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One of the messages sent by listeners to Wednesday's programme about dialects of English suggested that we should get rid of dialects because they encourage compartmentalising and getting into little groups, at a time when we need to become more like each other, to avoid tension and trouble.
Some others, like the author Beryl Bainbridge, have suggested that regional dialects produce slovenly speech, and hold people back from success in life.
Should we make an effort to get rid of our dialects, or, on the other hand, to preserve them as some people are trying to do? Is there a place for the traditional dialects in modern life, as well as the new words and slang that was featured in the first programme?
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Should we let dialects die?
One of the messages sent by listeners to Wednesday's programme about dialects of English suggested that we should get rid of dialects because they encourage compartmentalising and getting into little groups, at a time when we need to become more like each other, to avoid tension and trouble.
Some others, like the author Beryl Bainbridge, have suggested that regional dialects produce slovenly speech, and hold people back from success in life.
Should we make an effort to get rid of our dialects, or, on the other hand, to preserve them as some people are trying to do? Is there a place for the traditional dialects in modern life, as well as the new words and slang that was featured in the first programme?
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Didn't our accents come from our ancestors and this is the reason we still have them. They are historical and I think very important! We can identify people with what accents we have. Im a teenager who lives in Rochdale and if i spoke with any other accent I would have stuck out like a sore thumb! Im sure the tides will change on that as i get older and start applying to universities. My friend has applied to oxford university and he is predicted top marks but he thinks he wont get into oxford because of his broad Rochdale accent!!
I completly disagree with trying to abolish our accents. It is part of my identity and I am proud of where i come from and of my accent and even the dodgy dialect :D
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Whatever accent you've got started out as something different, and will be dofferent again in twenty years.
God didn't say, here's Rochdale, this is how they shall speak hereafter.
The reality is that your accent is a monkey-hear monkey speak cocktail of the different waves of immigrants who lived alongside each other and the previous wave and whose children adopted some of those speech-patterns by hearing them.
Everything changes, and you cannot lock children's sense of hearing in a museum, or stop people travelling to find work. So accents will inevitably change, it the concept of change which really defines your identity, not the way you sound as such..
Re: Should we let dialects die?
>Surrendering to power politics and the Walmartisation of
>Britain is all very satisfactory from the point of view
>of a political pessimist or determinist.
>But I think most people would like to think that they
>still have a right to defend those communities and
>identities from homogenisation.
Individuals choose to lose their dialect and modify their accent voluntarily, usually because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that this course of action will bring social and/or economic benefit to the individual and his/her family.
Generally homogenisation of accent and loss of dialect have come about as a result of mobility. Incomers in any community will dilute 'localisation', the greater the proportion of incomers to locals the greater the loss of dialect and accent. The effect of this is best observed in the counties around London, where many local accents and dialects have been wiped out in the past half century, only to be replaced by 'estuary english' (ugh!).
Re: Should we let dialects die?
> Individuals choose to lose their dialect and modify
> their accent voluntarily, usually because they
> perceive (rightly or wrongly) that this course of
> action will bring social and/or economic benefit to
> the individual and his/her family.
Some people make a conscious effort to lose their accent for career or class reasons, it's true. but not so much these days.
A regional accent is often seen as a sign of honesty and the PR indutry in particular loves them.
There are still significant class barriers though. And they are a threat to the survival of regional accents because of the financial incentive in breaking them. Lose your accent and get on the board/become a member of the club...
> Generally homogenisation of accent and loss of
> dialect have come about as a result of mobility.
> Incomers in any community will dilute 'localisation', the greater the proportion of
> incomers to locals the greater the loss of dialect
> and accent. The effect of this is best observed in
> the counties around London, where many local accents
> and dialects have been wiped out in the past half
> century, only to be replaced by 'estuary english'
> (ugh!).
It's not as monolithic as that. And 'outsiders' accents have always blended with host accents to produce the regional accents which we recognise today - and the new variations of cockney which are sprininging up all the time. So mobility does change accents, and we have never been so mobile. Neither can the mass media be escaped. So it does seem that the existing regional dialects, with their breadth of expression and texture, will disappear.
But that is no reason to celebrate, and every reason to record as many of them while they do exist.
