Accent or Dialect?

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kiwiboy_nz_99
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Accent or Dialect?

Post by kiwiboy_nz_99 » Tue Aug 19, 2003 7:50 am

We ruffians over at the Korean part of this board have been having a raging debate about accents and dialects. One person has found a distionary definition of a dialect that contains "accent, vocabulary, OR grammar", while the one I found reads "accent, vocabulary, AND grammar". I'm contending that a strong accent alone does not constitute a dialect, that there must be some morphing of the vocabulary and or grammar. Can we get a definitive version of the distinction, with plenty of healthy examples thrown in? I'm saying there are very few true dialects of English. So, on top of a tip top distinction between accent and dialect, I would really like as many examples as possible of true dialects in English. I'm guessing Cornish, and picking that Bostonian is not sufficiently deviant to qualify.

Thats to all you brainy folks in advance! :D

lolwhites
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Post by lolwhites » Tue Aug 19, 2003 2:57 pm

When I studied Linguistics at university I was told that a dialect was any variety of a language; this could be accent, vocabulary, grammar or any combination of the three. In other words, everyone speaks a dialect. "Standard" British English is a dialect, just one variety, albeit one which is more prestigious and widely understood.
My students often say that I speak "good" English; in fact I speak the dialect of a white, middle class male, born in the early 1970's and raised in the South of England. In linguistic terms this is as much a dialect as Geordie, Cornish or Bostonian. What is considered the "standard" dialect is usually a reflection of where the money and power lies, which is down to history, not linguistics. Had the Irish conquered England, rather than the other way around, my dialect would probably considered "bad" English and we'd say the best English was spoken in Dublin.

kiwiboy_nz_99
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Post by kiwiboy_nz_99 » Tue Aug 19, 2003 3:06 pm

Seems an extremely openended definition. I was looking for some kind of notion of how far it must stray from a given norm before it is classed a dialect. Otherwise, we could say that the people who live one block over from me speak a different dialect.

dduck
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Post by dduck » Tue Aug 19, 2003 4:02 pm

Some people consider Scots to be a dialect of English, whereas some others say that it's sufficiently different to be a language in it's own right. Interestingly enough, Scots is recognised in Northern Ireland as a language by the government, but not in Scotland.

I tend to agree with lolwhites definition of 'a dialect'. There are a multitude of varieties of English; historical reasons and a desire for standardization has selected one arbitary version as best.

If I consider my home town Dundee, the city itself has had it's own dialect, different from the rest of Scotland, for hundreds of years. This has been influenced by the influx of Irish settlers over the years - the two 'dialects' merged into the modern Dundee dialect. Additionally, one only has to travel a few miles outside of the city into the countryside, before it's possible to detect different language patterns, that is, accents, grammar and vocabulary.

In the widest sense, there are probably thousands upon thousands of different dialects in the UK. When one considers only grammar, we're probably talking of hundreds.

Iain

LarryLatham
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Dialects

Post by LarryLatham » Tue Aug 19, 2003 6:05 pm

Interesting thread!

I had considered dialects as generally defined somewhat like that kiwiboy has advanced here, but that is not based on anything I may have read or studied in linguistics programs. You guys are forcing me to think about it, however. But I have read or heard something about dialects. For instance, I've read or heard somewhere that Chinese has in excess of 1000 separate dialects. That does not appear to be unreasonable, given the size and topography of the country together with the huge population and the age of the language.

It seems to me if we take lolwhites' ideas to their extreme, then every single person's speech constitutes a separate dialect, since no two people speak in exactly the same way. It would seem there isn't much insight to be gained from such a description of "dialect." :?

Larry Latham

wjserson
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Post by wjserson » Wed Aug 20, 2003 2:39 am

Actually, to be specific, an individual's style of speaking and how it differs from other individuals accents is called an "idiolect" by linguists.

wjserson
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Post by wjserson » Wed Aug 20, 2003 6:51 am

If you don't mind, here's my opinion.

All definitions given thus far for the word "dialect" are correct. The Routledge Dictionary of Linguistic Terms defines "dialect" as the following : "A linguistic system that (a) shows a high degree of similarity to other systems so that at least partial mutual intellegibility is possible; (b) is tied to a specific region in such a way that the regional distribution of the system does not overlap with an area covered by another such system ; (c) does not have a written or standardized form i.e. does not have officially standardized orthographic and grammatical rules."

This definition certainly does apply to all the examples mentioned by other replies to your question (Scots English, Bostonian, etc).

An "accent" is simply a audible aspect of a person's speech that you identify as belonging to a certain linguistic group.

Dialects are usually used by native speakers such as New Yorkers and Londoners who speak English as a first language. An accent, as we all know, can apply to non-native speakers "He has a Japanese accent/He has a German accent/He has a French accent." On top of this, these accents of non-native speakers are never referred to as "dialects" : *"That man from France speaks French English/a French English dialect." we clearly say "He has a French accent." or"He speaks English with a French accent."

wjserson
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Post by wjserson » Thu Aug 21, 2003 1:06 am

Certainly didn't think my comments would create such a silence... :oops: Any other opinions?

Roger
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Post by Roger » Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:20 am

Well, some of us were on holiday. Now I for one am back.

Yes, 'accent' belongs to the phonetic department. It is a slightly divergent pronunciation often attributed to the speaker being a non-native. 'Accent' also means 'stress', the way we put stress on certain syllables in words.
It may be argued that 'accent' as being a foreigner's pronunciation is an arbitary term that puts anyone speaking with an 'accent' outside the pale of native speakers. However, I have heard people complaining about 'Aussie accents' and "Texas accents', whatever that meant. On the other hand, I have never heard of a "Queen's accent".

