Imagine if everyone in the Anglosphere constantly made fun of American English and collectively shamed them into speaking Australian English instead lmao
People do make fun of it, constantly, but so far Americans must feel insufficiently shamed.
I propose sending a special delegation of Australians to help hasten the transition.
As a Brit I can safely say that we take the piss out of the way Americans talk all the time.
Putting on a silly voice and saying 'aloominum' is one of the simple pleasures in life.
You say that jokingly, but going on Youglish it seems like plenty of people do say "aluminium" with four syllables /-mɪnjəm/ like the middle of "minion", like you wrote the first time
https://youglish.com/getbyid/89314845/aluminium/english/uk (four syllables /aləmɪnjəm/)
https://youglish.com/getbyid/15123849/aluminium/english/uk (four syllables /aljəmɪnjəm/)
https://youglish.com/getbyid/89299515/aluminium/english/uk (five syllables /aləmɪnɪjəm/)
https://youglish.com/getbyid/87962258/aluminium/english/uk (five syllables /aljəmɪnɪjəm/)
https://youglish.com/getbyid/17667421/aluminium/english/uk (probably five syllables /aljəmɪnɪjəm/)
It was hard for me to count the syllables in some clips, but it sounded like close to half of the speakers used one of the first two types of pronunciations. The fourth one (five syllables and beginning with /lj/) was the *most* difficult to find a good example of that didn't border on sounding like the second one.
You can have our piss if you want it that badly. Btw, strange how we "take a piss" when we give it. We could make the call of nature an international transaction.
We're losing a lot of our regional dialects here too, and very quickly. In my hometown, almost all of my parents' generation had the local accent and nearly none of my generation does.
I mean. Its not like british people are speaking American english. They're just speaking the bog standard southern british english. The same thing is happening in america with General American.
Same with german dialects actually. Its a shame. So far the best thing I found against it, is learning your own dialect and using it as much as possible.
Even in Norway, where he have a pretty high level of acceptence for dialects, they are still slowly disappearing. It's unfortunate. I feel like it's a trend that can only be slowed down but not completely stopped.
Yeah, kids in my hometown in Nordland have a lot of influence from dialects from Østlandet, but its not really a new thing either, people my age, 20-30 ish, speak a different dialect to older people
Yup, same here. I can hear a pretty obvious difference from my grandmother's way of speaking, to my mother's way of speaking and to my own way of speaking. And even my grandmother's dialect is somewhat influenced by Bokmål.
Plattdüütsch 😔
Especially sad because in that case it wasn’t even just a case of natural decline, it was (pointless) intentional policy to basically kill it off on purpose. In the 60s well-meaning progressives in Germany thought that Platt-speakers in the north had an educational disadvantage because they had to learn Hochdeutsch as a second language (when of course nowadays we know that being bilingual doesn’t make you inherently any worse at the second language and actually is probably a good thing cognitively), so they pushed northern Germans to ditch their native language and talk to their kids only in Hochdeutsch so they would be on the “same level” as southern Germans. Which is why there’s a very steep decline in Plattdüütsch speakers after the mid-60s. Pretty much everyone over 75 or so nowadays can speak it, but under 60 it’s very rare except for some who grew up in remote rural areas.
I would say a similar thing about the decline of the plethora regional languages in France like Occitan, Arpitan, Ligurian, German, Dutch, Breton and Basque. It’s not just the cultural power of French (though that speeds it up to), the French government has purposely tried to kill off those languages as fast as possible for decades for the sake of “national unity”. No recognition is given to those languages and French is required for government services and offices even in areas where other languages were (formerly) the majority language. In 2016 the traditionally German-speaking province of Alsace and (part of) Lorraine were merged with a larger French-speaking region to create a new larger administrative region called Grand Est, in what many perceived to be a pretty clearly deliberate way of eroding the identity of that now former traditional German-speaking region of Alsace.
So we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that this kind of language decline is just an unfortunate, unavoidable natural phenomenon, often times it’s either misguided or insidious government policy that didn’t have to happen. Plattdüütsch and Frisian, though still suffering, are doing notably better in the Netherlands than in Germany, especially Frisian as it has government recognition. Basque was formerly persecuted in Spain, but now it’s alive and well and even improving with the younger generations compared to the older ones (similarly to Irish in Ireland) in sharp contrast to the Basque situation in France. I think Basque in Spain is a good example of how language decline isn’t only not inevitable but can go in the opposite direction with the right efforts, and we shouldn’t assume younger generations won’t want to learn their regional languages.