Now if new accents with new forms of expression emerge, such as the Cockney/Jamaican hybrid, then maybe there isn't so much to worry about. But the likelihood is that, like Jamaican Cockney, they will be serve more as a cypher-language, defending the user from the outisde world, than a true dialect.
I get the horrible feeling that everyone else will talk like an air hostess or a till-assistant at Aikea.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
If a dialect is dying, it is no longer socially relevant. Changes in language are brought about by a constantly evolving social fabric which by necessity is reflected in speech. To "preserve" a dialect—to keep it from changing—you'd have to stop the community as a whole from changing.
I wouldn't like the idea of never hearing a Yorkshireman again, or a Cockney accent, or a thick Per-r-rth br-r-rogue, but if it happens, so be it.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Just as the diversity of fih in a river are a sign of its cleanliness, so diversity of dialect are a sign that some sense of local community and identity survives.
Their eradication is a sign that things are changing, but not necessarily for the better. Different dialects and accents provide a diversity of expression. Standard English is a dead language without input from the street. Incapable of genuinely expressing the feelings and thought of the speaker unless he is from a very narro class group. And even then, only ion the blandest and most anodyne fashion. American corporate speak is probably the ugliest and most crippling language on Earth.
English needs its dialects to survive.
Surrendering to power politics and the Walmartisation of Britain is all very satisfactory from the point of view of a political pessimist or determinist.
But I think most people would like to think that they still have a right to defend those communities and identities from homogenisation.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
I agree that language depends on input from the street to breathe, to stay alive and relevant. But the language on the street also needs to breathe, to adapt to outside influences, whether it's "good" or not, just as an older dialect changed long ago to produce the present dialect. It seems to me that preserving a dialect, besides probably being impossible, would freeze it permenantly in a moment in time, would make it unchangeable and, eventually, a dusty relic.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
There are two interwoven issues here. First is regional accent. The second is dialect.
Many Britons tone down their regional accent when dealing with people from other regions, attempting to mimic RP, simultaneously dropping dialect in order to render their speech comprehensible. With their 'own kind' their accent reverts to the local, and dialect returns.
While this remains the case strong regional accents and dialect will survive.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
> One of the messages sent by listeners to Wednesday's
> programme about dialects of English suggested that we
> should get rid of dialects because they encourage
> compartmentalising and getting into little groups, at
> a time when we need to become more like each other,
> to avoid tension and trouble.
>
> Some others, like the author Beryl Bainbridge, have
> suggested that regional dialects produce slovenly
> speech, and hold people back from success in life.
>
> Should we make an effort to get rid of our dialects,
> or, on the other hand, to preserve them as some
> people are trying to do? Is there a place for the
> traditional dialects in modern life, as well as the
> new words and slang that was featured in the first
> programme?
I'm sorry, but this is all Cart Before The Horse.
Accents and diversity in general, are the results of a degree of localisation.. Of relative isolation combined with relative local self-sufficiency. Accents are also malleable, morphing according to the random perception of infants of their parents' speech. But without distance, there would be no regions and therefore no regional accents.
Globalisation and mass travel naturally erode accents by exzposure, but also create new ones.. London Carib-Cockney, for instance.
So it isn't a question of 'preserving' accents, like paintings or great buildings, but about providing he right environment for them to continue evolving at their own pace, like the way in which people who understand conservatiuon try to preserve endangered animals or plants.
This means less enforced homogenisation, represented by the Evil Forces of Globalisation, and a positive movement to encourage local economies and communities.
It's the difference between a world run by Ronald McDonald, and one run by Old MacDonald - and all his neighbours and friends, meaning you.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
If people are disadvantaged because their dialect sounds wrong to others it is not the dialect that needs to change but social perceptions of that dialect.
Dialects naturally change and develop as people travel more and mix with others with different dialects. It would not be possible to 'let them die'. How could that happen? Who would decide what dialect is acceptable and on what grounds?
The Queen's English? Are we all English in the UK? i don't think so!
Re: Should we let dialects die?
It's quite possible to allow a significan amount of euthanasia though. Commercial pressures are the best pillow-wielders in that respect.
What is vitally important, now that we can do it, is to record and monitor the different variations of accent and dialect. A 'Human Genome' of demotic speech, if you like.
