What is the acrolect and basilect in your country?

Historian   Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:17 pm GMT
I think that the Prussians and Hamburgers are supposed to be staider than the Bavarians and Rhinelanders, so their accent(s) were probably more refined.
Ed   Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:34 pm GMT
In this part of the world, in South West England, the acrolect would be RP and the basilect would be the rhotic West Country dialect. This tends to be spoken more in the rural areas and by lower classes. It is widely mocked for sounding backward. The classic image produced by this dialect is of a farmer chewing a stalk of straw and going "Ooh arr" and is associated with humorous songs by the Wurzels etc. Another negative stereotype of a speaker of this dialect is of course Vicky Pollard. The most distinctive and mocked features of this dialect are:


* Rs much more strongly pronounced than in standard English - hence the stereotyped "Ooh arr".

* An intrusive L after words ending in A. Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle and Normal (Eva, Ida and Norma). I've heard "idea" rendered as "ideal" and "area" as "aerial", even Asda (a supermarket chain) as "Asdal".

* Adding the word "to" to questions about location. For example "where are you to?" and "where do you live to?" rather that "where are you?" and "where do you live?" Sometimes this changes the meaning of the sentence for a speaker of standard English. For example I was asked by a bus driver in Bristol "where did you get on to?" and I assumed he was asking where I was going, but he wanted to know where I got on the bus.

* The long I is pronounced as if it was OI. So "five" is pronounced as if it might be spelled "foive".

West Country dialect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country_dialects
The Wurzels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wurzels
Vicky Pollard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicky_Pollard


The acrolect of Afrikaans would be the dialect of the Eastern Cape (Oosgrens Afrikaans) which has become the literary standard of the language. As a young language, there relatively little regional variation and 'educated' people tend to speak a similar dialect wherever they are.

The basilect, or at least one of them would be the dialect of the Cape Coloureds spoken in and around Cape Town. Probably the most stigmitised feature of the Cape Coloured Afrikaans dialect is the pronounciation of J which rather than being rendered as Y in English "yellow" as it is in standard Afrikaans is rendered as J as in English "jam". Such people are often mocked for their use of "djy" and "djou" (you).
Grace Lawrence   Wed Dec 20, 2006 1:57 am GMT
I'm not able to say with any measure of certainty if my accent qualifies as the American acrolect. However, I feel as though I should add that the Yankee accent, which some of you, here, have termed the "Boston Brahmin accent," exists to this day. A fair number of the members of my family and those of our friends seem to speak with this accent as well. There is probably some degree of merger with other accents in our area, but based upon those people who I know to speak in the same manner, the accent may still be heard in the Boston area, as well as in parts of Maine and Connecticut, the uppermost portion of Westchester County here in New York, and across the Hudson River in some of the northernmost parts of New Jersey.

Specifically, I know of family and friends that speak in this manner in each of the following places.
Ardsley, New York (my home)
Rye, New York (my uncle's family)
Saddle River, New Jersey (family friends)
Alpine, New Jersey (my maternal grandparents)
Greenwich, Connecticut (cousins and friends)
Guilford, Connecticut (a family friend)
Hartford, Connecticut (family friends)
Madison, Connecticut (my paternal grandparents)
New London, Connecticut (second cousins)
Marion, Massachusetts (family friends)
Osterville, Massachusetts (a great aunt and cousins)
Falmouth, Massachusetts (family friends)
Hull, Massachusetts (family friends)
Marblehead, Massachusetts (two great uncles and their families)
Manchester, Massachusetts (cousins)
Kittery, Maine (a cousin and family friends)
Kennebunkport, Maine (my great-grandparents until recently and several family friends)
Rene   Wed Dec 20, 2006 6:04 pm GMT
Hey, on the subject of beating a dead horse, how 'bout the saying "haven't got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of."? I've only heard member of my own family and extended family use it, never anyone else.

I agree about the Southern and New York accents being stigmatised. I had a math teacher who used to tease kids when they asked what seemed like really dumb or obvious questions by answering them very slowly in a Southern accent while writing the answer on the white board. Happened to me once; very embarassing.
User   Wed Dec 20, 2006 6:12 pm GMT
>> However, I feel as though I should add that the Yankee accent, which some of you, here, have termed the "Boston Brahmin accent," exists to this day. A fair number of the members of my family and those of our friends seem to speak with this accent as well. <<

Oh please please please make a recording of it! I'd love to hear it!!
ashley   Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:26 pm GMT
In America, our acrolect is Standard American English, the Midland and Upper Midwestern dialects.

As for basilects, that's a tough question to answer. Every American thinks he talks like Peter Jennings. Nobody realizes they even have an accent until they leave. Mostly, rural accents like the Appalachian dialect (mine) are looked down upon, as though those people must not be very smart for not having learned Standard American English. We look down upon Black English too.

Speakers of different dialects can find something wrong or obnoxious with any other dialect. New Englanders are too harsh, Southerners are too slow, Appalachians mangle the grammar rules. And sometimes, if you speak certain dialects, people with other dialects won't understand you.

