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Should dialects exist? | ||
Tags: Dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5057 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 9 of 38 30 August 2011 at 4:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Languages are a means of communication amongst people. They grow. They evolve. They change. Dialects are changes in languages that suit a particular group of people. They may evolve into new languages over time, as Latin dialects evolved into the Romance languages of the present. In today's interconnected world- the odds are against that happening.
I am proud to speak a non-standard dialect of English natively. It reminds me of where I am from and who I am. It reminds me that I havenot been homogenized, that I am an individual. That I am an individual who belongs to a sub-group of people who are proud of who they are and where they come from.My language, accent, dialect and vocabulary are part of who I am. I speak standard English as well, when necessary, to facilitate communication and understanding amongst native and non-native speakers of English. I love the diversity of the English language all over the world. It adds color to our lives and spices up the standard language when dialectical usages and words become adopted. I don't want to live in a bland, spice-less world. Edited by iguanamon on 30 August 2011 at 4:34am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5176 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 38 30 August 2011 at 4:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The process that allows languages to split and diverge into mutually unintelligible
systems of communication also necessarily allows, in its intermediate stages, various dialects to exist. No dialects, no languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5561 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 11 of 38 30 August 2011 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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You should worry less about dialects (as in regional variants of a language or dialect continuum), and more about register, sociolects, jargons/argots, ...
If you accept that in any language, you'll talk differently to your boss (or chief) than to your old chums, to your partner than to a stranger on the street (or in the bush), accepting that people in different regions speak a bit differently from each other isn't that difficult. More than that, speakers of a diverging dialect do not expect you to speak like them and usually they modify theit speech so that you as a foreigner can understand them better, something speakers of the prestige dialect do not always do. Edited by Bao on 30 August 2011 at 4:51pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4654 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 12 of 38 30 August 2011 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
@Chung - your optimism is dazzling, but imagine, for example, someone who's working temporally with Arabs and visit different Arabic countries and his feelings, especially, if he work with lower educated people, who don't know the "standard" Arabic. I feel extremely sorry for him.
But... why? I simply cannot understand this. (The pain of living in a linguistically united country)
Believe me that my Polish-British friend would strongly disagree.
Maybe such person is pro the united Yugoslavia? :)
Absolutely no problem to me. @Bao & @iguanamon - but you have to say that it's kinda uncomfortable when you cannot understand people walking around you, especially if you live somewhere a bit longer than one month or so.
Interesting point of view, because I've tried to eliminate minor elements of dialectism in my speech. Probably it was successful, because people from the whole Poland can't hear I was born in the Eastern Poland. And I'm not proud of my place of birth, definitely.
But I'd like to. It seems I'm the devil's advocate ;) Edited by prz_ on 30 August 2011 at 7:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5561 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 38 30 August 2011 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Well, I learn to. When I'm in such a situation I listen and observe, trying to find known patterns and understand how sound shifts work (that's probably the most important bit) and what non-standard grammar and vocabulary mean. And, of course, I try to prepare myself for such situations wth material in different dialects as soon as I can understand most of an interview or a broadcast in standard language. I never really thought about dialects as something that could be annoying, but rather as something I have to put some effort in if I want to understand the language well. And they can be so funny. I find it very fascinating to observe how people switch between registers and dialects depending on the situation, their mood and what they are trying to convey. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 4889 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 14 of 38 31 August 2011 at 12:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Well as an American I'm becoming less and less phased by such vocabulary and idiom mixing... it happens even among native speakers, myself included. It's because of exposure to media and the internet, having friends and co-workers from other English speaking countries, interacting with immigrants, etc. I know I have caught myself using British spellings at times. Mixing accents still does sounds jarring. Though, I suppose we are becoming more and more accepting of that, since we are so used to hearing many different non-native foreign accents in English ranging from broken to near-native, and everything in-between. I still think it sounds better to stick to a particular accent though, otherwise you might end up sounding a bit pretentious or give off the wrong impression. Also it can make you more difficult to understand, so unless your pronunciation is already very good, it's probably not a good idea. Edited by starrye on 31 August 2011 at 12:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4861 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 15 of 38 31 August 2011 at 1:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I agree that it's very unnerving to hear a mix of English dialects. If you meet someone who speaks another dialect, you learn to accept that as a part of their personal heritage and a personal peculiarity. The standard language is not a mix of all dialects. Using words particular to one dialect in conduction with words in other dialects can be confusing because, in effect, you would sound like no dialect or version of the standard language. For example, someone who adopted a strong English accent but used Californian slang like bro, dude, and gnarly would sound to a native English speaker as if they're out of place or even disrespecting the way Californians speak. It's very complicated. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 38 31 August 2011 at 3:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
It's hard to describe neatly but as Kartof concludes the mixing of variants/dialects is complicated and often is taken the wrong way by speakers of the target language. Your British friend's reaction may be excessive, but I think that the motivation for it is present in all of us native speakers to varying degrees, judging by some of the responses. I should have provide a better example for you to think about. Imagine if I the student of Polish would deliberately mix dialectal forms when using Polish. Say that I use many words that aren't in the standard, and pronounce each sentence with a different accent, picking whichever one I feel like using in a given moment. Instead of merely speaking always with Mazurzenie, how would you react if I would start a casual conversation with you about something banal (e.g. my daily routine) by using Goralski, and then in the next few sentences talk as if I were from Kaszuby, and then after that speak in a way that's very similar to someone from Gorny Slask, and to top it off, I would then start to use Polish like people from Kresy. I doubt that you would not wonder why in hell I'd be changing my speech patterns or choice of words. You may even think that I'm trying to make light of Poles or something, or crudely show off how adept I am in using non-standard language that depends on regions. Note that most of us English-speakers are fairly tolerant of other accents but consistency or using the language in ways that don't stand out for the wrong reasons is the way to go (especially when using the language orally, but even some of us on this forum may argue about the veracity of things such as "dove" and "dived" or "aluminum" or "aluminium") And even if you speak with the same general accent but deliberately use words that are not associated with the accent of that variant, you could raise eyebrows or even cause potential misunderstandings. For example, when I hear Americans say things such as "they played attractive football" ("football" here meaning "soccer", rather than "American" football) or say "they live on the first floor" (but in the British English sense where "first floor" refers to the floor above the ground floor; in North American English, we'd call this floor "the second floor"), I would wonder why are they speaking to me in the accent that I'm used to, but using words according to the sense or meaning understood in a different variant. It's kind of like how I noticed that Canadian professor who spoke indistinguishibly from other North Americans until I heard him pronounce "France" like the British (I wonder now how he would pronounce the 'a' in something like "to be frank..." :-P Would it sound like "to be fronk"? or "to be frahnk"?). 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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