Accents and Dialects: A Comprehensive Exploration
Understanding English Accents and Dialects
This document explores various English accents and dialects, covering their unique characteristics and origins.
Questions 1: Accent and Dialect Characteristics
1. The term Scouse refers to… people who live in Liverpool.
2. Yorkshire English is non-rhotic (T / F). TRUE.
3. Yorkshire English shares characteristics with northern accents. (T/F). TRUE.
4. In Yorkshire accents, the BATH and TRAP words are both pronounced with /a/ unlike RP, where the former is /a:/ and the latter /ae/ (T/F). TRUE.
5. Ay = yes; canny = careful; gan = go; divven = don’t; wor = our. New Castle English.
6. Which accent has a peculiar sing-song intonation? Welsh accent.
7. ………………… is the accent spoken in the East End of London. Cockney.
8. Where did RP originate? In London.
9. Which accent is famous for its rhyming slang? Give an example. Cockney à Examples: Give You A Bell – Call you, Wicked – Cool!
10. Which accent has back slang (=words pronounced backwards)? Example: yob = boy. Cockney.
11. What accent would replace voiceless “th” in words like theatre, think, author with /f/? Cockney.
12. Which accent has voiced “th” in words like this, the, northern /V/; ve, vis; no:ven? Cockney.
13. Cockney speakers will use a glottal stop to replace /T/. (T /F). TRUE.
14. How do you pronounce horrible, hospital in Cockney? Without the “h”; ‘horrible’ is /ɒrɪbəw/, ‘hospital’ is /ɒspɪʔəw/.
15. Do you know any characteristic about Cockney vowels? Cockney vowels are slightly different from RP. For example, the RP /ʌ/ is more open /æ̙/. Some of the diphthongs are wider than in RP. For many people, this is the most characteristic feature of the Cockney accent. For example, /ʌʊ/ in GOAT words instead of /əʊ/ and /ʌɪ/ in FACE words instead of /eɪ/.
16. What about the diphthongs in Cockney? Goat and Face. The vowel FACE undergoes neutralization as a result of [l]-vocalization in TC and PLS, so that when followed by the voiced liquid, it may emerge as [aev]. GOAT is a diphthong with a central starting point, [əʊ]. Some of the diphthongs are wider than in RP. For many people, this is the most characteristic feature of the Cockney accent. For example, /ʌʊ/ in GOAT words instead of /əʊ/ and /ʌɪ/ in FACE words instead of /eɪ/.
17. What accent has the characteristic of Negative concord? Irish English.
18. What accent has Clefting for topicalisation purposes? Irish English accent.
19. What accent uses For to infinitives of purpose: He went to Dublin for to buy a car? Irish English accent.
20. What accent uses: Inversion in embedded questions? Irish English accent.
21. Till in the sense of ‘in order that’: Come here till I tell you. Irish English accent.
22. Subordinating and (frequently concessive): We went for a walk and it raining. Irish English
23. Singular time reference for never. Irish English accent.
24. Preference for that as a relative pronoun. Irish English accent.
25. Overuse of the definite article. Irish English accent.
26. ‘Now’ as an intensifier: She had three children in five years now. Irish English accent.
27. Can you mention the types of English in Ulster? Ulster Scots, Mid-Ulster English, South Ulster English, and Contact Ulster English.
28. Differences between accent and dialect. An accent is the way that a particular person or group of people sound. It´s the way somebody pronounces words, the musicality of their speech, etc. However, a dialect describes both a person´s accent and the grammatical features of the way that person talks.
29. Which accent has the vocabulary greet for cry, bairn for child, ken for know, wee for small, etc.? Scottish accent.
30. Which accent has /u/ for mouth, about and round instead of /au/? Scottish accent.
31. Can you give two examples of non-standard features of English (phonology, morphology, and syntax)? In the development of the language, English has shown variation with a number of features on different linguistic levels. In English, the indicators of non-standardness are chiefly phonological, but there are also morphological and syntactical features. Some of these features are: In phonology, presence of syllable-final /r/ (card /kɑ:ɻd/), lack of initial /h-/ (happy /æpi/), glottalisation of /t/ (bottle /bɔʔḷ/), no lowering of /ʊ/ (but /bʊt/), short /a/ before /f, s, θ/ (bath /baθ/); in morphology, contraction of am + not (amn’t) or are/ is + not (isn’t/ain’t), use of /i:/ for /ai/ with possessive pronoun my, use of demonstrative pronouns for possessive pronouns (them boys), a distinctive form for the second person plural (ye, yez, youse); in syntax, use of past participle as preterite (I done the work, I seen him), verbal -s outside third person singular (The boys plays football), passive with get (His car got stolen last week), use of for with infinitives (He went out for to get some milk).
32. What is dialectology? It is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation.
33. What is diastratic? It refers to variation in language between social classes.
34. What is diatopic? It refers to variation in language on a geographical level.
35. What is diglossia? It is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community´s everyday or vernacular language variety, a highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used for ordinary conversation.
36. What is Geordie? The people of Newcastle are Geordie. Many English-speaking people find it very difficult. It is similar in some ways to Scottish English. People say ay for yes, and there are words like bairn, which are found in both dialects.
37. What is a glottal stop? The glottal stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩.
38. Hiberno-English. It is the Irish English accent spoken in Ireland.
39. What do you mean by idiolect? Idiolect is an individual´s distinctive and unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Idiolect is the variety of language unique to an individual. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among some group of people.
40. What is intrusive r? The phenomenon of intrusive R is an overgeneralizing reinterpretation of linking R into an r-insertion rule that affects any word that ends in the non-high vowels /ə/, /ɪə/, /ɑː/, or /ɔː/; when such a word is closely followed by another word beginning in a vowel sound, an [r] is inserted between them, even when no final /r/ was historically present.
41. What do we refer to when using the expression World Englishes? It is a term for emerging localized or indigenized varieties of English, especially varieties that have developed in territories influenced by the United Kingdom or the United States.
Questions 2: English Dispersal
1. What is/was the first dispersal or diaspora?
We can speak of the two dispersals or diasporas of English. The first diaspora, initially involving the migration of around 25,000 people from the south and east of England primarily to North America and Australia, resulted in new mother tongue varieties of English.