[HN Gopher] A Map of British Dialects (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
A Map of British Dialects (2023)
Author : gregorvand
Score : 195 points
Date : 2025-04-19 08:02 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (starkeycomics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (starkeycomics.com)
| zeristor wrote:
| Corbyite. Sounds like a mineral formed when Iron-Bru percolates
| through sandstone.
| timrichard wrote:
| And is then finished in a trouser press...
| zeristor wrote:
| Or indeed the Star Trek episode:
|
| "The Corbomite Maneuver"
|
| Perhaps it was inspired by a day out to Corby?
| devrandoom wrote:
| Irn-Bru, the national soft drink of Scotland.
|
| Their ads are brilliant.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1lcuZoYiuVs
| n4r9 wrote:
| Love seeing Pompey on there. Ryan Starkey is no dinlo.
| PastorSalad wrote:
| I know right? Lot of squinnies on here bemoaning the accuracy
| but I've spent my whole life being told my dialect is just half
| cockney, half bristonian by the rest of the country. I feel so
| seen.
| memsom wrote:
| Pompey is less strong on the island these days, but Leigh
| Park people sound like I remember from childhood still.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I don't live there anymore but I was at Victorious festival
| a few years ago watching an American band (can't remember
| which). The front man told a story of when they recorded
| their first album in Portsmouth. Someone in the crowd
| lifted up their pint and shouted "Yawrigh' mush!". And the
| screen ads said "Don't be a din - put it in the bin". Those
| words feel like they're from some dreamworld until you hear
| them again in person.
| memsom wrote:
| Those words are used, but a lot of people on the island
| use a massively watered down version of the dialect now.
| When I was a kid we said "baw" for "ball" "vis,va' 'n
| fing" for "this, that and thing" and "dinny/din/dinlo"
| (simpleton/idiot), "mush/musty" (a person, you may know,
| but don't want to name - a bit like "mate"), "kark it"
| (died), "lairy" (as in cheeky, obnoxious, pushy - hard to
| describe.), "lakes" (originally "cool" but started to be
| ironic), "wew X" as an emphasis ("wew" being "well", so
| "wew smar'" (really "smart", as in really good), "wew
| lairy" (really "pushy/cheeky/whatever it means"). "Giving
| i' aw va'" ("Giving it all that", being lairy/trying it
| on.) "kushty" (great/good). And much more. I can't write
| down everthing unfortunately.
|
| As I said, you still here all this when Parkies speak,
| but on the Island it is a lot less heard these days.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| "roight"
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I like Kent and Sussex accents. Rod Hull (carer of Emus) had a
| good one.
|
| "We wunt be druv" is the Sussex motto:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_wunt_be_druv
| b800h wrote:
| When is this map from? 1955?
|
| Essex accents had travelled well into Hertfordshire by the 1970s.
| Cockney has evaporated and the condensate largely landed in Essex
| and Hertfordshire.
|
| Do people really speak Kentish in most of Kent? Or is it a mix of
| Modern Estuary, MLE (multicultural London English) and RP
| (received pronunciation)?
|
| I know the author says that the map will always be wrong, I
| understand that, but this map is _badly out of date_.
| countrymile wrote:
| There are two sorts of Essex, the countryside version that
| straddles south Suffolk and the London imported one that has
| become the stereotype, that appears to be estuary on the map.
| Both have massive crossover depending whether you're in town or
| village. A rather difficult mapping task!
| whoistraitor wrote:
| Yeh it's strange it includes cockney so prominently. It isn't
| really very present unless you spend time around the various
| gentlemen frequenting sports pubs and pie and mash shops in
| east London, or if you take a black cab very often. I'd say the
| "roadman" dialect, mixing cockney and Jamaican patois, plus
| grime vibes, is FAR more common. I'll hear it everyday
| wandering around South and east London. I guess it's a London
| dialect so it's in that umbrella,... but how come cockney gets
| such a fat slab of land?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > pie and mash shops
|
| p-aye an mashhhh, bruv
| simonh wrote:
| You used to be able to get pie, mash and liquor round me in
| the Bexley area until about 10 years ago, but the ones I
| knew have closed now and I don't know where the nearest
| place is.
|
| Not sure if you can still get Jellied Eels in Eltham, which
| would be a shame if you can't.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I heard one of manzies shut down in bermondsey this year,
| but there is a new one on the isle of sheppey.
| ascorbic wrote:
| That's multicultural London English, or MLE:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Do people really speak Kentish in most of Kent? Or is it a
| mix of Modern Estuary,
|
| Yes, ish
|
| For example Bermondsey(a former borough in southwark, london)
| is a weird mix of kent and cockney, but it is still, just about
| distinct. if you move more into kent, I sounds get longer. from
| I to Aye, to Aye-eh
|
| In the 80s-2000s half of central london moved to the suburbs,
| taking the accent with them.
