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Re: dialectal diversity in English

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 7, 2003, 16:35
Stone Gordonssen scripsit:

> I've read, and even heard referenced on TV, that there is an Appalachian > variation which is (was?) considered a "true dialect" (I've no idea which > criteria were used), being more like Elizabethan English.
It's an urban myth. See Larry "Basque" Trask's debunking at http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-most-recent/msg05503.html ObBonus: While searching for this (unsuccessfully) at snopes.com, the Urban Legends web site, I stumbled across this outrage on French: http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/hotel.htm .
> I have however met both northerners (e.g. from New York and Chicago) and > southerners (e.g. from Atlanta and New Orleans) who publicly acclaimed that > each others' speech was fully unintelligable.
Bah. I don't believe a word of it. "Die, Yankee/rebel scum!" is perfectly intelligible in either dialect.
> I know a bit of Mandarin but nothing of Sichuan;
It's a weird story: although a Southern province, only Mandarin is spoken there, apparently the result of a depopulation event (a plague, perhaps, or a really massive scorched-earth war) about 400 years ago. But of course the Mandarin is by no means that of Beijing.
> but when I first began > studying German, I was surprised how unintelligable my teachers found even > one shift of stress in polysyllabic words. I can't remember a specific real > example, but it was similar to saying [ar\"bait@n] instead of ["ar\bait@n] > in _Wo arbeiten Sie?_.
I'll bet that you were also laxing German "a" to [@], causing what you said to sound like "*Wo er beiten Sie?" King of confusion. -- If you understand, John Cowan things are just as they are; http://www.ccil.org/~cowan if you do not understand, http://www.reutershealth.com things are just as they are. jcowan@reutershealth.com

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Daniel Ryan Prohaska <daniel@...>