Step forward the BBC, if you please, with a 6 part series on regional accents, recording both old people, while there is still time as with documentaries like 'The World At War' and 'The People's Century', and young people, with their transient and intercontinental inflections and derivations.
Where did Yorkshire accent come from?
It would certainly be guaranteed an audience in each of the regions it covered and would keep the academics busy for generations. Not to mention the educational and global revenue from such a project...
We've had all the Round Britain Tours of beaches and Stonehenge. Now how about the people. Why is someone from London unable to understand a word of what someone from Glasgow says?
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Surely it's not a question of should we or shouldn't we, more a question of can we. I don't think we can "let" dialect die, simply because they won't anyway, and there will always be regional variations in English as in any other widely spoken language, and this is an inescapable fact. Standard English just reflects the version which became accepted as standard as education and literacy spread during the late middle ages and early modern era, later to be given a boost by the media- particularly of course by the BBC. However there is no more logic in "proper" English than any other. For example the double negative which we don't never use, only became incorrect in the 18th century after a grammarian, (whose name escapes me), wrote a book pronoucing it as incorrect, because it didn't exist in Latin. Prior to that it was common in English- Shakespeare used it for example, but now of course it sounds wrong to us, so we don't generally use it. A completely artificial and arbitary rule, but it has influenced how we speak, which that is part of how languages change and develop, and this is simply unstoppable.
Personally I think that the regional differences, (are they really dialects or just accents with regional slang and jargon?), are part of what makes our country such a rich and interesting place, and are an echo of the history of the British people. 30 miles separate Manchester from Liverpool, but the two dialects are completely different. Compare that with the USA where there is less variation between the East and West coasts than between 30 miles over here. The reason for that is simple- English arrived over there in a more or less fully formed standard version, which became the lingua franca, and then the national language. Here a literary standard was imposed on a people who spoke a hodgepodge of dialects, probably barely mutually intelligible. The standard has come to dominate, but the traces of the old tongues remain in the regional variations. They won't be kept down. They're not bad English- just different English, and so long as we can understand each other they are not a problem to anyone but the small minded.
Nick P
Re: Should we let dialects die?
One or two observations, in no particular order ...
Avoura, I meant recordings of the Queen herself speaking forty or fifty years ago: she has the same "posh" tones we hear in that insurance ad.
The old rule used to be that if the first syllable was stressed, use "a", but "an" if it was unstressed: so a hospital, but an honorific. "Hotel" is evenly stresssed, so it was a bit of a shibboleth in some quarters. Where I come from, we say "an 'ospital" (but then we also say "them belong to we"!)
Simon, what do we do if we want to discuss swearwords?
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Kasper, the answer to your question is 'with great care' - we're more than happy to host a debate on the less couth parts of the dictionary, but at the same time we have to balance that with our usual editorial standards. Unfortunately, being online we don't have the luxury of a watershed which means we have to ensure all our content is family-friendly. As with any posting to the board, everything will be looked over by a moderator before it is published. We won't wash anyone's mouth out with carbolic soap if they step over a line, but we do reserve the right to edit or reject all posts to Open2.
I would suggest applying the question 'would this shock a maiden aunt' to anything you write before you hit Post Message; however, get my unmarried aunt behind the wheel of her Fiat Panda and you'd hear language that would make a stevedore blush. That's the problem with swearing - one person's everyday verbal tic is another's onset of the end of civilisation.
So perhaps it's better to just ask yourself 'is the use of any profanity relevant, necessary and measured?' and we can take it from there.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
One of the problems with talking/writing about talking, as with most discussion at a general level, is that we have to be clear about what we mean. Next Wednesday's 'word4word' programme (9 a.m. and 9.30 p.m., BBC Radio 4) should throw some light on the issue of 'correctness' in speaking English and whether there is such a thing.
Intelligibility in speech depends on a number of factors, including why we're speaking, whom we're speaking to, what we're speaking about, in what situation we're speaking and what relationship we're in to the listeners. Avoura's message makes it clear that there aren't any problems with understanding spoken English in a work context despite the speakers' accents, so it's apparently not different accents that are under discussion here. We usually understand what's being said in our own workplace, anyway, because we know the circumstances and any jargon that's being used. Someone else's workplace speech may be difficult to understand, for the same reason.
