Do dialects of english equal varieties of english?
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Do dialects of english equal varieties of english?
as far as i know dialect describes features of grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of pronunciation while varieties of english also differ in these ways, so are they the same ? if not , what are the differences?
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Is the difference that you can stay in your variety of English to talk about physics but you have to come out of dialect? In other words, any subject other than "kitchen language" is beyond a dialect's capacities. Whole newspapers can be written in one variety of English (The Times, The Times of India, The New York Times).
Obvously this is complicated by issues such as status, power and repression (a dialect is a language without an army) but for the most part these are the factors that bring about the situation.
Obvously this is complicated by issues such as status, power and repression (a dialect is a language without an army) but for the most part these are the factors that bring about the situation.
Beyond the kitchen and in to patriotism and live for one's country:JuanTwoThree wrote:Is the difference that you can stay in your variety of English to talk about physics but you have to come out of dialect? In other words, any subject other than "kitchen language" is beyond a dialect's capacities. Whole newspapers can be written in one variety of English (The Times, The Times of India, The New York Times).
Obvously this is complicated by issues such as status, power and repression (a dialect is a language without an army) but for the most part these are the factors that bring about the situation.
Owd England
From Tykes Abrooad (W. Nicholson, Wakefield, 1911).
Walter Hampson.
Tha'rt welcome, thrice welcome, Owd England;
It maks my een sparkle wi' glee,
An' does mi heart gooid to behold thee,
For I know tha's a welcome for me.
Let others recaant all thi failin's,
Let traitors upbraid as they will,
I know at thy virtues are many,
An' my heart's beeatin' true to thee still.
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Now, does the writer need to move out of "the kitchen" to be understood, or do you need to move in? Careful with your answer, as it may reflect the underlying imperialist motives that teaching English to the world can often have.
JuanTwoThree wrote:Is the difference that you can stay in your variety of English to talk about physics but you have to come out of dialect? In other words, any subject other than "kitchen language" is beyond a dialect's capacities. Whole newspapers can be written in one variety of English (The Times, The Times of India, The New York Times).
Obvously this is complicated by issues such as status, power and repression (a dialect is a language without an army) but for the most part these are the factors that bring about the situation.
But, here's some kitchen talk, just for you:
G’way an’ quit dat noise, Miss Lucy—
Put dat music book away;
What’s de use to keep on tryin’?
Ef you practise twell you’re gray,
You cain’t sta’t no notes a-flyin’
Lak de ones dat rants and rings
F’om de kitchen to [d]e big woods
When Malindy sings.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose writing style won him a large audience and attracted the attention of William Dean Howells, a major critical force in nineteenth-century America.
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"Kitchen language" is a well-known term used to describe a language that hasn't got all the resources for a wide variety of situations. I can't say I like the patronising term either.
Your sweet little poem is mostly phonetic transcription, isn't it? Hardly Burns for incomprehensibility. OK there's a bit of thou and a non standard plural (eyen for eyes ) but I would say the writer strayed out of dialect with recant, upbraid and virtues, showing the very difficulties that I described.
From "The Lambton Worm"
He waddn't fash to carry it hyem,
So he hoyed it in a well.
A real dialect poem
Your sweet little poem is mostly phonetic transcription, isn't it? Hardly Burns for incomprehensibility. OK there's a bit of thou and a non standard plural (eyen for eyes ) but I would say the writer strayed out of dialect with recant, upbraid and virtues, showing the very difficulties that I described.
From "The Lambton Worm"
He waddn't fash to carry it hyem,
So he hoyed it in a well.
A real dialect poem
That term could pefectly describe standard English just as well as any other dialect of English.JuanTwoThree wrote:"Kitchen language" is a well-known term used to describe a language that hasn't got all the resources for a wide variety of situations. I can't say I like the patronising term either.
So you think all dialects are mutually incomprehensible, do you? BTW; was that "a language that hasn't got...", or meant to be "language that hasn't got"?Your sweet little poem is mostly phonetic transcription, isn't it? Hardly Burns for incomprehensibility.
There are varying degrees of mutual comprehensibilty between all dialects.A real dialect poem
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A language.
I didn't invent the term. Google it and you'll see Afrikaans, Slovenian and others being described as "kitchen languages". As I said, I don't much like it. But it has a meaning that is well established.
I suppose my everyday definition of a dialect suggests, but doesn't "mean", to me a strong sense of place, the presence of some non-standard vocabulary and grammar and incompleteness in that its use cannot be sustained to talk about complexities, a " kitchen language". Others would add the absence of a reasonable body of literature, which I think is snobbery.
There must be some incomprehensibility, even if momentary, otherwise you'd have to explain the difference between dialect and pronunciation. I understand my Yorkshire relatives' accents but if they shift into dialect I don't.
By "a real dialect poem" I meant that it isn't a patronising faux-dialect exercise, not that it's more or less difficult to understand.
One of the best definitions I've ever heard was that the day before Franco died Catalan was a dialect and the day after a language. So my use of words like dialect or variety is probably more political, social, complex, subjective and hierarchical, betraying my deep though unacknowledged snobbery about (speakers of) non-standard Englishes. Including myself. I ought to be ashamed of myself.. and maybe I am.
I didn't invent the term. Google it and you'll see Afrikaans, Slovenian and others being described as "kitchen languages". As I said, I don't much like it. But it has a meaning that is well established.
I suppose my everyday definition of a dialect suggests, but doesn't "mean", to me a strong sense of place, the presence of some non-standard vocabulary and grammar and incompleteness in that its use cannot be sustained to talk about complexities, a " kitchen language". Others would add the absence of a reasonable body of literature, which I think is snobbery.