|
| However the south london accent still exists in younguns,
| depending on parents of course. If you're second generation,
| and depending on which school you go to, you might get a hybrid
| accent. (my daughter got a proper bermondsey accent, but I
| suspect now she'd get, posher accent.)
|
| but, those accents are well away from these:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S8JR4eJAXA which sounds more
| related to broads norfolk when I was growing up. (but 1950s
| broads was different to 80s)
|
| I think the biggest issue is trying to pin down the hard accent
| changes vs the gradual.
|
| For example somewhere in Lincolnshire it goes from rural burble
| to hard yorkshire-eqse stops. I suspect its something to do
| with the fens.
| tankenmate wrote:
| Sarf Londn, happy memories...
| pxeger1 wrote:
| "RP", by the definition it was originally given, doesn't really
| exist any more in anyone under 70 or so. What you may now think
| of as "RP" is usually called Standard Southern British, or SSB.
| leoedin wrote:
| You just need to listen to the various generations of the
| royal family to see that RP is effectively dead.
|
| I read somewhere that accents "move" up the social hierarchy
| over time. Aspects of speech which are widely working class
| will eventually become traits of the upper class - while
| meanwhile the working cm lass have moved on.
| zelos wrote:
| I had the same feeling. I've lived in Sussex for most of my
| life and I can't say I've heard a Sussex accent for a long
| time. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of an urban/rural split?
| smitty1e wrote:
| https://cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/ is the chicken dinner!
| dijit wrote:
| According to this I am from one of the smallest Dialect regions
| (Coventry)- I really wonder _why_ it could be a dialectical
| enclave; I am aware that the Forest of Arden divided Coventry
| from Birmingham and the Black Country making them distinct, but I
| had no idea that it was such an isolated dialect.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Cov is pretty distinct. for example the apple's siri british
| voice 3 I would argue is light Cov accent.
|
| Given how close beeer-ming-um is, you'd think they'd be
| similar.
| tankenmate wrote:
| It's because so many malcontents were sent to Coventry _*wink*_
| beardyw wrote:
| It is quite distinct in the pronunciation of "ing". The N and
| the G are strongly emphasised. "Singing" is a good test word.
| The Gs jump out at you.
| martinrue wrote:
| Why are there so few on this map? Seems wrong to me :)
| gregorvand wrote:
| Too specific for this map but there's also an intriguing case of
| town in England called Corby, where people speak mainly with a
| Scottish accent https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28225325.
| Pretty fascinating.
| n4r9 wrote:
| [edit - Corby is on the map! It refers to the accent as
| "Corbyite" in the middle of "Northants".]
|
| The TV programme "Toxin Town" is set in Corby, about birth
| defects caused by mishandled environmental waste.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg7pvl59wxo
| davedx wrote:
| Right! They also explained in that series that the Scots were
| economic migrants there for the steelworks work. Great series
| too.
| gregorvand wrote:
| oh thanks!
| amiga386 wrote:
| Fa says aat? Fowks dinnae spik "Grumpian" up in Aiberdeen, they
| spik'i Doric.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_%28Scotland%29
| gregorvand wrote:
| The article mentions not covering Doric or Scots since they are
| considered virtually second languages
| devrandoom wrote:
| I love it, have listen:
| https://m.youtube.com/shorts/ZrJMVPQyxvg
| dfawcus wrote:
| Not 'virtually', Scots is a different language to English,
| and Doric is a dialect of Scots.
|
| English and Scots are sibling languages, c.f. some of the
| geographically close Scandinavian languages.
|
| If you want a quick guide to languages in Britain, the site
| has an additional article which the original links to:
|
| https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-
| an...
| gregorvand wrote:
| Thanks. I am Scottish originally and understand a lot of
| Scots. I guess I said 'virtually' since Gaelic is probably
| the only 'official' other language in Scotland but I agree
| Scots and Doric should be recognised as such.
| bradley13 wrote:
| I rented a room for a few months, from an elderly couple in the
| countryside outside Aberdeen. It took a solid week before I
| could do more than nod politely at whatever the heck they were
| on about.
| _fw wrote:
| This is good but it's not diverse enough for North West England.
| In 'Wigan' (as shown on the map) you've got the Oldham/Bolton
| accents (book - bewk; first - fussed) which are similar but as
| distinct as Brummie/Black Country.
|
| In Merseyside you've also got Wools/Scousers, each with different
| patter and pronunciation. Not to mention Warrington and its
| accent further East.
| zeristor wrote:
| Perhaps it's gone out I can remember a Leytonstone accent, and a
| Barnet one. But that's accents not a dialect.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| Those are dialects. An accent is what you have as a second
| language speaker.
|
| (Of course reality is more complicated; creoles and pidgins etc
| )
| KaiserPro wrote:
| thats the thing, norfolk dialect had about four main strains,
| but most of the dialect as disappeared, leaving only the
| accent
| dmurray wrote:
| Is that true? I think a dialect needs to have at least some
| of its own _words_.
