Re: USAGE: YAEPT:Re: Shavian: was Re: USAGE: Con-graphies
From: | Joe <joe@...> |
Date: | Sunday, June 11, 2006, 15:53 |
daniel prohaska wrote:
>...> Joe a screfas:
>
> "Hokkien and Cantonese are far more different from one another than
> your average English dialect. English is a surprisingly monolithic
> language, actually, compared to Arabic and Chinese, or even German or
> Italian."
>
>
>
> Joe,
>
> English - monolithic?! My foot! ;-) Have you ever heard any of the
> traditional dialects spoken in England? I can only give you examples
> from Lancashire. I agree with you that the language of the younger
> generation has been somewhat levelled, in grammar and vocabulary more
> so than in phonology. But there are still a few younger speakers that
> use traditional dialect or at least code switch back and forth between
> dialect and a form modified towards the regional standard.
>
>
>
I know, I am English, you know ;)
But compared to Arabic or Chinese, the dialects are very close together,
and as I say, even compared to German. It's not completely homogenous,
but moreso than other languages. The examples you gave are pretty
transparent to me, except for a couple which use kind of unfamiliar
idioms (pulling to, t'road to) But that might be because my mum comes
from Yorkshire, who knows?
I fine dialectology dead interes'n', though. 's kin'a interes'n to
compare yer own dialect to someone else's
[@ fAin dAilEktQl:dZi dEd IntrEsn= D@u s kAin@ IntrEsn= t@ c@mpE: y@
@un dAi@lEkt t@ sVmwQn Elsz=]
My own dialect seems to be developing a load of syllabic consonants, and
there seems to be a lot of consonant dropping going on. Unstressed
vowels seem to be merging with what consonants are undropped to make a
syllabic consonate.
For example:
"I'm going" varies from [@mg@uin] to [N=g@uin], or even (sometimes) [N@uin]
"I think that I shall go to the shops" is [TINk Ng@n@ g@u t_hT@ SQps]