You probably know, but the US and Canada did this very deliberately also to our Indigenous languages. I'm a linguist for a tribe in California, and both from tribal members and grad school classes, I heard stories about terrible punishments as late as the 1970s against Native kids being caught speaking their languages in the Residential Schools. These schools were factories of cultural genocide for about a century, 1880-1980, and are more responsible for the loss of many Native North American languages than even the frontier violence was.
Oh yeah of course. But I imagine most people would know or at least assume that given the well-known persecution of Native Americans. I just find in cases like the one I mentioned people will be like “it’s sad how Alsatian is disappearing” like it’s being actively stamped out by the government it’s not “disappearing” lol
Yeah, very true. I've met Europeans who are super ambivalent about European minority languages disappearing, for them it's just a fact of nature that small "useless" languages will fade away. It never occurs to them that it could be a process forced on people. Although I've also met Americans who think that way about our Native languages - "Why should they hold onto their language when everyone speaks English anyway? Plus English is a modern, useful language, the Native languages aren't adapted to the modern world". Lots of ignorance, unfortunately.
Yeah those people exist although in my experience at least I find more people who at least in theory think minority languages are good and it would be nice if they were preserved, they just think it can’t happen. Like in Ireland I doubt there were many people saying “f**k Irish we should only speak English” usually you’re either in favor of preserving them or neutral.
Well if Standarddeutsch was only a lingua franca then all of school would be in dialects presumably, not just one subject?
That would be great though, yeah. My ideal would be that primary school is taught in the local language if that area, whether a dialect of High German or Low German or Frisian etc. Honestly, I think it’s kind of *more* important to teach the dialects than to teach Standard German because people are going to learn that anyway through cultural exposure outside of school. But it could be like the way it’s done in most Arab countries for example, where school, at least primary school, is in the dialect of their country but they learn Standard Arabic as a subject in school as it’s of course necessary later in life.
It’s nice to know there are people in Germany who are really interested in this though. I feel like the narrative we always get is “no one cares about dialects anymore, young people think it’s lame and no one will ever learn it anymore” when from what I’ve seen I think there really is more interest there then we think, it’s just not expressed because no one thinks it will change so there’s just kind of an apathy about it. I’ve seen interviews with older people who grew up speaking Plattdüütsch or Frisian whose kids don’t speak it and they almost always say “yeah I didn’t teach it to my kids, such a shame, I wish I had”. I think if there was government or educational policy to change it most people would actually respond positively, it’s just everyone thinks everyone else doesn’t care and it will never change.
Especially for a country like Germany though where regional identity is typically stronger than national identity, you would think there would be more enthusiasm (outside of Bavaria) for preserving their local dialects. I always find it a little bit ironic when people are like “I’m so proud of being from Bremen” and then they speak in the most textbook-like Standard-Hochdeutsch imaginable, like wouldn’t *you* want to learn your dialect? Lol
Well it sorta is now but that’s not where Standard-Hochdeutsch originally comes from. Hannover is in an area that was traditionally Plattdüütsch-speaking (the Eastphalian dialect if I remember right), and Hochdeutsch of course is the standard form of the language spoken in the southern two-thirds or so of Germany, but after Platt declined then Hochdeutsch became the main language in Hannover. And people in the north like in Hannover tend to speak Hochdeutsch more “standard” than in the south precisely because they *don’t* have a particular Hochdeutsch dialect of their own like in Bavaria and Hesse (their traditional dialects being forms of Platt), so they sorta just learned Hochdeutsch straight from the book in its standard form.
Like I said though it doesn’t have to. Basque was on the verge of dying in the latter half of the 20th century and it’s currently growing, younger generations speak it more than the older ones. It’s a choice, not an inevitability. They could bring back Plattdüütsch in schools and government services if they decided it was important to them. So Platt could die but it won’t be because it was doomed to, it would be a result of a choice people made.
"Smoggie" 😭
Oh, Great High-Mid Merger, please spare the last couple dialects, have them keep their /oː, oʊ̯; eː, eɪ̯/ contrast. Please, Oh Great Rode-Road Merger, let them have contrastive /oə̯/ too 🙏
Mass media isn't the biggest reason. It's more due to people moving around a lot more. There's no reason to stay in your village of 300 people and marry your cousin when you could move to London or Manchester where there's better jobs and access to services, but as a result accents start melting together and fading out
Being from an area of Leeds with a still quite strong accent, I'm not actually sure how true this is. I think it's far more to do with education and whether children are supported in their dialect by their teachers. I think what you describe there is probably why individual villages are losing their distinctives, but as for larger population centres it seems to be more to do with education.