|
| If people in your town use the same words as the town across
| the river, but you pronounce your R's and the others do not,
| I would say you speak the same dialect but with distinct
| accents.
|
| Maybe the point is moot because any two populations separate
| enough to develop distinct ways of pronouncing words
| inevitably also create words of their own.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| The accent and dialect changes every 20 miles or so, so this is
| obviously a bit vague.
|
| We can't even agree on what to call a bread roll [0] never mind
| how some words should be pronounced [1].
|
| My mother was brought up in Liverpool, but her (Irish immigrant)
| mother hated the Bootle accent so much that she taught her, and
| her older sister, to speak something closer to RP.
|
| That washed off, and like her I got bullied at school in North
| Derbyshire for speaking "too posh". Yet locals in my new home of
| London clearly place me as being from the North but can't place
| where. To be honest neither can most Northerners. I think I'm
| broadly "South Pennine", so a bit of High Peak, a bit of
| Manchester, the odd spot of Lancashire or even West Yorkshire -
| reflects where I grew up, went to Uni, lived, and socialised
| with. My partner has a similar accent despite growing up in a
| part of Manchester with a distinct accent and dialect of its own.
|
| The point is, it's complex and it's changing. And it's not just
| the UK. It seems to have sped up in recent years. When I hear
| Canadian voices from 70 years ago, I can hear Scottish tinges.
| Likewise the US East coast of the mid-20th century had more West
| Country in it than today.
|
| It was only a friend's grandfathers generation that could tell
| what street someone grew up on from their voice alone, and today
| we are increasingly homogenised - I wonder what "English" will
| sound like in 200 or 500 years.
|
| [0] https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/bread/
|
| [1] https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/class-farce/
| franticgecko3 wrote:
| I'm from West Yorkshire, the dialect is slowly fading. My
| grandfather would speak with a strong accent and with
| spatterings of Norse words. I notice now that, yes, dialects in
| the UK are becoming homogenised but there is also some American
| influence seeping in. The American way of pronouncing a double
| t as a d "better" => "bedder" is increasingly more prevalent in
| the UK, it's slightly saddening.
| rwmj wrote:
| Pronouncing zed as "zee" is particularly annoying (as in "Gen
| Z").
| 1659447091 wrote:
| anytime I hear someone use "zed" for Z(ee) the next thing I
| hear in my head is "Zed's dead, baby"[0] Pulp Fiction and I
| just can't help but chuckle
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E3aAvhUucI
| dave333 wrote:
| I emigrated from the UK to USA in 1980 and my first code
| review at Bell Labs I spent about 30 mins explaining my
| code and then asked if there were any final questions and
| someone hesitantly asked, "What is this variable 'zed'
| you keep talking about?"
| rwmj wrote:
| I used to work for a networking start-up and when we were
| in the US trying - without success - to sell the company
| we practised over and over saying _" roWter"_ for _"
| router"_ (English pronunciation like _" rooter"_).
| wcarss wrote:
| As a Canadian I read that as "rOATer" for a moment,
| because the word row rhyming with ow is quite uncommon
| here -- the row I know is in a boating or a data context.
| dfawcus wrote:
| As a Brit, so did I. That said, a "rotor" would be
| pronounced as "rOATer" and has a completely different
| meaning.
|
| isn't English fun !
| ninalanyon wrote:
| You never have a row with anyone?
| wisemang wrote:
| As a Canadian, obviously not.
|
| (For real though we don't use that word for argument or
| whatever.)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Funny, I just realised that I say "rooter" in French
| (because route ("roote") means way, like in English), but
| I say "rAWter" in English
| ninalanyon wrote:
| There are two words with the same spelling but separate
| pronunciations in British English:
|
| Router (rooter) the thing that routes packets in a
| newtwork
|
| Router (rowter) a machine tool that cuts grooves, etc.,
| in wood or metal.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Ah, so I pronounce the IT equipment wrong. I guess that
| "raw-ter" sounds really bad then.
| stevekemp wrote:
| The one that gets me the most is English people suddenly
| saying "fall" instead of "autumn".
| dfawcus wrote:
| It is a traditional one which fell out of fashion.
|
| https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/learn-
| about/weather/seasons...
|
| https://twominenglish.com/autumn-vs-fall/
|
| Now if we start saying "diaper" again instead of "nappy",
| you can start to worry.
| mr_toad wrote:
| The weirdest one to me is the English suddenly referring
| to police as "feds".
|
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37256/police-
| in-...
|
| It's not like they didn't already have dozens of slang
| terms for the police.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| There was a cartoon in Private Eye a couple of weeks ago
| that suggested the reason why Millenials and Gen Z could
| never be reconciled is that they can't agree whether it's
| pronounced "Generation Zed", or "Generation Zee", as the
| younger generation themselves would call it.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I find Valley speak, where people say 'like' every third
| word, infuriating.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| I may be completely wrong, but I think one direction of
| evolution in pronunciation is the gradual shift to that which
| takes less physical effort to pronounce.