Kasper helpfully picks up articulation and 'mumbling' as a reason for not understanding what someone is saying. Is this what Avoura is concerned about? If not, what features of other people's speech could be considered as not intelligible or 'proper' (something of an awkward term in discussing language, as Wednesday's programme will probably make clear)?
The minor variations in grammar which are found in our regional dialects are unlikely to be causing problems: they may vary from the standard forms but they don't usually make someone's speech unintelligible - for example, if someone in the South-West of England says 'I comes', or someone in Norwich says 'She go' their meaning is still clear to the listener (and if you're interested in the English language it's fascinating to encounter these differences).
The first 'word4word' programme dealt with the topic of new words coming into the English vocabulary - are these one of the factors meant in Avoura's message? If so, they're probably being used in an informal, chatty context, usually among speakers who have some knowledge of their meaning. The context of the rest of the sentence or the other words used can generally make the meaning clear. If it's young people speaking, they often choose to use an exaggerated version of the latest fashionable way of speaking, to be 'in' with the group and to keep older people at a distance - and they probably always have done so.
Is it perhaps a question of the context - the social and/or geographical situation in which the conversation which can't be understood takes place? Having never had an informal conversation with the Queen, - or a formal one, for that matter - I, like most people, can only discuss her public utterances, which, like most public speeches or official comments, are in a form of English very different from that of relaxed, casual conversation, in terms of vocabulary and grammar used, and often of accent and intonation. In other words, she's on duty as a professional communicator.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
One of the problems with talking/writing about talking, as with most discussion at a general level, is that we have to be clear about what we mean. Next Wednesday's 'word4word' programme (9 a.m. and 9.30 p.m., BBC Radio 4) should throw some light on the issue of 'correctness' in speaking English and whether there is such a thing.
Intelligibility in speech depends on a number of factors, including why we're speaking, whom we're speaking to, what we're speaking about, in what situation we're speaking and what relationship we're in to the listeners. Avoura's message makes it clear that there aren't any problems with understanding spoken English in a work context despite the speakers' accents, so it's apparently not different accents that are under discussion here. We usually understand what's being said in our own workplace, anyway, because we know the circumstances and any jargon that's being used. Someone else's workplace speech may be difficult to understand, for the same reason.
Kasper helpfully picks up articulation and 'mumbling' as a reason for not understanding what someone is saying. Is this what Avoura is concerned about? If not, what features of other people's speech could be considered as not intelligible or 'proper' (something of an awkward term in discussing language, as Wednesday's programme will probably make clear)?
The minor variations in grammar which are found in our regional dialects are unlikely to be causing problems: they may vary from the standard forms but they don't usually make someone's speech unintelligible - for example, if someone in the South-West of England says 'I comes', or someone in Norwich says 'She go' their meaning is still clear to the listener (and if you're interested in the English language it's fascinating to encounter these differences).
The first 'word4word' programme dealt with the topic of new words coming into the English vocabulary - are these one of the factors meant in Avoura's message? If so, they're probably being used in an informal, chatty context, usually among speakers who have some knowledge of their meaning. The context of the rest of the sentence or the other words used can generally make the meaning clear. If it's young people speaking, they often choose to use an exaggerated version of the latest fashionable way of speaking, to be 'in' with the group and to keep older people at a distance - and they probably always have done so.
Is it perhaps a question of the context - the social and/or geographical situation in which the conversation which can't be understood takes place? Having never had an informal conversation with the Queen, - or a formal one, for that matter - I, like most people, can only discuss her public utterances, which, like most public speeches or official comments, are in a form of English very different from that of relaxed, casual conversation, in terms of vocabulary and grammar used, and often of accent and intonation. In other words, she's on duty as a professional communicator.
So let's see if next Wednesday's programme sheds any light on the issue.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Wow --- it must be a record: I don't think I've ever seen so many colossal accent snobs on one message board at the same time!
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Who?
Re: Should we let dialects die?
People like George Seth and Avoura, if you want me to name names.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
You should be celebrating the fact that English has over fifty dialects and accents! If one has a rich heritage, why dilute it?