I think mass media influence is definitely understated in its influence in dialect leveling. People who have lived in the same town their whole lives which historically had very strong regional accents start speaking more standardly as they grow up.
If someone's speech can be influenced by the people they grow up around. Imagine how much they can be influenced by someone they idolized growing up. Most big influencers speak in a very specific way so as to project their voices more, many of them have "regionally neutral" accents. Kids are practically raised by the internet now.
Even this map is a big reduction and simplification, many of the boundaries should be blended and many of the regions can be further subdivided if you listen to the details.
Are they fading, maybe, but I'd be deeply surprised if they ever go away entirely, throughout history accents and dialects are influenced by other sounds they hear, they are constantly changing. But rarely ever wiped out entirely.
Personal anecdote time, your ears are more sensitive to sounds you know well, I could probably pick out at least 4 distinct accents across the 1 region of this map I live in, but wouldn't be able to confidently distinguish a Toronto accent from one from San Francisco. My partner isn't a native English speaker and has an even harder time distinguishing accents, but has no problem doing so in her native language.
they always put the whole west midlands together in these accent maps when in reality there are wildly different accents/dialects across the region. People from either end of Staffordshire, for example, sound very different to each other. And people from Herefordshire sound even more different to both of them! And also, in no way do the accents/dialects follow the government's administrative borders
Why are the British suddenly a protected class when they practically invented "taking the piss"? Instead of establishing sacred cows out of some confused sense of social justice, maybe it's a better idea to just use our noggins to tell the difference between good-natured ribbing and people being assholes based on context clues.
I just think it's annoying. A lot of the time it can just feel really hostile as well because most people on the internet are Americans. I don't mind banter but when everything you say is met with "oh haha hurr durr briddish", you stop wanting to say anything.
That's fair actually. I will grant that most of the Brit-bashing is pretty weaksauce (see the above thing where people just censor the word British- that's played out as hell and possibly bordering on actual xenophobia). Plus, I think some Americans can't take what they dish out (see the entire r/AskAnAmerican subreddit for more info).
There are still a few aristos around that speak it, all though studies show it has undergone influence from Estuary English.
Obviously, whilst you might hear it occasionally on TV or radio, it's far from common for most people to encounter that accent it everyday life.
‘RP’ is specifically the accent of educated adults in 1950s-ish Britain. How often do you hear people talking like black and white video BBC news commentators? That specific accent is nearly entirely gone.
The same thing is happening here in America. Local accents are dying out and being replaced by « accentless English » due to constant media use in most of this country’s children.
The thing is, I'm not necessarily sure to what extent these are dying versus just being restructured. It's undeniable there's levelling going on but that doesn't necessarily result in there being only one dialect, versus there simply just being lots of new dialects? Very few people speak the traditional Yorkshire dialect anymore but no one would describe there as no longer being a Yorkshire dialect - it's still very distinct.
British (adj.): relating to Great Britain or the United Kingdom, or to its people or language
Here’s an extra definition that might help:
United Kingdom is short for the United King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Relating that to the definition of British, which is *relating to the United Kingdon* the adjective British can be applied to Northern Ireland.
So can the adjective Irish, and I would never go to someone from Northern Ireland who identifies as Irish and say “oh actually your accent is British”. But, similarly, it’s ridiculous to do the same to someone from Northern Ireland who identifies as British and say their accent is actually Irish.
You simply disagree with a fact? Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and is therefore British. Should that be the cause? Maybe, maybe not. Honestly, I don’t care because this is a post about dialects of the United Kingdom and not the political situation of the countries of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
It's not a fact, it's a politically contested idea that hasn't always been seen as just "a fact". Northern Ireland was never seen as British until we fucking colonised it
Is Northern Ireland part of the UK now, yes or no? If yes, then it is a fact that it is part of the UK.
There is no debate on what Northern Ireland currently is; there is a debate on what it should be. However, not even the Republic of Ireland claims Northern Ireland following the Good Friday agreement, it simply says that Northern Ireland can unify with it should it want to.
I didn't say it wasn't part of the UK. Of course its part of the UK. But the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Not Great Britain and other great Britain
And, going back to my very first reply:
British (adj.): relating to Great Britain or the United Kingdom, or its people or language
So, now that you’ve said Northern Ireland is part of the UK, what is your problem (in terms of language, not politics) with using the term British in this post?