'Dialects' are defined as variants of a language. My OXFORD English Grammar defines it as
'a variety of a language that is distinct from other varieties in grammar, vocabulary and ACCENT."
Thus, accents may define dialects, but they are not dialects. In what way can grammar define a dialect? Examples given include:
- I likes it
- He ain't
- he didn't have no breakfast
- we got off of the train...
- look at them cows...

My feeling is that these examples are not excellent specimen of dialect speech. If you use any one of them in your own English, it will come across as somewhat artificial, strained, false - they do belong to a whole register in which they are native, say African-American English, thus in an "ethnic" English. Shall we call this a "sociolect"? They would be alright in a text by Tennessee Williams but not in a John Steinbeck.
"Dialects" as I understand this word are regional variants of one language. Grammar rarely differs from that of the main variety. There are only minor differences between the grammar of British English and any other national English though I would add a disclaimer here: I am refering to WRITTEN forms of the language (dialects). I am willing to accept that spoken varieties may differ more from one another, though I do not wish to corroborate this with examples.
The effect is that the various national accents - can be so overriding as to render one dialect unintelligible aurally to speakers of another dialect. This is certainly the case here in China, and I observed it in German-speaking countries too. What's important is that the WRITTEN and standardised forms of the national languages are intelligible to speakers of all dialects although we have to say this is due to educational efforts.
The vocabulary does vary more greatly from one dialect to another - see the many lexical differences between US English and British English.
Of course, whether we label someone's dialect a 'dialect' or a 'language' is a political decision. China is not the only nation whose leaders warily watch the proliferation of Chinese dialects. The Czechs and Slovaks split up - speaking two "languages", as did the Serbs and the Croats. I hear that Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible. Well, but no Pakistani will stoop so low as to call his mother tongue "Hindi", and the same can be said of a native Hindi speaker with regard to speaking 'Urdu".
- He

dduck
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Post by dduck » Thu Aug 21, 2003 6:14 pm

Roger wrote:There are only minor differences between the grammar of British English and any other national English though I would add a disclaimer here: I am refering to WRITTEN forms of the language (dialects). I am willing to accept that spoken varieties may differ more from one another, though I do not wish to corroborate this with examples.
How much research have you put into this? I'd be impressed if you've traveled around the Midlands and North of England recording the different language pattern and literature produced by local writers. For my part, I'm more familiar with Scottish spoken and written language. As I mentioned above, it's debatable to call Scots a dialect of English. However, if you consider do then are you saying that there are only minor differences?

For your perusal:

http://www.electricscotland.com/tourist/sh_gram.htm
http://www.saltiresociety.org.uk/scotsgrammar.htm
http://www.thatsbraw.co.uk/The%20Broons ... -cigar.htm

Iain

wjserson
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Post by wjserson » Fri Aug 22, 2003 6:48 am

That's incredible! That's the 1rst time I've read the Broons in over 20 yrs! Have any Oor Wully?

Stephen Jones
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Post by Stephen Jones » Fri Aug 22, 2003 7:15 am

A dialect must have it's own grammatical rules, or at the very least significant differences in vocabulary. You can speak Standard English with a northern or a southern or a scottish accent but it's still the same dialect.

Incidentally although most dialects are regional variations, not all regional variations are dialects, and not all dialects are regional variations - English in particular is famed for having social dialects.

The difference between two dialects of the same language, and two separate languages is basically mutual comprehensibility. I can understand Scots and Scots speakers can understand BBC English, so they are separate dialects, not separate languages.

But Italian and Spanish or French are not mutually comprehensible in any more than a rudimentary way, and thus have been considered separate languages, and not dialects of Latin or Romance, for over 1200 years.

However other factors come into play. Someone once said that a language was a dialect with an army behind it. Certainly Dutch is no more different from High German than other Low German dialects but because it had a separate, and anti-German, state, it is considered a separate language, and the differences have increased.[/code]

dduck
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Post by dduck » Fri Aug 22, 2003 7:56 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:The difference between two dialects of the same language, and two separate languages is basically mutual comprehensibility. I can understand Scots and Scots speakers can understand BBC English, so they are separate dialects, not separate languages.
I don't mean to be rude, but it's a bit ridiculous to suggest that because one person (i.e. you) can understand Scots therefore it's a dialect. What about the BBC putting subtitles on Rab C. Nesbitt (a comedy based in Glasgow using authentic language) because English folk couldn't understand it? I think that sample group is a bit more representative.

Furthermore, I've lived and worked in both the Netherlands and Germany. Germans don't naturally understand Dutch. However, I know of some Dutch people have managed to learn German from watching it as a child, while others failed to learn it at school. Your argument that understanding another form of speach from TV implies it's a dialect (i.e. BBC English) doesn't hold water.

As a sidenote, to be fair I should point out that just because I find holes in your points, doesn't mean that I disagree with them entirely. It's just that I think you've chosen the wrong path.

Iain

wjserson
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Post by wjserson » Fri Aug 22, 2003 10:34 pm

I'd like to point out, dduck, that SJ did use the word "basically" to mean that there are exceptions. There are always exceptions. I would like to add that SF's distinction between what constitutes different language and different dialects of the same language is textbook : it might not satisfy you, but it's more true than not.

And to use the word "rediculous" when referring to SF's justifiable comments is a bit harsh, whether "a bit" or not, don't you think?

kiwiboy_nz_99
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Post by kiwiboy_nz_99 » Sat Aug 23, 2003 4:47 pm

Thanks to all concerned. You disagreed so I don't get to go back and win my argument. But it's been rewarding. I must come here more often.

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