I need help finding some dialect information
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This is more than just a thinly veiled ad for my website, which just happens to be
at http://students.csci.unt.edu/~kun/dialindex.html
I'm looking for some good information on the kinds of accents found in the British Isles. Everytime I look up anything on Google I'll get sites with local dialect dictionaries, but they are always about WHAT people say, not HOW they say it, which is what I'm looking for. Or sometimes I'll find a post on this forum, which is how I got here in the first place. And, of course, feel free to look around the site. Unlike many other people around the internet, I actually made sure I didn't put anything up there that wasn't backed up by any real linguistic research; no popular preconceptions, stereotypes, or clichés allowed. All my sources are on the links page. |
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| And by the way, I know I'm not going to fit everything about England into one chapter. If it took 23 to do North America, then England, which is far more diverse, wouldn't fit on the site. After all, people write whole books on individual dialects of England. I just want to show how to differentiate between larger regions, like north and south. Of course, I wouldn't mind seeing any detailed descriptions of dialects, I can always add a few links. |
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| I just looked at your site, and I noticed that you don't have any information on the Canadian Atlantic Provinces. How do you plan on finding information about the dialects from that area? I have never seen anything about dialects in the Atlantic Provinces, other than Newfoundland. I find that fact interesting because it is probably the only place in Canada where accents significantly differ from the 'standard' Canadian accent. How do you plan on finding information about the Atlantic Provinces? Has there ever been any significant study of the local dialects? |
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I just had a peek into you site, but I think it is extremely informative, just the
sort of dialect guide that may be useful to understand regional characteristics.
What I would recommend is that you should definitely include Scottish and Irish English
when giving an overview of British dialects. They would even deserve a separate chapter,
as well as Australian/New Zealand English.
By the way, you could check out the links at: http://www.usingenglish.com/links/Dictionaries_Thesauri_and_Reference/Dialects_of_English/ Good luck! |
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| Sorry, the above link is also more about dictionaries and glossaries, but here is one that may work for you, among others it contains studies on various British dialects, including Scots: http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/britishisles.htm#joannaprzedlacka |
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As I was looking through the Universal Teacher page I realized I had seen it before.
However, I did find a good link at the bottom that I hadn't seen before, so thanks
for pointing me in that direction.
I do have an unfinished draft of an Australia & New Zealand page on my computer. I'll probably finish it as soon as I finish going through another forum thread about Dark L's. And as for the Atlantic Provinces, all I've heard was from some samples at the International Dialects of English Archive (http://www.ukans.edu/~idea) and a movie I saw a few years ago called "The Shipping News." The Atlas of North American English is supposed to have a chapter on Canada but they never put it online. I don't think the Atlas has actually been published yet, the chapters they have online are drafts. |