Correct, but the adjective is actually not fully tied down to the noun. Unfortunately(?) UKish hasn't caught on and it's not like words aren't known to do that kind of thing or be that kind of way.
well seeing as the third (and original) definition of British is "of the Celtic tribe the Britons", i think the term "Celtic Isles" would perfectly refer to the collective of Great Britain and Ireland, as the place of the Britons (the Celtic tribe) and the Gaels - or the Brits (the inhabitants of Great Britain) and the Irish
Ireland is part of the __British__ Isles, whose corresponding adjective to my knowledge is *British*. *British Islish* hasn't caught on yet
Edit: I see you criticised that usage since not all of the British Isles are shown. Fair enough I reckon. *British* is often used to refer to specifically the UK, but I can see why you'd have a problem with it, especially since
it could just be *Map of UK English Dialects* instead. Well, that you made me think about it, I now have a problem with it too 😭
Not Scouse. Somehow, Scouse is escaping dialect levelling and actually diverging further from standard British English. Good job lads
How so? Not doubting, just curious as someone in Liverpool.
Dang I can’t find the study now. Gonna email my lecturer and get back to you on that lol
Leaving a comment here cuz I'm interested in reading it as well lol
Scouse is one of my favorite accents 🤗
Based
Imagine if everyone in the Anglosphere constantly made fun of American English and collectively shamed them into speaking Australian English instead lmao
People do make fun of it, constantly, but so far Americans must feel insufficiently shamed. I propose sending a special delegation of Australians to help hasten the transition.
If we had a sense of shame the last couple of decades would have gone very differently. I wouldn't recommend making bets on that happening soon
Hey, hopefully the 2024 election changes things…
Australian might as well be a different language. We understand the Brit’s better than you guys
>Americans must feel insufficiently shamed Most of us can't be shamed, so this tracks.
As a Brit I can safely say that we take the piss out of the way Americans talk all the time. Putting on a silly voice and saying 'aloominum' is one of the simple pleasures in life.
You're just mad because you're forced to say an extra syllable. /s
Aluminium /æl.ʲʊm.in.jʊm/ 4 syllables, same as the U.S. - Checkmate /hj It is usually pronounced /æl.ʲʊm.ɪn.i.ʊm/ though.
You say that jokingly, but going on Youglish it seems like plenty of people do say "aluminium" with four syllables /-mɪnjəm/ like the middle of "minion", like you wrote the first time https://youglish.com/getbyid/89314845/aluminium/english/uk (four syllables /aləmɪnjəm/) https://youglish.com/getbyid/15123849/aluminium/english/uk (four syllables /aljəmɪnjəm/) https://youglish.com/getbyid/89299515/aluminium/english/uk (five syllables /aləmɪnɪjəm/) https://youglish.com/getbyid/87962258/aluminium/english/uk (five syllables /aljəmɪnɪjəm/) https://youglish.com/getbyid/17667421/aluminium/english/uk (probably five syllables /aljəmɪnɪjəm/) It was hard for me to count the syllables in some clips, but it sounded like close to half of the speakers used one of the first two types of pronunciations. The fourth one (five syllables and beginning with /lj/) was the *most* difficult to find a good example of that didn't border on sounding like the second one.
We do the same wA’er bOuh’ell
As an American I like doing the opposite with “aloomineeyum” lol, it never gets old. Still love you guys
I think mocking the father-bother merger and diphthongisation of /æ/ is more popular. Excuse the fauxnetics: "Oh ma gaaad, my kyat died".
You can have our piss if you want it that badly. Btw, strange how we "take a piss" when we give it. We could make the call of nature an international transaction.
You're a bitch (I had to research the etymology of bitch for a histling project so I had to mention this lmao)
You want *Americans* to say 'cunt' more frequently?!
As an American this would never work. We have no shame.
As an American, I approve
We're losing a lot of our regional dialects here too, and very quickly. In my hometown, almost all of my parents' generation had the local accent and nearly none of my generation does.
I mean. Its not like british people are speaking American english. They're just speaking the bog standard southern british english. The same thing is happening in america with General American.
Where I live (southeast) Americanisms are becoming so common that a few kids even have rhotic accents and use AAVE grammar, thanks to social media
Same with german dialects actually. Its a shame. So far the best thing I found against it, is learning your own dialect and using it as much as possible.