|
| "Bedder" is less physical work, less effort, in the mouth
| than "better".
| froddd wrote:
| "Be'er" seems like even less work. _For some people_
| trollbridge wrote:
| Exact same thing is happening in Australia. I'm guessing it's
| from watching streaming video, Netflix, TikTok, etc. where
| American accents predominate, and any non-American accents
| are flattened enough to be sure it's easy for Americans to
| understand them.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| It's weird that the mainstream TV execs think audiences
| want boring American accents. To me, one of the best things
| about the White Lotus (hit HBO show) is that it highlights
| a distinct array of accents (including Australian).
| HK-NC wrote:
| Norse words?
| smh wrote:
| https://www.viking.no/e/england/e-yorkshire_norse.htm
|
| Most have fallen out of use but e.g. 'laik' is still
| understood by young people.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It may alleveiate the epidemic of th-fronting among young
| men.
| simonh wrote:
| When I was staying with a friend in Norway once we visited
| his mother, and to me she sounded like someone with a broad
| Durham/Newcastle accent (my mother is from there) speaking
| German. A lot of north east words are germanic, or
| Scandinavian. My grandfather was a farmer near Durham and
| pigs were swine, children were bairns.
|
| As for American influence, my youngest daughter picked up a
| lot of that from Youtube at one point, and I once interviewed
| a girl from Gravesend with such a strong US accent I assumed
| she'd grown up over there.
| thom wrote:
| I have no idea what my accent is at this point. I spent enough
| time in Oxford that I can pass as posh if I need to, moved to a
| part of Cheshire that had a huge scouse population, then moved
| to Watford and then Kent and picked up my dad's dreadful habit
| of talking vaguely cockney to tradespeople. Now I live in
| Sheffield and me and my kids have random a mix of long and
| short As. I also grew up in lower-case parts of the internet
| and drive myself mad at work switching between that and grown
| up casing, so it's not just vocal dialects anymore.
| fnord77 wrote:
| > the bread pictured here
|
| no bread is pictured
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Yeah, that seems to have been lost at some point. From memory
| they used a picture of what Americans might call a soft
| dinner roll.
|
| To me it would be more a roll than a bap or a barm, but
| they're almost synonyms. The weird one for me was when a mate
| insisted it was a teacake, and I suggested that would only
| apply if it had raisins in it. What I was describing, he
| insisted, was a fruit teacake, and without fruit it became a
| teacake. This is contrary to what the rest of the country
| believes outside of North Manchester, but has become a
| running joke for many years between us.
| ljm wrote:
| The general unawareness of what a barmcake (barm) is
| outside of Bolton/east lancs, particularly in London, never
| ceases to amuse me.
|
| "What the hell is a chip/bacon/sausage/pastie/pie barm!?"
| deanishe wrote:
| To be fair, it was nearly 50 years before I knew what the
| "liquor" Cockneys put on their pie and mash is.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| My wife was from Orkney and we spent a few months in the
| US. So we had US biscuits which are not the same as UK
| biscuits, US cookies which are not Orcadian cookies, West
| Country English buns which are definitely not US buns.
|
| Your (Yorkshire?) teacakes are almost but not exactly like
| my buns.
|
| You can imagine the confusion when the children asked for a
| cookie, a bun, or a biscuit while in the US.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| When I asked for a bag of scraps in the chippy tonight the
| lady asked if I wanted "any breadcakes luv" showing me they
| were an 'outsider' (from about 30 miles away I reckon).
|
| Also, no-one has called me 'duck' in the last week; which
| just feels wrong.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > I got bullied at school in North Derbyshire for speaking "too
| posh".
|
| Isn't it fascinating that people judge accents harshly? After
| all, if we can _understand_ one another, what 's the problem?
|
| The problem is social stratification within a power structure.
| Here's a related BBC article from earlier this year.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyjdyj729ro
| switch007 wrote:
| > if we can understand one another, what's the problem?
|
| The accent is just being used a heuristic of where you're
| from, which is the actual judgement. Posh = not from round
| here.
|
| Northerners are famously insular and protective of their
| communities (I love them for it but I think it can go a bit
| far sometimes)
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the Brits so can't comment on the
| specifics there.
|
| However, as a kid, I had a similar experience in a completely
| different country when we moved cities. My accent wasn't
| "posh" or "higher class" in any way, it was just from a
| different region. Kids would give me a hard time for it. But
| the exact same would happen in reverse form in the other
| region.
|
| Guess people just don't like "outsiders".
| bombela wrote:
| Adding my story to the list.
|
| I grew up in France, from white parents, classical music
| professionals, catholic practicing. With what I now recognize
| as a posh french accent, that they consciously learned as a
| way to climb the social ladder.
|
| I went to the town school where 80% of the students were
| descendent of North African immigrants, mostly from Algeria.
|
| Most of those kids lived in projects city, and part of their
| identity is a specific accent differentiating them from the
| outside of the project city. This accent is not really
| related to Arabic; it is distinctively different; with what I
| can only describe as a palpable aggressivity in tone.
