Re: dialectal diversity in English

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

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