DIALECTS ACCENTS INTERMEZZO What is dialect What is

DIALECTS & ACCENTS

INTERMEZZO What is dialect? What is accent? Are they same or different?

DIALECT • A variety of a language spoken by a group of people that is characterized by systematic features (e. g. , phonological, lexical, grammatical) that distinguish it from other varieties of that same language. • Everyone speaks a dialect. • Idiolect: the speech variety of an individual speaker.

DIALECT (CONT’D) Language = a continuum of dialect Dialect = a continuum of idiolect Language dialect idiolect

MISCONCEPTION ABOUT DIALECT • Dialect ≠ ‘substandard’ • Dialect ≠ ‘incorrect’ • Dialect ≠ ‘slang’ FACT: everyone speaks a dialect

FACTORS AFFECTING DIALECT VARIATION Dialect can vary because: 1. Geographical Locations 2. Social Class 3. Educational Background or Occupation (Yule, 2010: 241 -256)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION • People coming from different places may have different dialects. For instance, American people speak different dialects such as New England English, Inland Northern American English, Mid-Atlantic dialects and so forth. These dialects are due to the geographical locations.

SOCIAL CLASS Middle class Working class (upper) (lower)

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND OR OCCUPATION Well educated • • Formal Appropriate Grammatically correct Talk like a book Less educated • More casual • Free • Sometimes ungrammatical

WAYS DIALECT VARY • Phonological (accent) • Morphological • Syntactical/Grammatical • Semantic/Lexical

PHONOLOGICAL (ACCENT) There are obviously many American English accents. For reference, here is a list of only the most common classifications in the United States and United Kingdom. General American This refers to the spectrum of ‘standard’ English spoken by newscasters, TV actors, and a large percentage of middle-class Americans. Prominent Features: • The short-a (as in cat) is raised and diphthongized before nasal consonants. Hence man and can’t are pronounced something like IPA meən and keənt (“meh-uhn” and “keh-uhnt. ”) • Rhotic, meaning the r is pronounced at the end of words like car and mother. • Words like lot and rod are pronounced with an unrounded vowel, as lɑt and ɹɑd (“laht” and “rahd”). • The diphthong in words like boat and rode is pronounced relatively back: i. e. IPA boʊt and roʊd

Eastern New England English This describes the classic “Boston Accent. ” It also refers to related accents in Eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Eastern New Hampshire and Eastern Connecticut. The most important feature of this is non-rhoticity: unlike other American accents, New Englanders drop the “r” at the end of syllables. Hence the famous phrase “pahk yuh cahr in hahvuhd yahd” (Park your car in Harvard Yard). Prominent Features: • Non-rhoticity, as mentioned above. • Fronted pronunciation of words like father and palm, so these are pronounced IPA faðə and pa: m (i. e. this vowel is close to the vowel in words like “cat” and “mad” in General American). • Unlike most other American accents, the vowel in lot and rod is rounded as in most British dialects, pronounced IPA lɒt and ɹɒd (“lawt” and “rawd”). Note that this feature is less prevalent in some sub-dialects, such as Rhode Island.

Received Pronunciation is the closest to a “standard accent” that has ever existed in the UK. Although it originally derives from London English, it is non-regional. You’ve probably heard this accent countless times in Jane Austen adaptations, Merchant Ivory films, and Oscar Wilde plays. It emerged from the 18 th- and 19 th-Century aristocracy, and has remained the “gold standard” ever since. Prominent Features: • Non-rhoticity, meaning the r at the ends of words isn’t pronounced (mother sounds like “muhthuh”). • Trap-bath split, meaning that certain a words, like bath, can’t, and dance are pronounced with the broad-a in father. (This differs from most American accents, in which these words are pronounced with the short-a in cat. • The vowels tend to be a bit more conservative than other accents in Southern England, which have undergone significant vowel shifting over the past century.

Cockney is probably the second most famous British accent. It originated in the East End of London, but shares many features with and influences other dialects in that region. Prominent Features: • Raised vowel in words like trap and cat so these sounds like “trep” and “cet. ” • Non-rhoticity: see explanation above under Received Pronunciation, above. • Trap-bath split: see explanation above under Received Pronunciation. • London vowel shift: The vowel sounds are shifted around so that Cockney “day” sounds is pronounced IPA dæɪ (close to American “die”) and Cockney buy verges near IPA bɒɪ (close to American “boy”). • Glottal Stopping: the letter t is pronounced with the back of the throat (glottis) in between vowels; hence better becomes IPA be? ə (sounds to outsiders like “be’uh”). • L-vocalization: The l at the end of words often becomes a vowel sound Hence pal can seem to sound like “pow. ” (I’ve seen this rendered in IPA as /w/, /o, / and /ɰ/. ) • Th-Fronting: The th in words like think or this is pronounced with a more forward consonant depending on the word: thing becomes “fing, ” this becomes “dis, ” and mother becomes “muhvah. ”

MORPHOLOGICAL Unlike British English, American English has always shown a marked tendency to use nouns as verbs. Examples of ‘verbed’ nouns are, interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in “exit the lobby”), factor (in mathematics), gun (“shoot”).

SYNTACTIC/GRAMMAR • Even British and American speak English, but both of them utilize different aspects of grammar. My team is winning. Which team is losing? The other team are all sitting down. Which team are losing?

SEMANTIC/LEXICAL Am. E Br. E • • Truck Attorney Cookie Apartment Lorry Barrister Biscuit Flat

ACCENT • An accent is a certain form of a language spoken by a subgroup of speakers of that language which is defined by phonological features. • Everyone has an accent, just as everyone speaks a dialect. It's not a question of “having” or “not having” an accent or dialect, it's a question of which accent or dialect you speak with. • Note that you can speak the same dialect as someone else while using a different accent (though frequently the two vary together). Thus people from Boston and Brooklyn use about the same dialect, but their accents are radically different.

DIALECT AND ACCENT IN ENGLISH American English 1. Northern (Northern New England, Boston, NY City, etc. ) 2. Northern Midland (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Ohio-Plains, etc. ) 3. Southern Midland (Appalachia, Arkansas. Oklahoma) 4. Southern (Virginia, Carolina, Texas, etc. ) 5. Western (Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, California, etc. )

DIALECT AND ACCENT IN ENGLISH British English 1. Northern (Cheshire, Cumbrian, Geordie, etc. ) 2. East Midland 3. West Midland (Black Country, Brummie, Potteries, Telford) 4. East Anglian (Norfolk, Suffolk) 5. Southern (RP, Cockney, Essex, etc. ) 6. West Country (Anglo-Cornish) 7. Bristolian

POINTS TO PONDER Dialects and accents are one of the variations in a language i. e. English. These two terms are not exactly the same. However, both of them are interwoven. Dialect is not a substandard of a language, it is not slang either. Dialect is a variety of a language spoken by group of people that is characterized by systematic features (e. g. phonological, lexical, and grammatical) that language dialect distinguish it from other varieties of that same language. While accent is only variations in pronunciation only. Thus, accent is a subset of dialect. accent

Register • A register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting • Registers can simply be described as variations of the language according to its use, while the dialect as a language variation based on users registers on this concept is not limited to the choice of words (such as the notion registers in the traditional theory) but also includes the choice of the use of text structure, and texture. • Example : English journalist

Style • Style relates to the typical ways in which one or more people do a particular thing. • Examples : - Formal - Informal

• SALAMAT • SHUKRAN WA ILA ALIQA’A