|
| I ended up under police protection after a few broken limbs.
|
| This was more than 25y ago. Sometimes I wonder what those
| kids have become. If they sometimes regret.
|
| As recently as a couple years ago, a white posh accent kid at
| the same school got bullied and almost suffocated to death
| with a fire extinguisher. By the next generation of those
| immigrants.
|
| I am now an immigrant in the Bay Area. Nobody cares about my
| accent here ;)
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > school where 80% of the students were descendent of North
| African immigrants, mostly from Algeria.
|
| Ah, the Colonial power structure. A gift that keeps on
| giving. But tribalism runs deep too.
|
| > in the Bay Area. Nobody cares about my accent here
|
| For the most part in the modern US, money=caste. Tribalism
| still runs deep (see: US politics) but _how people
| pronounce_ isn 't such a factor as it can be in the EU and
| in the UK.
|
| As you are probably aware, French in Canada is also a many-
| caste system.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Isn't it fascinating that people judge accents harshly?
| After all, if we can understand one another, what's the
| problem?
|
| Two populations in close proximity separated by social
| differences will develop accents and use those accents to
| differentiate themselves. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
| andai wrote:
| It'll sound like whatever the Amish speak! Apparently their
| population grows exponentially, while the rest, not so much.
| fecal_henge wrote:
| I was born in the peak district but never quite gained the
| accent. Didnt sound either like a townie or a sheep shagger.
|
| I live in london also, but people cant place me. They sometimes
| guess Irish or German.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm reminded of Serious Klein, who is a German rapper who
| explicitly sounds like a native English speaker. Imo he's
| closet to a West Coast rapper, but even this is up to debate.
| He could easily be from Maryland, or any other American city.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_Klein
| davidw wrote:
| > dialect changes every 20 miles or so
|
| When I first lived in Italy, this was mind-blowing for me as an
| American from the west coast. I went on a bike ride with the
| local team I had joined and they stopped for espresso in a
| nearby town, and the guy who ran the place was like "oh, you're
| from Padova" when he heard them speaking. An identifiable
| change in the dialect over a distance you could easily cover on
| a bike was a huge "wow!" moment for me.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| An Italian told me that he married a girl from the next
| valley and was asked by an elderly relative, 'why did you
| marry a foreigner?'.
| dogman1050 wrote:
| I find this fascinating. Didn't see it in the article, but I
| wonder how many people speak each dialect. Since of those areas
| are very small.
| pat_springleaf wrote:
| The thing is, this sort of thing can never be represented with
| borders.
|
| A more accurate map might be ones akin to wildlife population
| maps, with splodges dotted around the country. Many accents exist
| in the same place and depend on a huge range of factors like
| class, immigration statistics, and geographic isolation.
| bjackman wrote:
| I think something important to explain about British English
| dialects is the class factor.
|
| It's easy to forget because the classic RP accents have largely
| died out, but the way I was brought up to speak (actively! My
| parents would "correct" my speech patterns) is much more
| reflective of class than locality. This is the case throughout
| England at least. Brits take this for granted but it's not the
| global norm!
|
| In many British cities there is also a major race axis to
| dialects too. Just like how American English has black and white
| accents, you could make a better-than-chance guess at a modern
| Londoner's ethnicity from a recording of their voice. (See
| Multicultural London English).
| thebruce87m wrote:
| > This is the case throughout England at least. Brits take this
| for granted but it's not the global norm!
|
| England and Britain are not interchangeable, unless you
| specifically mean that all Brits take it for granted that this
| is only the case in England or something like that?
|
| Edit: for the downvoters:
| https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/difference-between-britai...
| Jensson wrote:
| There was no error there, maybe he doesn't know if class is a
| major factor in Scotland or Ireland? That could make sense
| since England as the center of power that class would be more
| of a factor there for dialects, but I am not sure.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| The great thing about LLMs is we don't have to argue about
| language any more, a machine can do it for us. Here is is
| explained:
|
| "The common country error in that statement is confusing
| "England" with the entire United Kingdom.
|
| Explanation: * The statement says: "This is the case
| throughout England at least. Brits take this for
| granted..." * It singles out England but then generalizes
| to all Brits (which includes people from Scotland, Wales,
| and Northern Ireland--not just England). * This is a common
| error, especially among non-UK speakers, where England is
| incorrectly used to refer to the entire UK."
| n4r9 wrote:
| I didn't get the impression that bjackman was confusing
| England with the UK. They are two distinct statements,
| one applying to England and the other to the UK. Appeal
| to LLM isn't going to convince me otherwise!
| bjackman wrote:
| Yes exactly in fact I was specifically thinking of my
| belief that class is signalled less strongly in many
| Scottish dialects. But the general concept of class being
| closely related to accent is something that people will
| instinctively understand throughout the whole of Britain
| (and probably Ireland too), even if it's not that big an
| effect in their own local dialect.
