Dialectic features

[jutfrank]

I've started a new thread here to answer the request below from GoesStation, in the hope that others may similarly wish to describe some of the features they feel to be generic of their own dialect.

Can you post some links to recordings of people speaking your native dialect?

Okay, I searched around quite a lot and the best I could come up with is this recording of two kids speaking in 1999. It should be noted that the way they are speaking is very different from the MLE that is widespread nowadays across London. I chose this particular recording because it's a great example of the South London accent used at that time. I highlight below the dialectic features that I think are typical of (if not unique to) this particular speech group.

0:08 Using I got for 'I've got'.

1:05 Using an 'f' sound for an unvoiced 'th' sound, such as in phrases like 'sort o' fing' (sort of thing) and a 'v' sound for a voiced 'th':

[I] buy some fings wiv it.

1:09 Using and that as a filler. This is incredibly common, as you'll hear by how often these kids use it. It might appear to outsiders to mean something like and so on or and stuff, (which it can) but it's more often than not almost completely meaningless. Check out this exchange:

Who buys you all of those things?
Me mum and that
Do you have to nag them?
Yeah, sometimes. I get pocket money and I get money in the week and that

2:31 Using none for 'any' in negative sentences:

How much pocket money do you get?
I don't get none

3:20 Using what sounds like int or ent as an all-purpose auxiliary. This is different from the more drawn out Cockney version 'ain't'.

I ent spent that yet

3:50 Using what instead of 'that' in defining relative clauses:

It's just a club what goes on on a Friday

4:38 Conjugating first person singular with third person 's'. This is an interesting one, as it's not very common. Even these kids rarely do it, but you can hear Sam answer the interviewer:

What sorts of thing do you do at the weekends? Sam?
Normally, I just goes ... I 'ave a ... I stay around my area. I go up me nan's or go swimming or bowling or cinema or summin(k) like that

You can also notice here the use of prepositions—using up to mean 'to' and also dropping 'to the' after the verb 'go'. Also, from Sam, at 4:57:

... and sometimes I go pictures and bowlin' or summink wiv me friends.

and from Jordan at 5:38:

When I went Greenwich swimmin' baths wiv me friends ...

I'll stress again that this particular speech form is characteristically quite distinct from Cockney (listen to the actor Danny Dyer here), which is traditionally spoken in East London (although it shares many of its features) and completely unlike the modern MLE. Traditional North London dialect is also quite distinct, to a Londoner at least.

 

[SoothingDave]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Pennsylvania_English

Our most famous quirks:

1. Second person plural "yinz" or "yunz"

2. "Haus" for "house," etc.

The diphthong /aʊ/, as in ow, is monophthongized to [aː] in some environments (sounding instead like ah), including before nasal consonants (e.g., downtown ['daːntaːn] and found [faːnd]), liquid consonants (e.g., fowl, hour) and obstruents (e.g., house [haːs], out, cloudy).[SUP][6][/SUP][SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][15][/SUP] This monophthongization does not occur, however, in word-final positions (e.g., how, now), where the diphthong remains [aʊ].[SUP][16][/SUP] This is one of the few features, if not the only one, restricted almost exclusively to western Pennsylvania in North America, although it can sometimes be found in other accents of the English-speaking world, such as Cockney and South African English.[SUP][[/SUP]

3. The missing "to be." We say "the car needs washed."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbzTqt12IWo

Pittsburgh Dad is a (slightly) exaggerated example.

 

[GoesStation]

3. The missing "to be." We say "the car needs washed."

That economical usage is very common in my area. We donate the infinitives to the needy in an annual festival.

I'm on the edge of a region where many people pronounce that as "warshed". :-(

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I learned to talk in Cincinnati but can't think of any recordings that highlight it. Some people there talk standard, flat American TV-ese, some talk Appalachian, some talk deep south.

