how many dialects of your own language do you speak?

joshuah   Tue Jul 07, 2009 8:30 pm GMT
and i don't mean by this speaking, for instance, catalan, because it's a separate language.
I meant something like German vs. Austrian German or... cockney English vs. Irish English.
matko   Tue Jul 07, 2009 9:03 pm GMT
well, i don't speak any of the dialects spoken in Croatia, because they're way too different from the standard language. Actually, all those dialects were different languages until the 20th century.
Nowadays, we all speak our dialect and mutually, we comunicate in "standard" Croatian.

my dialect is "Zagrebian". I understand also the kaikavian dialect, but only the easier variaty, one that's closer to zagrebian.

i also speak shtokavian (the standard form). Chakavian (Istria and Dalmatia)--almost nothing when i listen to some grannies.
Super Korean   Wed Jul 08, 2009 6:13 pm GMT
I'm a native speaker of Korean and we have several dialects throughout the peninsula. I honestly don't speak any one of them perfectly except for my own one. (Seoul-Gyeonggi Dialect which is considered as a standard accent in South Korea.) Me and my parents were all born and raised in Seoul area so I haven't been exposed to other dialects that much.
Of course, I can try some local dialects but then, local people would laugh at my poor attempts at imitating their accents. My attempts would end up sounding very awkward and funny.

FYI, Korean dialects are all mutually intelligible except for Jeju Island dialect. The island dialect is much harder to understand than North Korean dialects.
Skippy   Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:04 pm GMT
With English, there's so much focus on what is 'proper' and what is 'improper,' that dialects do not get much attention outside of their native speakers. In other words, a native Southern American English speaker isn't going to go out and learn Cockney to go to England. Furthermore, it may be seen as insulting. I find Scots extremely attractive, but I imagine if I went to Scotland, as a Texan, and attempted to speak that way, they would think I was making fun of them.

In other words, with English, I imagine that the most you will find would be 2: one's native dialect and the 'standard' of their home country.
guest   Fri Jul 10, 2009 11:56 pm GMT
My native language is English and I only speak one dialect.
K. T.   Sat Jul 11, 2009 12:21 am GMT
I speak a mixed dialect. Sometimes I sound British, sometimes "general American", sometimes slightly Southern. It's probably because I've moved a lot. That's what spies do, you know.

I'm not a spy. That's a joke. I have moved a lot, though.
Travis   Wed Jul 15, 2009 3:38 am GMT
I speak a range of registers of my own dialect of English, from a low register that is very far from General American to a very high register which in many ways closely emulates formal GA but still has the underlying phonology of my own dialect and with some non-GA usages being retained. I do not speak any other varieties of English at all aside from being able to speak something actually resembling GA for short periods of time, which I find to be quite tiring, as I find it to be very unnatural due to my own native phonology being very strongly ingrained.
NOMAD   Wed Jul 15, 2009 3:42 am GMT
The only time English speakers speak another dialect is when:
1. They are a long time resident in the new region, and even then they will usually only 'tone down' their original accent and remain identifiably from another region.
2. Comical imitations.
3. Actors in movies. Some people can pull it off quite well.
Travis   Wed Jul 15, 2009 8:06 am GMT
Mind you that people will switch between standard varieties and their own dialects within English (or between English and another language, such as Scots). But yes, it seems quite rare for individuals aside from maybe actors to actually know (and not merely imitate) two distinctly different English dialects where neither of which is roughly equivalent to some standard variety.
Another Chinese   Wed Jul 15, 2009 8:46 am GMT
Mandarin & Cantonese
J.C.   Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:30 am GMT
Fortunately there are no real dialects in BP so I couldn't speak any. However, when it comes to regional pronunciation I consider myself to be a speaker of the "Carioca" variation, even though most people I meet
think I'm from Brasília or Minas Gerais. Happily nobody has ever asked me if I'm from São Paulo (Even though I was born there).

As for Japanese, which is now my first language and I consider it to be native, I speak standard Japanese and Osaka dialect.

Cheers