| bjackman wrote:
| That's exactly what I mean. It's not entirely the same in
| e.g. Scotland. But Scottish people will understand English
| class signals.
|
| Hilarious that you'd read my comment explaining British class
| and linguistics dynamics and assume I don't know what Britain
| is lol
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Glad you find it hilarious, but if you think that the rest
| of the UK spends great amounts of time considering England
| I would encourage you to visit some of these places.
| smackay wrote:
| A somewhat public thank you to Donald Omand from Aberdeen
| University for all the work he did in documenting the dialect of
| Caithness - that purple-ish bit at the far top right of the
| Scottish mainland.
|
| https://www.wickvoices.co.uk/voices_listen.php?id=0806202309...
| fossgeller wrote:
| I was just thinking about the variety of british dialects, have
| been consuming more UK media recently.
|
| It would have been even more interesting to have an interactive
| map that also has audio files linked to it.
| pyb wrote:
| "You will find the same thing in [...] France".
|
| Actually, you don't. Strong regional accents are pretty rare
| compared to the UK or Germany
| rjsw wrote:
| What about Ch'ti [1] or Savoyard?
|
| The article is about dialects not accents. Even just
| considering French accents, I find the Marseille one
| distinctive.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picard_language
| pyb wrote:
| There are a couple of light accents in France
| (Toulouse,Marseille) but not many.
|
| Stronger accents are found outside France: Quebec, Africa...
| sevensor wrote:
| Not unrelated to a longstanding policy of suppressing regional
| languages:
|
| > Depuis plus de deux siecles, les pouvoirs politiques ont
| combattu les langues regionales
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France
| pyb wrote:
| Exactly. My grandfather was punished in school whenever he
| spoke Breton
| auxbuss wrote:
| Years ago, I went to live and work in Strasbourg. My French
| was... rudimentary, school-level, but after a few weeks I was
| picking up the rhythm and following along. Then the grand chef
| came up from Paris. During the night out entertaining him, I
| asked him to slow down a bit as I was struggling with his
| accent. He completely lost it, insulting the locals as
| peasants, and claiming the accent was theirs not his. Kind of
| put a damper on the evening.
|
| Obviously the Marseille "dialect" is recognisable, but
| otherwise, travelling throughout France, and even the French-
| speaking parts of Switzerland, I could understand folk.
| rob_c wrote:
| If you find cockney over that area over something non British I
| would be impressed.
|
| Source, have lived in said area.
|
| Interesting, but more of a measure of what has been lost in some
| parts of the country to change.
| beardyw wrote:
| Waze has decided I need a London accent to find my way. Kate now
| says "Go strai on". Kate used to sound like a genteel granny. I
| miss her.
| fy20 wrote:
| I had a really interesting situation a couple of decades ago when
| I was studying. I grew up in a rural part of the UK in the South
| West. The nearest train station was just over the county border,
| around 20 miles away.
|
| One day I was waiting for the train, and there were two men
| talking: a vicar and his friend - both in their 50s. Clearly from
| that area. Even though I'd grown up in an area with a similar
| accent - less than 20 miles away - I could not understand a word
| they were saying.
| paulnpace wrote:
| Which is the accent where 80% of consonants and 1/3 of vowels are
| pronounced like a hard "ff"? I associate it with Manks, but I'm
| just a Yank so what do I really know.
| croemer wrote:
| The names of dialects aren't super useful to people who aren't
| from the UK. Also, dialects often are continua, so drawing
| borders without any sort of hierarchy to indicate closeness is
| quite pointless.
|
| What would be cool if one could click on each dialect/region and
| hear a few words spoken in that dialect.
| abm53 wrote:
| I agree.
|
| In my view many of these small regions (that blend into one
| another) could be combined to give a much more useful map with
| more sharply distinct accents.
|
| Such a map may be less precise, but far more useful to most.
| tbjgolden wrote:
| Tbh I was worried when I saw this title but its not bad
| croemer wrote:
| Here is the equivalent map for German:
| https://language.mki.wisc.edu/essays/high-and-low-german/
|
| Here's a similar one from Wikipedia that includes Dutch dialects
| as an example of dialect continuum:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialektkontinuum#/media/Datei:...
| probably based on this historical map:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/11kvga1/an_1894_ma...
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| This Wikipedia page also has some interesting maps:
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_dialecten
| jimnotgym wrote:
| The West Midlands Region needs some serious sub division.
| Herefordshire has nothing of the brummie and Shropshire fades out
| from the black- country yam-yam into a border talk that is sadly
| dieing out due to the amount of migration from the South. It is
| still destinct in rural communities. Man pronounced 'mon', cold
| pronounced 'cowd' and sheep pronounced 'ship'. I could barely
| follow my father speaking to his father, due to the amount of
| local words they used. They were 'upper wommers' though (people
| who live in the hills!).