No offence, but Bainbridge seems to have the sort of blinkered mentality prevalent during the years when all one could hear was BBC English.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Kasper is quite right; in the early twentieth century, upper-class pronunciation features included 'gel' for 'girl' and not pronouncing the 'h' in 'hotel' to show that the speaker knew it came from French where it wasn't pronounced. Both of those features disappeared,, and there has been a considerable change in the pronunciation of vowels, too.
There's also the question of exactly what we mean by 'the Queen's English'. As in all varieties of English, there's the pronunciation and also the choice of words and the grammatical structures which string them together. Choice of words and some features of grammar will vary depending on the circumstances in which we're speaking, whoever we are and however we pronounce, e.g whether it's appropriate to use contracted verb forms like 'we're' and 'I'll' rather than 'we are' and 'I will'.
Attitudes to different varieties and their pronunciation tend to depend on our own background, both social and geographical. If a variety has good associations for us, we approve of it, and the reverse is often true, too. A recent popular survey found that many people who didn't come from the West Midlands disliked Birmingham English. Although I'm not a West Midlander, I spent several very happy years in Birmingham and when I hear a Brummie speak I react very positively. A former colleague of mine who always spoke Standard English with the Received Pronunciation accent (like the old 'BBC pronunciation') nonetheless said that he loved to hear Cockney because it reminded him of growing up in London and hearing it around him. Also, those who speak a regional variety of English can often modify the way they speak in different circumstances - that is, if they want to fit in with the group they are speaking to.
Diana
Re: Should we let dialects die?
> Kasper is quite right; in the early twentieth
> century, upper-class pronunciation features included
> 'gel' for 'girl' and not pronouncing the 'h' in
> 'hotel' to show that the speaker knew it came from
> French where it wasn't pronounced. Both of those
> features disappeared, and there has been a
> considerable change in the pronunciation of vowels,
> too.
>
> Diana
The gait of speech was also pretty clipped.
Also, the sort of officer's drawl, where they mangled their 'r's has all but disappeared.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
I just wish that everyone would speak the Queen's English and nothing else, if they are going to speak English. Some of the things that some people speak in the UK should not be called English at all.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Avoura, even the Queen doesn't speak the Queen's English today! If you listen to recordings from the forties or fifties, she -- and the rest of the upper crust -- spoke with a different accent from today's.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Kasper, by the Queen's English I mean the English that the Queen speaks, not necessarily the old-fashioned BBC English or received pronunciation. All I would like to see is that people make the effort to speak properly and pronounce words properly -- there are far too many people in the area where I live whom I cannot understand most of the time, as they just do not speak properly at all. In contrast to this, people at my place of work in the City of London are from a variety of places in this country and foreign countries, and I can understand all of them clearly as they all speak properly, yet they all have their own accents and culture. I just want people to speak in a way which everyone can understand.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Avoura, I think we can still communicate without difficulty if we enunciate clearly. I had an ear infection which gave me a high-frequency hearing loss, and everyone seemed to be mumbling. Now it's cleared up, but there are still a few mumblers: they are the ones who need to make an effort. I think we are in agreement, in fact.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
It's not a case of letting dialects die. Even in today's mobile world, local dialects are as strong as ever. As someone from Kent, living in Manchester, I thought at first my dialect would be a problem but if anything the opposite. It can be a bit of a talking point. Now when I return to Kent, some of my friends remark on some northern terms I have picked up such as "nowt" for nothing" or "glass" pronounced "gla-ss" instead of "glah-ss". Dialects will not die but I would like to see more regional accents on national broadcasting. Radio 5 Live's drive-home news programme would be a good place to start. It's terribly "home counties"!
Re: Should we let dialects die?
Yes I think that we should. I have a strong Hampshire accent and I think that this has been a disservuce to me throughout my working life in spite of good academic qualifications. You have only to look at the films produced in the 1945 to 1980 era to see that the officer class was always discernable from the ranks by their accents, and I am afraid that little has changed since then.
Re: Should we let dialects die?
> Yes I think that we should. I have a strong Hampshire
> accent and I think that this has been a disservuce to
> me throughout my working life in spite of good
> academic qualifications. You have only to look at the
> films produced in the 1945 to 1980 era to see that
> the officer class was always discernable from the
> ranks by their accents, and I am afraid that little
> has changed since then.
That's because the officer class
did speak with a different accent. Not to have it was a severe social handicap.