There must be some incomprehensibility, even if momentary, otherwise you'd have to explain the difference between dialect and pronunciation. I understand my Yorkshire relatives' accents but if they shift into dialect I don't.
By "a real dialect poem" I meant that it isn't a patronising faux-dialect exercise, not that it's more or less difficult to understand.
One of the best definitions I've ever heard was that the day before Franco died Catalan was a dialect and the day after a language. So my use of words like dialect or variety is probably more political, social, complex, subjective and hierarchical, betraying my deep though unacknowledged snobbery about (speakers of) non-standard Englishes. Including myself. I ought to be ashamed of myself.. and maybe I am.
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Dear Juan, the idea of "kitchen languages" has a long history, and has long been discredited.
Any language can be used for any purpose, and the success of university level education in Catalan or Sinhala makes this clear.
Dialect, is often used as a derogatory term, as it was under Franco's time, though the French are even more derogatory and use the term "patois" - it was long after Franco's death that Catalan became accepted as a language to the north of the Pyranees.
Catalan could never really be considered a dialect because the question automatically arises "dialect of what?". It can't be considered a dialect of Spanish, because Spanish and Catalan are mutually incomprehensible (more so than Spanish and Italian), so we would be obliged to admit that it is a dialect of Romance, which would mean that we would have to demote French, Spanish, Romanian, Portoguese, Italian and the other Romance languages to the level of dialect, and the idea of having the a language nobody speaks as the standard, and a load of mutually incomprehensible dialects would suggest the classification was erroneous.
Do go back to the comment that annoyed Metal 56 so much,
Now, you would only use your dialect to discuss Physics with somebody else who speaks it, and would no doubt use standard English when you wished to communcate with a wider audience. However that no more means that you can't use your dialect for it, than the fact that 93% of published scientific papers in France are written in English, means that you can't discuss Physics in French.
Now, this does not discount the possibility that standard English may have been the medium of instruction for that subject and thus a speaker of another dialect may have difficulties using it for that purpose.
Any language can be used for any purpose, and the success of university level education in Catalan or Sinhala makes this clear.
Dialect, is often used as a derogatory term, as it was under Franco's time, though the French are even more derogatory and use the term "patois" - it was long after Franco's death that Catalan became accepted as a language to the north of the Pyranees.
Catalan could never really be considered a dialect because the question automatically arises "dialect of what?". It can't be considered a dialect of Spanish, because Spanish and Catalan are mutually incomprehensible (more so than Spanish and Italian), so we would be obliged to admit that it is a dialect of Romance, which would mean that we would have to demote French, Spanish, Romanian, Portoguese, Italian and the other Romance languages to the level of dialect, and the idea of having the a language nobody speaks as the standard, and a load of mutually incomprehensible dialects would suggest the classification was erroneous.
Do go back to the comment that annoyed Metal 56 so much,
the answer is no. You can talk about Physics in Geordie, Glaswegian or any form you wish of Brixton Creole - it is of course more than likely that all the technical terms you will be using are the same in your dialect as in all the other dialects of English, but that does not mean you are no longer using your dialect. You are making the mistake of confusing the totality of the dialect with its distinguishing charactersitics.The fact that the words we may use in English to discuss an intellectual topic are the same in French or Spanish or Arabic does not mean that we are no longer speaking English.Is the difference that you can stay in your variety of English to talk about physics but you have to come out of dialect? In other words, any subject other than "kitchen language" is beyond a dialect's capacities.
Now, you would only use your dialect to discuss Physics with somebody else who speaks it, and would no doubt use standard English when you wished to communcate with a wider audience. However that no more means that you can't use your dialect for it, than the fact that 93% of published scientific papers in France are written in English, means that you can't discuss Physics in French.
Now, this does not discount the possibility that standard English may have been the medium of instruction for that subject and thus a speaker of another dialect may have difficulties using it for that purpose.
With you all the way on that.Stephen Jones wrote:
the answer is no. You can talk about Physics in Geordie, Glaswegian or any form you wish of Brixton Creole - it is of course more than likely that all the technical terms you will be using are the same in your dialect as in all the other dialects of English, but that does not mean you are no longer using your dialect. You are making the mistake of confusing the totality of the dialect with its distinguishing charactersitics.The fact that the words we may use in English to discuss an intellectual topic are the same in French or Spanish or Arabic does not mean that we are no longer speaking English.
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That's me told off . I'm suitably chastened. Humbled.
Although I can't help wondering how anybody would know that two Geordies talking about Nuclear Physics were in fact talking in Geordie. Including themselves. How much Geordie would there be?
I'm glad to hear that "kitchen language" is no more. I didn't like it 25 years ago and you can imagine what the SWP girls thought of it. Though someone's been using it since Internet, or I wouldn't have found it again.
Aren't there some German words, which I can't for the life of me remember, that aren't so loaded and define these ideas better?
Although I can't help wondering how anybody would know that two Geordies talking about Nuclear Physics were in fact talking in Geordie. Including themselves. How much Geordie would there be?
I'm glad to hear that "kitchen language" is no more. I didn't like it 25 years ago and you can imagine what the SWP girls thought of it. Though someone's been using it since Internet, or I wouldn't have found it again.
Aren't there some German words, which I can't for the life of me remember, that aren't so loaded and define these ideas better?
One point that I'd add, that isn't particularly intelligent, is that a "dialect" (which is usually not used in a pejorative way among us) is an "variety" that has certain distinguishable charactaristics that we agree on : characteristics that are associated with a certain group or geographic area (I can't think of any right now but enough examples have come out of these discussions of different English/Scottish dialects) I would say that a "variety" of a language is one that isn't quite placed as of yet. I mean, one could easily replace the word "dialect" with "variety" and not quite signify the same thing. I'm thinking . . . I think that makes sense. Anybody else?