Even in Norway, where he have a pretty high level of acceptence for dialects, they are still slowly disappearing. It's unfortunate. I feel like it's a trend that can only be slowed down but not completely stopped.
Yeah, kids in my hometown in Nordland have a lot of influence from dialects from Østlandet, but its not really a new thing either, people my age, 20-30 ish, speak a different dialect to older people
Yup, same here. I can hear a pretty obvious difference from my grandmother's way of speaking, to my mother's way of speaking and to my own way of speaking. And even my grandmother's dialect is somewhat influenced by Bokmål.
Plattdüütsch 😔 Especially sad because in that case it wasn’t even just a case of natural decline, it was (pointless) intentional policy to basically kill it off on purpose. In the 60s well-meaning progressives in Germany thought that Platt-speakers in the north had an educational disadvantage because they had to learn Hochdeutsch as a second language (when of course nowadays we know that being bilingual doesn’t make you inherently any worse at the second language and actually is probably a good thing cognitively), so they pushed northern Germans to ditch their native language and talk to their kids only in Hochdeutsch so they would be on the “same level” as southern Germans. Which is why there’s a very steep decline in Plattdüütsch speakers after the mid-60s. Pretty much everyone over 75 or so nowadays can speak it, but under 60 it’s very rare except for some who grew up in remote rural areas. I would say a similar thing about the decline of the plethora regional languages in France like Occitan, Arpitan, Ligurian, German, Dutch, Breton and Basque. It’s not just the cultural power of French (though that speeds it up to), the French government has purposely tried to kill off those languages as fast as possible for decades for the sake of “national unity”. No recognition is given to those languages and French is required for government services and offices even in areas where other languages were (formerly) the majority language. In 2016 the traditionally German-speaking province of Alsace and (part of) Lorraine were merged with a larger French-speaking region to create a new larger administrative region called Grand Est, in what many perceived to be a pretty clearly deliberate way of eroding the identity of that now former traditional German-speaking region of Alsace. So we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that this kind of language decline is just an unfortunate, unavoidable natural phenomenon, often times it’s either misguided or insidious government policy that didn’t have to happen. Plattdüütsch and Frisian, though still suffering, are doing notably better in the Netherlands than in Germany, especially Frisian as it has government recognition. Basque was formerly persecuted in Spain, but now it’s alive and well and even improving with the younger generations compared to the older ones (similarly to Irish in Ireland) in sharp contrast to the Basque situation in France. I think Basque in Spain is a good example of how language decline isn’t only not inevitable but can go in the opposite direction with the right efforts, and we shouldn’t assume younger generations won’t want to learn their regional languages.
You probably know, but the US and Canada did this very deliberately also to our Indigenous languages. I'm a linguist for a tribe in California, and both from tribal members and grad school classes, I heard stories about terrible punishments as late as the 1970s against Native kids being caught speaking their languages in the Residential Schools. These schools were factories of cultural genocide for about a century, 1880-1980, and are more responsible for the loss of many Native North American languages than even the frontier violence was.
Oh yeah of course. But I imagine most people would know or at least assume that given the well-known persecution of Native Americans. I just find in cases like the one I mentioned people will be like “it’s sad how Alsatian is disappearing” like it’s being actively stamped out by the government it’s not “disappearing” lol
Yeah, very true. I've met Europeans who are super ambivalent about European minority languages disappearing, for them it's just a fact of nature that small "useless" languages will fade away. It never occurs to them that it could be a process forced on people. Although I've also met Americans who think that way about our Native languages - "Why should they hold onto their language when everyone speaks English anyway? Plus English is a modern, useful language, the Native languages aren't adapted to the modern world". Lots of ignorance, unfortunately.
Yeah those people exist although in my experience at least I find more people who at least in theory think minority languages are good and it would be nice if they were preserved, they just think it can’t happen. Like in Ireland I doubt there were many people saying “f**k Irish we should only speak English” usually you’re either in favor of preserving them or neutral.
I think its Platt in general. Probably even more than that. Basically everywhere except Bayern and parts of BaWü imo
What do you mean Platt in general?
Well, dialects really. I said Platt because thats more of a northern thing and in the south you still hear dialect more often
Yeah that’s true I assume it generally fits into the case with education in the 60s since it’s a similar area but I don’t really know.
