Questions tagged [dialects]
Dialects are varieties of a language that differ in systematic ways from each other but are mutually intelligible.
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Did Russian Peasant dialect(s) significantly differ from the "mainstream" Russian?
Richard Pipes in The Russian Revolution remarks:
The peasantry was hardly affected by the westernization which had transformed Russia's elite into Europeans, and in its culture remained loyal to ...
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Standard representation of dialects across cultures?
If you expand the "Dialectal data" link here on the Chinese Wiktionary, you see like ~40+ what I'll call "varieties". They are grouped under 2 categories:
Variety (parent group, ...
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Is there a Mid-Atlantic pronouncing dictionary?
I’m someone who speaks what I would describe as “a conservative American accent”. I sound like General American from a couple decades ago. I distinguish between the vowels in Mary, marry, and merry, ...
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Which English phoneme varies the most among its dialects?
The phonology of English shows extensive variance among its multitude of dialects. Which phoneme(s) shows the most variance throughout the language?
I think the most immediately apparent choice would ...
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How to make a reference grammar of colloquial forms of a language?
Recently, I became interested in trying to document the grammar and phonologies of colloquial or "street" forms of English. Is there an easy way to figure out how people in my neighborhood ...
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Is there a technical term for the process of a dialectal word being accepted as part of the standard variety?
For example, the word pet appeared originally in Scottish and northern England dialect, but it is no longer felt as specific to certain regions. I have not discovered any appropriate term for such ...
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What tribal/regional Yemeni arabic dialects and/or modern south Arabian languages or crioles do SFO and OAK Bay Area Yemeni imigrants speak most?
I think I've noticed near-homogeneity, in SF and Oakland bodegas. But there are reasons to doubt that.
I'm interested in:
The most common Yemeni lects (or three most commonly natively used, for ...
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Does word order and word choice influence how a word is pronounced?
I'm curious about the connection between word order/grammar and how that influences the way we pronounce a word, particularly in reference to dialect.
For example, if we take the word 'going' and ...
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At some point, was г/Г pronounced in Russian like it still is in Ukrainian (somewhat akin to h/H in hotel, i.e. /h/)? Or is it purely regional?
Recently, with a few colleagues moving into our office from Russia, we have a new resident colleague with the first name Герман. Now, being German native speaker, my assumption was that the name ...
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Geographic distribution of ‘I haven’t’ and ‘I’ve not’
The answer to this question on English Language & Usage discusses a possible difference between American and British dialects in their use of ‘I’ve not’ and ‘I haven’t’. I have noticed ‘I’ve not’ ...
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Are there any dialects of English which ⟨i⟩ in unstress syllable will be realized as [ɪ]?
The pronunciation of "dilute" should be /daɪˈlut/, but according to Wikipedia, another acceptable pronunciation of this word is /dɪˈlut/. So I summarize this rule as "/aɪ/ is realized ...
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Are the phonetic features of this recording of Booker T. Washington characteristic of any dialect of English?
I ran across this recording of a speech by Booker T. Washington, and was surprised by his pronunciations. (The recording is evidently from 1908.) From what I gathered, for /ɹ/ he uses [ɾ] in onset ...
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Inherited kinship term that is attested only in a Scandinavian dialect out of all Germanic languages
This is again a memory refreshing question.
I am looking for a specific kinship term that is considered to be inherited into a Scandinavian dialect despite the fact that no other Germanic language has ...
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What is the difference between written dialects, spoken dialects, and writing/encoding schemes?
I am working on a language website and am just encountering the need to specify spoken dialects. I already have a sort of scheme for representing written encodings (like Tibetan wiley romanization ...
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How do new dialects emerge?
When two communities live apart and communicate little with each other, over time some innovations tend to differentiate the respective linguistic varieties until two systematically distinguishable ...
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Where do the "îs" and "îi" forms of "a fi" ( "to be" ) originate in dialectal Romanian?
perhaps the Latin first person singular indicative "sum" with an "î" of uncertain origin? Im not sure about "îi". I guess from the short "e" /je/ form of "...
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Why do people with a British accent make an "r" sound at the end of words ending in an "ah" sound
I'm American so I've seen this in so many movies and just wondering, what's up with that?
Example: We will not need those blankets in Russia-r.
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Is there a clear linguistic reason for Swiss German not being considered its own Germanic language?
This question has been inspired by the fact that I’ve recently heard the Swiss talk among each other and I started to dig deeper. Having done minors in Italian and American studies which each included ...
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Full list of ISO-639-6
Is there a full list of codes in ISO-639-6:2009 (Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 6: Alpha-4 code for comprehensive coverage of language variants) such as a cached mirror or ...
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Sites for collecting and mapping vocab differences within languages
What are the publicly available websites for mapping (and collecting data) on vocabulary differences within a language?
For French there is
Français de nos régions.
For English there is
...
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What to call a "dialect" that forms in a certain setting?
What do you call the language-variation that a group of people speak with each other in a certain setting?
It's a language variety that adheres to all the rules and framework of the original language, ...
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How does an original proto language produce its daughter languages?
I am trying to understand the principles how a proto language produces it daughter languages, do they proliferate from dialects of the same proto language or do they proliferate from dialects of other ...
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Origin of the English word 'tooth' being pronounced /tʊθ/?
According to Wiktionary, the English word 'tooth' can be pronounced as /tʊθ/ (as opposed to its regular pronunciation in RP of /tuːθ/) in certain areas of Wales and the British Midlands.
Is there any ...
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Is there a region in which velarized L is the primary (and sole) articulation? Or is it indicative of an articulation disorder?
Listening to Ira Glass the other day, I noticed his 'l', to my ears, sounds exclusively velar with little to no dental component. Here's a clip (he says the word "like" a couple times in ...
