‘bairn’, ‘brae’, ‘canny’, ‘dour’, and ‘pawky’ that have made their way into RP.
• Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language still spoken by about 60,000 people (almost all bilingual) mostly in the Highlands and Western Isles, while Scots are often

• The Reddit post is titled “English dialects” and was posted two years ago on the r/linguistics subreddit.
• The poster notes that variation within English in the British Isles is mostly a matter of accent, with some local vocabulary and grammar points, but Scots is a distinct Anglic language with its syntax, morphology, and vocabulary. Vernacular Northumbrian English is argued to be closer to Scots than to Standard English, and Cumbrian is also distinct from Standard English.
• The poster recalls finding a text that was translated into a dozen English vernacular dialects, and while they were still considered the same language, differences were stark.
• The poster asks if anyone has descriptions or outlines of those vernaculars or knows how and when London English displaced them.
• A Reddit user recommends Simon Roper’s channel on Youtube for information on various English dialects in the UK, especially Cumbrian (2 karma).
• The Reddit post discusses a Survey of English Dialects in the 1950s, which aimed to document the various English dialects in the UK. The survey was considered urgent because dialects were disappearing. The poster wonders if this means those local varieties were clearly separable from Standard English, in a fashion similar to that of German, Dutch, and French dialects (Oïl). The poster has not found the results of the survey online.

• Question posed on the webpage: whether there were ever mutually unintelligible “dialects” of English like there are in other European languages
• The original poster clarifies that dialects here refers to separate languages, like Plattdeutsch and Bavarian which are distinct due to cultural or basic anatomical similarities.
• Examples of varieties of English mentioned:
  • Scots
  • Yola (Wexford dialect spoken within an English-speaking area of County Wexford, Ireland)
  • Northumbrian (spoken in the rural northeast of England, was mutually unintelligible with standard English until relatively recently)
  • Cumbrian (not Cumbric) is one example that existed about a century ago
  • West country dialects had a different gender system (countable and uncountable nouns had different genders)
• Poems written in various Middle English dialects that are almost unintelligible to modern speakers, even though they can understand Chaucer.
• Comment: National borders are used to decide what counts as a dialect and what counts as an accent. If we applied a similar definition in the UK we could consider Celtic languages like Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish to be dialects that are not mutually intelligible with English, but they are distinct languages.
• Differences between Standard British English and Standard American English
• A broad accent can be difficult to follow if you’re not accustomed to hearing it, but the differences aren’t insurmountable.
• Accent levelling happens over time, as people move around and the differences between dialects start to wear down.
• There were a number of historical developments in the modern period that caused people to move around more, like the enclosures acts, the highland clearances and the industrial revolution.
• The Australian accent arose from the mingling of Irish, Cockney and RP accents, a process known as koineization.
• The rise of mass media will have sped up the dialect levelling process still further.
• These days English is a global language, and there are varieties around the world that are largely English-based but with significant differences in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, like West African Pidgin English, and Singlish which is spoken natively by many in Singapore. These aren’t always mutually intelligible.
• One comment argues that a “dialect” that’s not intelligible is a separate language.
• Another comment points out that the word “dialect” is ill-defined and usually what separates a language versus a dialect is politics

• The webpage is a post from r/linguistics titled “Will English eventually evolve into an entire language family like Latin and Sanskrit?” posted 2 years ago
• The comment section discusses the diversity of regional dialects in Britain and whether they will lead to English evolving into several different languages like Latin and Sanskrit
• Historically, the evolution of English into several different languages like Latin and Sanskrit has been expected
• One user thinks there might be a single international standard for English via the internet, inhibiting radical developments
• However, another user points out that globalisation makes mutually intelligible varieties of English converge rather than diverge
• In addition, it’s hard to define a language
• Quirky regional English dialects in Britain are being replaced very quickly, with non-rhoticity being commonplace in Scottish urban environments
• The same has happened in the US on a smaller scale, with American English influencing urban British English directly
• New Zealand English is also strongly influenced by Australian English, and the English of former British colonies in which it’s majorly a second language are also very syncretic
• English-based Creole languages are also disappearing or at least being watered down due to globalisation, being constantly “corrected” to fit foreign standards
• Koine Greek appeared as a process of dialects from a common source converging back into a common form due to the cohesive nature the Greek world eventually developed. Koine Greek did have dialects, but in any way, they were closer than before
• Today, the vast majority of Greek dialects are very easily mutually intelligible
• Levelling is causing Scots to converge more and more into its sister language of English
• One user noticed from working with students in different anglophone countries that idiolects are converging on a variety of General American English, with remarkable consistency regardless of geography, discourse markers prevalent in US dialects, being retained when speaking to older generations that retain local idiolects
• Some users believe that the internet and education helps communication and also helps to teach people a standard language, making it more difficult for English to evolve into several different languages like Latin and Sanskrit.
• It’s hard to make predictions about whether English will eventually evolve into several different languages like Latin and Sanskrit due to the diverse and rapidly changing nature of regional dialects in Britain, globalisation, and the difficulty in defining what constitutes a language.

💭  Looking into

Comparison of regional dialects with standard British English

💭  Looking into

List of the top 5 most distinct regional dialects of British English