Our basilects are pretty much everything other than Standard American English.
Guest   Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:45 pm GMT
>> In America, our acrolect is Standard American English, the Midland and Upper Midwestern dialects. <<

Aren't you forgetting the Western dialect? Both the Midland and Upper Midwestern dialects sound quite funny to us, although they're not as stigmatized as a Southern accent.
Travis   Fri Feb 09, 2007 1:21 am GMT
>>>> In America, our acrolect is Standard American English, the Midland and Upper Midwestern dialects. <<

Aren't you forgetting the Western dialect? Both the Midland and Upper Midwestern dialects sound quite funny to us, although they're not as stigmatized as a Southern accent.<<

I would have to agree that many Upper Midwestern dialects today are not what one would call "standard" in a North American context, simply due to new sound shifts such as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift and Canadian Raising combined with old substratum features, and that if one had to identify one "most standard" dialect group in the context of NAE today, it would be Western dialects outside of the reach of the California Vowel Shift, aside from their cot-caught-merged-ness.
Guest   Mon Mar 05, 2007 10:04 pm GMT
I find this post fascintating. As a New-Englander, I have occasionally heard the "Boston-Brahmin" accent (although it reaches outside the boundaries of Boston.) As one poster mentioned, other areas that speak with this rarified accent would be some affluent areas of CT, ME, MA and upstate NY. (For the person who wanted to hear it, the actresses Katherine Hepburn and Grace Kelley are good examples.) However it is very rare to hear, and I don't think it is at all considered America's acrolect.

As for basilects, I think it would be different for each region of the USA. For New Englanders, the "Bronxese" and more average Boston accents; for the South, the Appalachian, and so on. Although, unfortunatley, the 'general' Southern accent is probably the most looked down upon (our national basilect.)

Can anyone tell me what they think is our national acrolect?
Josh Lalonde   Mon Mar 05, 2007 10:57 pm GMT
I think in the US, the acrolect could only be General American, something that doesn't really exist. It is sort of a construction of news media, possibly based on early 20th-century Mid-Western accents. This is the only "non-regional" accent in the US. As Travis mentioned, the West Coast is probably closest to this accent, except that it is cot-caught merged. I don't think acrolect and basilect are really very useful terms in American sociolinguistics, or at least not for so broad a group as the country as a whole. Many public figures speak in recognizable regional accents, and the way one speaks is not really a very good indicator of wealth, education, or other measures of social class. As for basilect, I would say that AAVE is the most stigmatized accent in the US, with Appalachian probably a close second. While accents like New York, or "generic Southern" are stigmatized, there is a sort of love/hate relationship to them in American culture. The Southern accent brings to mind the "gallant South" imagery, while the New York accent is associated with craftiness or "street smarts". These are just my perceptions, but I don't think either is completely stigmatized in the way the AAVE is. AAVE is traditionally seen as indicating stupidity, being a kind of slang, being connected to gang culture, etc. And I think Appalachian is seen as a "hillbilly" accent with all the sterotypes that come with it.
Travis   Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:45 am GMT
>>As Travis mentioned, the West Coast is probably closest to this accent, except that it is cot-caught merged.<<

I would have to disagree with such a bit, as I would say that the interior of the West is closer, and that the coastal regions (California, the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia) are somewhat further from such due to things ranging from California Vowel Shift and the fronting of /o/ and /u/ to the shift of /IN/ to /in/.

>>I don't think acrolect and basilect are really very useful terms in American sociolinguistics, or at least not for so broad a group as the country as a whole. Many public figures speak in recognizable regional accents, and the way one speaks is not really a very good indicator of wealth, education, or other measures of social class.<<

One could probably better characterize things simply in terms of less stigmatized dialects and more stigmatized dialects, without really establishing any kind of acrolect or basilect. Note that this does not necessarily correlate to how close dialects are to General American; for instance, the dialect here is quite different from GA and yet it is not stigmatized at all (people saying we sound funny aside), while there are features of some otherwise relatively GA-like dialects which are rather stigmatized, such saying ["wOr\S] for "wash".

As for GA, as much as it is referred to as an idea, in practice what one really gets is a whole range of vaguely GA-like dialects, and beyond that varieties which are essentially emulations of GA influenced by local dialect strata, rather than having GA as any firm acrolect.
Skippy   Tue Mar 06, 2007 7:26 am GMT
Generally, I myself consider Upper Class Massachusetts (like John Kerry) accents to be the acrolect with probably Appalachian to be the basilect...

That's more my observation... What I consider the "acrolect" sounds extremely irritating to me, while rhotic-Southern English (which one person referred to as the basilect) is sexy to me.
zzz   Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:31 pm GMT
What does Captain Janeway speak? I really like her accent?
Travis   Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:52 pm GMT
>>Generally, I myself consider Upper Class Massachusetts (like John Kerry) accents to be the acrolect with probably Appalachian to be the basilect...<<

Such was the acrolect up to the end of World War 2, but I really cannot say that such applies in practice after such; even individuals who one would associate with speaking very conservatively, such as network newscasters up until recently (think Walter Cronkite), did not speak such after WW2.
Josh Lalonde   Tue Mar 06, 2007 6:01 pm GMT
<<Generally, I myself consider Upper Class Massachusetts (like John Kerry) accents to be the acrolect with probably Appalachian to be the basilect... >>

To expand on what I said above, I don't think these terms are very useful in the US. While this may have been true pre-WWII, social class in the US has become very fluid and much less important. Early 20th-century America was quite stratified (though not as much as Europe) with segregation of Blacks, and discrimination against Irish, Italians, Jews, Eastern Europeans, etc. Eugenics was popular at the time... Basically, after WWII, a lot of things became acceptable that weren't before. There has been a lot of social mobility since then as well, so there is really no accent nationwide that conveys prestige. Some areas are very regionalistic, so having the regional accent is a matter of pride. Others are less so, and try to avoid regionalisms and speak General American. While there certainly are accents that are stigmatized, someone using it can still be of high social class, unlike in Europe where I think accent and class are more closely linked (though this is changing too).