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| Where's Doric in Aberdeenshire??
| nkurz wrote:
| The article has a section "Why Scots/Doric are not included"
| that covers this: "This map is specifically of the English
| language, and Scots (and its subset, Doric), are not English."
| It then links to another article that discusses Doric:
| https://starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/every-native-british-an...
| ksec wrote:
| I am not sure if it is still on but there is a TV series in UK
| called The Only Way is Essex. Which got quite famous when Chris
| Pratt [1] did its accent on The Graham Norton Show.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af7UD-IxzZI
| countrymile wrote:
| The accent attempt is at 1m30s but that's an Essex accent from
| the towns, and largely the result of Londoners moving out to
| Essex, if you head into the countryside, Essex sounds like
| this:
|
| https://youtu.be/1xxRdiiyT70?si=PlBnim1PW_y8nh5I
| treyd wrote:
| How did you find this video from 2013 with (as of writing)
| 290 views, and with it not mentioning Essex or accents at
| all?
| countrymile wrote:
| I know that part of the world quite well, it's from a local
| historical society, I just searched for them. They don't
| advertise well!
| lordnacho wrote:
| My first year at uni:
|
| Me: "How about that James guy, huh? He's obviously fought his way
| past disability, what a great guy, an example to all of us."
|
| "What do you mean?"
|
| "Well, he's a professor at Oxford, that's quite some achievement"
|
| "So what?"
|
| "Well, I mean, you know, he's gotten past his handicap. You can
| kinda hear it on him, right?"
|
| "He's Brummie..."
|
| "Is that like a palsy or something?"
|
| "No, there's nothing wrong with him, he just comes from a certain
| area near Birmingham"
|
| "Ah. I'm gonna go find a rock to hide under."
|
| A few years later, around when I got married:
|
| "Hey Nacho, where are your in-laws from? Your mom and I tried to
| talk to them"
|
| "They're from Scotland"
|
| "What language do they speak?"
|
| "English"
|
| "What, really? I tried to talk to your father-in-law, I couldn't
| understand anything!"
|
| "..."
| narag wrote:
| I had the opposite confusion. I asked the sysadmin where he was
| from, I had guessed Germany. He told me he was from Madrid,
| just had to relearn speaking after he had a brain tumor removed
| a few years before.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| There is also a strange thing called 'foreign accent
| syndrome':
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome
| karaterobot wrote:
| > This is pretty normal in any large region that has been
| speaking a language continually for 1600 years.
|
| Large! The thing that gets me is that, geographically, all of the
| UK would fit easily into the state of Oregon, but you'd have to
| be a linguist to describe even one distinctly Oregonian accent,
| let alone dozens. It's not surprising to me that a very old
| country would have so many accents, but it's surprising that they
| would still perpetuate into the present, after mass media,
| travel, and mass communication seems to have flattened or
| homogenized so many fine distinctions based on geographic
| isolation.
| mikelevins wrote:
| Of course the dialects are not so densely distributed in North
| America, and English has only been evolving in the Americas for
| a few hundred years, but there are a bunch of dialects, and I
| find them super interesting.
|
| My paternal grandparents were honest-to-goodness Ozark
| hillbillies who spoke Ozark Midlands (also called South
| Midlands), which is very close to, and sometimes conflated
| with, Appalachian English.
|
| I'm in the Ozarks now and at least in the region where I live,
| this dialect seems to be disappearing. I still hear traces of
| it, but I don't think I've heard anyone really speaking it in
| years.
|
| That's too bad. I love that dialect--perhaps because it was the
| language that my grandparents spoke.
|
| If you're curious about it, you could listen to some of Terry
| Gross' interview with Ralph Stanley. He spoke Appalachian
| English, but it's indistinguishable to my ear from the language
| my grandparents spoke.
|
| Here's the interview at NPR:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2016/06/24/483428938/bluegrass-legend-ra...
| leoedin wrote:
| I think social media is reducing local accents in a way mass
| travel or media never seemed to - probably because it exposes
| people to "cool" accents in a way that old media never did.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > you'd have to be a linguist to describe even one distinctly
| Oregonian accent, let alone dozens.
|
| You could definitely describe two or three, but you picked a
| new, far flung, low-population state as an example. Britain has
| 14x the population of Oregon. If Oregon had two accents, you
| might expect Britain to have 28.
|
| Going to older eastern parts of the country, you can usually
| tell where people are from within probably 100 miles. You can
| tell Chicago from Milwaukee from Detroit from Pittsburgh from
| Boston. You can tell Northwest Arkansas accents from Western
| Arkansas accents. You can hear a parent's Texas in the accent
| of somebody you grew up with in Kansas. You can even tell south
| Jersey accents from Baltimoreans if you ask them both to say
| the word "Orioles." Literally impossible for a Baltimorean to
| say. Orirols? Orals?
|
| California has hella accents too.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I am French so obviously not the best to discuss dialects but I
| would be curious to know what key reason would bring so many of
| them.
|
| We have dialects in France, a few are very distinct but I would
| not call a dialect when someone pronounces a few things
| differently. I know that this is subjective, but still.
