Teacher Discussion Forums

Two interesting links, I thought:

http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling20 ... alects.htm

and

http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/englis ... nglish.htm

Both sites treading the lite fantastic.

What the first site calls general characteristics are a load of bunk. I have little patience with attempts to describe language through the prism of imagined national characteristics, which is what that part of the site at least is doing.

The dialect site is interesting but incomplete and contains at least one canard (that of the speech of the Appalachians being nearer to the speech of Elizebethan English than the speech of modern London).

I know what you mean. That "general characteristics" section seems to set out to prove a set of stereotypes.

But otherwise these notes written by the lecturers themselves have in amongst the dumbing down some good stuff.

Otherwise it's hard to get information pitched above the simplistic but below the incomprehensible. In other words that I can understand and get something out of.