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Examples of languages that should be considered dialects, or dialects that should be considered languages
Are there any examples of languages that are extremely similar but are nonetheless considered to still be separate languages? Or the converse, dialects of one language that are extremely different ...
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Are "haff to" and "have to" different words in spoken English?
This sentence:
How many apples do you have to eat?
(at least in my dialect of English) means "How many apples do you possess and can eat?" if the final consonant in "have" is ...
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Is this Wikipedia Arabic dialects map correct about Badawi Arabic, and what is Badawi Arabic?
This map is from Wikipedia's Varieties of Arabic page. On the northern half of the western Red Sea coast, as well as most of Sinai and Israel, it seems to indicate that "Badawi" Arabic is ...
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Why do even completely illiterate persons, who speak their national language poorly, speak their local dialect with perfection?
Disclaimers: I have no linguistic knowledge whatsoever, I'm just fascinated by these subjects. Also, I will use the word "dialect" due to my lack of a better word, although I see that the ...
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Does anyone actually use /æ/ as an emphatic article?
In the movie "Wayne's World" (1992), Mike Myers's character (the titular Wayne) says "I don't even own æ gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack." To my ears ...
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Differences between free languages and official languages?
In short: as far as I know, English in the USA has no official standards from the government for how it's to be written and used. There are just dictionaries. Spanish however, has the RAE, which is an ...
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Is language change universal, ongoing, and arbitrary?
Learning that arbitrariness from Saussure means there is no logical connection between the sound of morpheme and its meaning. But can we brain storm about this topic a little bit?
When it comes to ...
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Why does Russian not vary from region to region?
We know that English varies from one country to another. Even within US, there are different accents (Baltimore, Texas, Kentucky, New York, etc).
But why Russian does not vary despite the large ...
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What is it called when a person pronounces the letter t in the word "metal" as something more similar to a d sound?
What is it called when a person pronounces the letter t in the word "metal" as something more similar to a d sound? And what is it called when a person stresses the t in the word "metal" to be more ...
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Are there any recent studies on vowels of PRS?
Consonants and their phenomena are well studied for PRS (Puerto Rican Spanish). However, vowels and their phenomena are less well known. Known vowel phenomena in the dialect are unstressed/final vowel ...
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Are consonants more stable than vowels?
I was trying my hand at an exercise to distinguish the different Sámi dialects (the exercise was used in the 2020 version of the Dutch Linguistics Olympiad). It gives nine words in all nine dialects ...
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Northumbrian pronunciation of ge-/gi- prefix and -g suffix
I'm working on a musical setting of Cædmon's Hymn, and I'd like to have the primary setting be in the Northumbrian dialect of its earliest written example (the 737 "Moore" Bede manuscript). I'm ...
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Is there a linguistic term for replacing past tense verb with present tense?
In my dialect of English (North West England), we sometimes use the present tense of a verb when standard English employs the past tense, such as in the sentence below:
"I waits for the bus ...
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Cumbrian sources
I'm interested in the cumbrian dialect, but I couldn't find good sources of vocabulary and pontual aspects of its grammar. Also, I was trying to understand the following poem:
I'll tell the'
We're ...
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Spoken Arabic dictionary/corpus?
Is there an existing corpus or dictionary for different spoken Arabic dialects? I'd like to look up a word (in English or MSA or in a spoken dialect) and find where this word or phrase is spoken (and ...
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Looking for Spanish varieties/accents
This might not be the right place to ask this, and if so, I apologize. I'm a student conducting research on Spanish varieties and I am wondering if anyone knows where I could find short texts read by ...
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What is a similect?
I'm looking for attested examples of similects in action. The term is relatively new for me. Could someone point me in the right direction?
Etymology
Coined by Anna Mauranen in a 2012 paper, from ...
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Difference between dialect levelling and pidgin formation?
So dialect levelling is, in which the speech of a group of people converges towards a common norm, with extreme differences being ironed out. While pidgin is a grammatically simplified means of ...
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What is sentence focus environment?
I am currently reading a chapter about dialect that distinguish dialects according to the alignment that is used in the dialect (alignment such as nominative-accusative, tripartite. etc)
I am ...
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Does the southern pronunciation of Jenny have a triphthong in it?
You know when Forrest Gump yells Jenny's name and it sounds like "Jenneay". I'm wondering if there actually is a triphthong at the end there, or of it is a figment of my imagination. I ...
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How have dialectology surveys changed over the years?
*Apologies for any ill terminology I may use, I'm pretty new to the field
I've been working on the transition of dialectology surveys from the traditional methods to the modern ones, now that we not ...
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Is there a name for this type of language divergence and isolation?
In South Australia there is a region called the Barossa Valley. At some point [after WW2? not sure] it was settled by a lot of German farmers who bought land and started dairy farms. They applied ...
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Where does Texan English derive its l-vocalization?
My English teacher grew up in Texas and unsurprisingly her native dialect is Texan English. I noticed that when intervocalic /l/ is followed by /i/, the /l/ is elided and /y/ takes its place. For ...
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How does the Sankt Goar isogloss work?
The Sankt Goar line crosses the german town of Sankt Goar and separates the dialects that have t in words like wat and dat and the dialects that have s in the corresponding words was and das. Is this ...
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The "th" sound as a plosive in British dialects
I've noticed that the th sound often becomes a plosive sound in Appalachian English. When and how did this phenomenon start?The only case I know where this happens in the british isles is Irish.Does ...
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Data on how people really talk in, for example, West Texas?
My wife and I just watched the movie No Country for Old Men, which is set in West Texas ca. 1980, and I couldn't help feeling that the screenwriter was laying it on a little thick with the regional ...
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