English dialects and varieties around the world

[Kikwang]

Hi,

I am working on a new project about the English dialects and varieties around the world (namely US, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa).

I have created a sample text using words that shows the different pronunciations and/or spelling or orthographies in one of the varieties. (for example : defense/defence, programme/program, colored pencils/pencil crayons/ colouring pencils/ coloured pencils, etc.).
I've also transcribed every versions (varieties) in phonetic alphabet.
(ˈðɪs ˈɪz ˈmɛɹi ˈʃiːz nɑːt ˈmɛɹiːd ənd ˈʃiːz ə ˈlɔɪ.ɚ. ˈʃiː ˈwɪl ˈbiː ˈtwɛntiː ˈfaɪv ˈɑːn ɑːkˈtoʊbɚ ˈsɛvənθ...)

This is why it was difficult to create a text with those specific words. There were many words so the text is very long.

Not being a native speaker, I'm looking for help and if you could proofread the text and also give your feedback regarding the grammar.
Any help you could provide would be much appreciated.

Note from mod: Attached .txt file has been removed to avoid anyone accidentally opening it.

 

[emsr2d2]

Welcome to the forum, Kikwang.

1. We don't provide a free proofreading service for huge amounts of text.
2. Many users are reluctant to click on links or open unknown files. (I'm not even familiar with .txt files so I'm not touching it!)
3. The way this forum works (public posts, public corrections) means that the text you would like us to look at needs to appear in the actual body of your text. That's so that we can quote it in our responses and add corrections and comments. That's impossible if you make your file an attachment.

Please feel free to start a new thread including just the opening paragraph of your text and we can make a start on that.

 

[Kikwang]

Thank you for your quick reply and explanationations.
I will follow your instructions.

 

[Kikwang]

Also, what forum should I put the text?

 

[emsr2d2]

Also, in what sub-forum should I put the text?

Editing and Writing Topics.

 

[Kikwang]

Text created with words from my research (in bold, need to be in the text).
American English version :

This is Mary. She's not married and she's a lawyer.
She will be twenty-five on October 7th.
She works from home from Monday through Wednesday and at the office through Friday.
She often reads the sports section.
After slipping off her pajamas,
She has a brother who lives with her parents in Florida.
Her aunt Anna also owns a house there.
Her father is a lawyer too and he always wears suspenders and a waistcoat.
Being a former government employee, he likes to discuss defense matters like the missile defense program,
or criticize and analyze hostile foreign countries.
He even had his own take on the mafia.
The Godfather saga was among his favorites movies.
His favorite destination is Costa Rica and its volcanoes and its glowing lava that could only be seen at night.
Sailboat is one of his favorite hobbies.
Her mother likes traveling abroad too.
She's a math teacher. And she always carries colored pencils, crayons and an eraser with her.
She likes traveling in Europe and she's always amazed with the metric system, meters and liters.
She learned to speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese in college.
Her 13 year-old brother is in 9th grade and will enter high school next year.
And he's greeting people with "hi, you all" instead of "you guys".
As a boy, he had dreamed about being on the baseball team.
Although he remains vague about it, he wants to be on the school Varsity team.
But he still has to practice a lot to be in it.
Her aunt worked in pediatrics and is working now in a fertility clinic helping women become pregnant.
Hearing a fetus heartbeat still give her goose bumps.
The weather in Northern California is not the same as the one in Southern California at this time of year,
where people are probably strolling on the boardwalk in flip flops or sneakers and thongs!
Today she is wearing a sweater, raincoat/windbreaker and even a beanie because it is quite windy.
She's not wearing pants but a heavy fiber gray skirt with a Nordstrom pantyhose.
She's of course wearing her usual gym shoes.

 

[Tarheel]

The two parts of a compound sentence should go together in some way.

It's weird to talk about what a person is not wearing. (An exception to that might be if the person is wearing something fhey don't usually wear.)

 

[Kikwang]

"The two parts of a compound sentence should go together in some way."

which sentence are you reffering to?

"It's weird to talk about what a person is not wearing. (An exception to that might be if the person is wearing something fhey don't usually wear.)"

yes, I was going for that meaning like the gym shoes.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Tarheel]

"She's not married, and she's a lawyer" makes no sense. Do you know why?

What does your research involve?

(That post is too long.)

 

[Kikwang]

It's a project about the English varieties and dialects in the world, namely R.P., American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African. I've looked for phonolgical, vocabulary and spelling differences among these varieties and then I've transcribed the text in each of these varieties.
I am very interested in languages and linguistics and I am in fluent French, English, Spanish, Catalan and partly fluent in Dutch,and Korean.

 

[Tarheel]

Perhaps:

It's a project about the similarities and differences of the various English variants.

Variants and dialects are two different things.

The two parts of a compound sentence have to have some relationship to each other.

 

[Tarheel]

If you need to use "married" and "lawyer" for some reason you could say:

She's married to a lawyer.

 

[Kikwang]

Thank you for your feedback.

In linguistics and in academic writing, they talk about "varieties of English".

English language - Dialects, Grammar, Vocabulary

English language - Dialects, Grammar, Vocabulary: The abbreviation RP (Received Pronunciation) denotes what is traditionally considered the standard accent of people living in London and the southeast of England and of other people elsewhere who speak in this way. RP is the only British accent...

www.britannica.com

 

[Tarheel]

Try:

She works from home on Monday through Wednesday and at the office on Thursday and Friday.

 

[jutfrank]

Hello, Kikwang. What are you asking us to do exactly?

Where did you get these sentences from? Why?

 

[5jj]

In linguistics and in academic writing, they talk about "varieties of English.

Some do. Others distinguish clearly between varieties (such as American, Australian, British, etc) and dialects (such as Liverpool, Glasgow, West Country, etc).

 

[emsr2d2]

I have merged the two threads so that it's not so confusing. I noticed that a couple of people asked what the purpose of the text is - I assume they hadn't seen the original thread in another sub-forum. I have put them all together so please make sure you read all the way from post #1.

 

[jutfrank]

Okay, thanks to emsr2d2 I understand much better now, but I don't get how you've chosen the bold words. Some of them use US spelling, but only a small minority. What do you mean by 'different pronunciations'? Different to what? Different in what way? A feature of any variant is that it has a certain way of pronouncing its words that is distinct from other variants. That means that every word is pronounced differently from the same word pronounced by a speaker of a different variety. This is also true of dialects and accents within variants. I think if you're going to select a meaningful data set, you might start by choosing words that differ in syllable stress.

 

[Tarheel]

Do you really think speakers of American English and speakers of British English pronounce every single word differently?

 

[Kikwang]

I've majored in translation but I was always more interested in linguistics and particularly in phonology and philology.
I've also been interested in regional accents (I don't like this term because it has a social and educational connotation, especially in English when you had the distinction between R.P. English and any other accents in Great Britain for example).
Books like "Accents of English in the British Isles" and "Accents of English Beyond the British Isles" by John. C. Wells or the work of David Alan Stern or inspired me. Other internet resources were "The Speech Accent Archive", a Univeristy of Leipzig study of the North Wind fable, the Aesop Language Bank.
For Canadian English, I've read Boberg's work and for American English, I've read the Atlas of North American English, the Harvard Dialect Survey, and many other resouurces.
The idea for creating the text came from "The Speech Accent Archive" text (Please call stella) and the Accent Tag project.
As all the projects were not very complete, I took upon myself to create a new one that would contain all the sounds and regional accents including the ones from the Southern Hemisphere.
I've picked up many of the words from these projects and this is why the list of words is large.
Now, my problem was to create a coherent text that included all those words.
I hope this long explanation answers all you questions.