Re: USAGE: YAEPT:Re: Shavian: was Re: USAGE: Con-graphies

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]