|
| There are out course some mad places where they ("they" means,
| you know, they) call _chocolatine_ a _pain au chocolat_ (a French
| private joke, see https://www.legorafi.fr/2013/03/20/toulouse-il-
| se-fait-abatt... - in French from a leading national newspaper)
| rconti wrote:
| probably related to the policy of suppressing regional
| languages discussed in another thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43735946
|
| It seems likely that regional languages impact accents in the
| "primary" language, and even if that's not the mechanism, the
| cultural attitude of discouraging "different" dialects might
| have the same damping effect on accents.
| memsom wrote:
| In the UK, some traditional dialects are almost different
| languages. It is not really like that anymore, but people do
| have whole swathes of vocabulary that outsiders do not
| understand.
|
| I think in France you got rid of the diversity in a lot of ways
| by having the French Language Academy.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Yes, we have a few different accents (and not a lot) but the
| world are basically the same, except for a few.
|
| You do not expect to not understand someone in France, it may
| just be more difficult because of the accent.
| tianqi wrote:
| Oddly enough, I've always been fascinated by Australian accents.
| It somehow made me particularly happy especially after I watched
| this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QCgqQdmr0M) where I
| couldn't understand a single sentence. I then tried to learn this
| accent in Sydney and was discouraged by many of my Aussie mates.
| Now I just have a little bit of the Sydney accent, which is
| roughly /ai/ -> /oi/ (bike -> boi-ke), /ei/ -> /ai/ (day -> die).
| I don't know why, but I like this accent, it sounds and feels
| warm, open and full.
| Scrapemist wrote:
| You seriously couldn't understand a single sentence?
| tianqi wrote:
| No, unfortunately. English is not my first language.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Try this Scottish accent:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUZyNLZZjMs
|
| Or this MLE (Multicultural London English) one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5bqYlsXDdg
| dfawcus wrote:
| An amusing anecdote, especially the Superman comparison at the
| end... "but I had nothing on bar me jocks"
| trollbridge wrote:
| Slight pet peeve: Northern Ireland dialects of English are not
| "British English"; they're Hiberno-English dialects. Northern
| Ireland is not part of Great Britain, nor is it British.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| 'British' is [also] the adjective for people from the United
| Kingdom (UK). The full name of the UK is the 'United Kingdom of
| Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| If you think this is dense, try Italy some time. Huge numbers of
| highly distinct dialects, because until the mid-1800s Italians
| spoke huge numbers of entirely different _languages,_ complete
| with their own full literature traditions. During unification the
| country settled on Florence 's language (the language of Dante)
| as the "official" language: but everyone still proudly speaks
| their own language. To my knowledge, Italy is regarded as the
| densest diverse dialect region in Europe.
|
| How different? What Americans call _arugula_ the British call
| _rocket_. Because the British word is derived from the French
| _roquette_ , which is from _ruchetta_ , a word in italian
| dialects along the French border. But Americans got their word
| from _aruculu_ in the southern Calabrese dialect, a result of
| immigration. The Italian word is _rucola_ , from the Latin
| _eruca_.
|
| Americans think "Capeesh" is an Italian word because they heard
| it in _The Godfather_. But it 's not: it's Sicilian, as is much
| of the film.
| dogmatism wrote:
| wait what? I always thought "capeesh" was just "capisce" with
| the end swallowed? Is "capisce" not standard italian?
| ks2048 wrote:
| Has anyone seen models (free or paid) to detect accents from
| audio?
| Anon84 wrote:
| A few years ago I worked on an empirical (twitter data) look at
| how English dialects change from place to place and how British
| and American evolved separately (based on Google Books):
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| </ShamelessPlug>
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I find it surprising that regional dialects are still quite
| strong given how much everyone is exposed (via TV and Internet)
| to other dialects (US expecially).
| pessimizer wrote:
| In my experience, there's only a small subset of people who
| will get their accent from the mass media rather than their
| parents and the people around them. That accent will also
| almost always be an vapid pseudo-American one, mysteriously
| bicoastal, combining LA valley girl, 90s NY highly-
| commercialized hip-hop regionalisms, and barely enough of their
| local accent to keep from getting punched. Also, since 2008,
| the word "folks."
|
| This is mostly I think wealthy and upper-middle class people,
| but there are also definitely a lot of strivers who just think
| they're _better_ than everyone local, and don 't want to sound
| like they come from where they come from, but like American
| surfer-artist-activists.
|
| Same thing happens in the US, through. A lot of Americans
| relating to the television more than their neighbors. Even
| worse, since the accents in US media have become terrible and
| authentic local accents rarely heard, young US media addicts
| are often imitating British and Australian people who are
| imitating US accents.
|
| I honestly rarely hear _any_ authentic southern US accents in
| TV and movies, only imitation ones. Imitation of the
| representations created by a highly centralized media might
| ultimately and gradually turn all of us into caricatures, even
| of ourselves.
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