I came to Maine in '88. There are a few different ways people talk here. The best-known is called the Downeast accent:

 

[GoesStation]

Governor Mike DeWine grew up in a well-off old family in my Ohio home town and speaks like many white people in town. (The old African-American community has a distinctly different accent.) He starts talking at 20:42.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Governor Mike DeWine grew up in a well-off old family in my Ohio home town and speaks like many white people in town. (The old African-American community has a distinctly different accent.) . . .

Yup, that's pretty much like how a lot of people talked down in Cincinnati — the people who don't sound like they're from Appalachia or the deep south.

Thanks for posting that!

The Appalachians ended a lot of sentences so they sounded like questions, and they often used more words than necessary. Like, if you asked someone where they were from, you might get something like "The greater Cincinnaduh metropol'tan vicinity?"

I remember Yellow Springs. Antioch, right? Nice place!

 

[GoesStation]

I remember Yellow Springs. Antioch, right? Nice place!

The old Antioch died after decades of slow decline. The college was, amazingly, resurrected a few years ago but the new version hasn't thrived. Hope springs eternal! The village is still charming, but it's quite different. An economy built on tourism and little shops is a lot less vibrant than one sustained by higher education, research, engineering, and light manufacturing.

 

[Tarheel]

I've heard DeWine speak and no trouble understanding him. (Those Londoners are a different story.)

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

The old Antioch died after decades of slow decline. The college was, amazingly, resurrected a few years ago but the new version hasn't thrived. Hope springs eternal! The village is still charming, but it's quite different. An economy built on tourism and little shops is a lot less vibrant than one sustained by higher education, research, engineering, and light manufacturing.

For some reason I have it in my head that it had reopened in LA—Marina Del Rey, or someplace like that. True? Hard to picture a Califormia-style Antioch-By-the-Sea.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

. . . 2. "Haus" for "house," etc. . . .

Reminds me of Cincinnati. We moved away when I was twelve, but it's taken me many years to become comfortable saying house instead of hass and our like hour instead of are.

I still cling to the Cincinnati sorry, which rhymes with Tory, rather than the eastern version, which sounds more like sari.

Glad I never picked up Appalachian Cincinnati's warsh for wash, idear for idea, and theeAYter for theater. I'd've never made any friends.

 

[GoesStation]

For some reason I have it in my head that it had reopened in LA—Marina Del Rey, or someplace like that. True? Hard to picture a Califormia-style Antioch-By-the-Sea.

It wasn't a matter of reopening. Antioch had a wildly ambitious and impractical expansionist president in the Sixties who opened a large network of branch campuses. The college became a university, with the Yellow Springs campus retaining the "College" name, and quickly began to hemorrhage money. Most of the branches were closed within ten years, but the administration continued to focus on the diminished network at the expense of the college. They eventually took out a large loan and built a building for the university on the edge of town, shutting down the college a few years later.

People dedicated to reviving the college launched a fundraiser and found a way to reopen, separate from the university, and renovate the original campus. The landmark Main Building remains closed after suffering severe damage from broken sprinkler pipes during the shutdown.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

It wasn't a matter of reopening. Antioch had a wildly ambitious and impractical expansionist president in the Sixties who opened a large network of branch campuses. The college became a university, with the Yellow Springs campus retaining the "College" name, and quickly began to hemorrhage money. Most of the branches were closed within ten years, but the administration continued to focus on the diminished network at the expense of the college. They eventually took out a large loan and built a building for the university on the edge of town, shutting down the college a few years later.

People dedicated to reviving the college launched a fundraiser and found a way to reopen, separate from the university, and renovate the original campus. The landmark Main Building remains closed after suffering severe damage from broken sprinkler pipes during the shutdown.

Glad I asked. I had a friend who went to the one in Keene, New Hampshire.

Antioch was my sister's dream college. She didn't get in. Broke her heart. But she spent too much time with extra-curriculars and not enough doing homework.

I don't think she regrets the extra-curricluars for a minute. Got a Columbia poli-sci doctorate and has been teaching ever since.