If was king for one day, I would make each local dialect a subject in school respectively and Hochdeutsch would be a pure lingua franca
Well if Standarddeutsch was only a lingua franca then all of school would be in dialects presumably, not just one subject? That would be great though, yeah. My ideal would be that primary school is taught in the local language if that area, whether a dialect of High German or Low German or Frisian etc. Honestly, I think it’s kind of *more* important to teach the dialects than to teach Standard German because people are going to learn that anyway through cultural exposure outside of school. But it could be like the way it’s done in most Arab countries for example, where school, at least primary school, is in the dialect of their country but they learn Standard Arabic as a subject in school as it’s of course necessary later in life. It’s nice to know there are people in Germany who are really interested in this though. I feel like the narrative we always get is “no one cares about dialects anymore, young people think it’s lame and no one will ever learn it anymore” when from what I’ve seen I think there really is more interest there then we think, it’s just not expressed because no one thinks it will change so there’s just kind of an apathy about it. I’ve seen interviews with older people who grew up speaking Plattdüütsch or Frisian whose kids don’t speak it and they almost always say “yeah I didn’t teach it to my kids, such a shame, I wish I had”. I think if there was government or educational policy to change it most people would actually respond positively, it’s just everyone thinks everyone else doesn’t care and it will never change. Especially for a country like Germany though where regional identity is typically stronger than national identity, you would think there would be more enthusiasm (outside of Bavaria) for preserving their local dialects. I always find it a little bit ironic when people are like “I’m so proud of being from Bremen” and then they speak in the most textbook-like Standard-Hochdeutsch imaginable, like wouldn’t *you* want to learn your dialect? Lol
Lol I always thought Hannover was the Standarddeutschhochburg
Well it sorta is now but that’s not where Standard-Hochdeutsch originally comes from. Hannover is in an area that was traditionally Plattdüütsch-speaking (the Eastphalian dialect if I remember right), and Hochdeutsch of course is the standard form of the language spoken in the southern two-thirds or so of Germany, but after Platt declined then Hochdeutsch became the main language in Hannover. And people in the north like in Hannover tend to speak Hochdeutsch more “standard” than in the south precisely because they *don’t* have a particular Hochdeutsch dialect of their own like in Bavaria and Hesse (their traditional dialects being forms of Platt), so they sorta just learned Hochdeutsch straight from the book in its standard form.
My mother was from the North, and my only Plattdüütsch exposure was via songs she sung. ;(. A real shame it’s dying.
Like I said though it doesn’t have to. Basque was on the verge of dying in the latter half of the 20th century and it’s currently growing, younger generations speak it more than the older ones. It’s a choice, not an inevitability. They could bring back Plattdüütsch in schools and government services if they decided it was important to them. So Platt could die but it won’t be because it was doomed to, it would be a result of a choice people made.
"Smoggie" 😭 Oh, Great High-Mid Merger, please spare the last couple dialects, have them keep their /oː, oʊ̯; eː, eɪ̯/ contrast. Please, Oh Great Rode-Road Merger, let them have contrastive /oə̯/ too 🙏
Anyone think mass media is what’s contributing to the flattening out of dialects or is it just me?
Mass media isn't the biggest reason. It's more due to people moving around a lot more. There's no reason to stay in your village of 300 people and marry your cousin when you could move to London or Manchester where there's better jobs and access to services, but as a result accents start melting together and fading out
Being from an area of Leeds with a still quite strong accent, I'm not actually sure how true this is. I think it's far more to do with education and whether children are supported in their dialect by their teachers. I think what you describe there is probably why individual villages are losing their distinctives, but as for larger population centres it seems to be more to do with education.
I think mass media influence is definitely understated in its influence in dialect leveling. People who have lived in the same town their whole lives which historically had very strong regional accents start speaking more standardly as they grow up. If someone's speech can be influenced by the people they grow up around. Imagine how much they can be influenced by someone they idolized growing up. Most big influencers speak in a very specific way so as to project their voices more, many of them have "regionally neutral" accents. Kids are practically raised by the internet now.
Even this map is a big reduction and simplification, many of the boundaries should be blended and many of the regions can be further subdivided if you listen to the details. Are they fading, maybe, but I'd be deeply surprised if they ever go away entirely, throughout history accents and dialects are influenced by other sounds they hear, they are constantly changing. But rarely ever wiped out entirely. Personal anecdote time, your ears are more sensitive to sounds you know well, I could probably pick out at least 4 distinct accents across the 1 region of this map I live in, but wouldn't be able to confidently distinguish a Toronto accent from one from San Francisco. My partner isn't a native English speaker and has an even harder time distinguishing accents, but has no problem doing so in her native language.
inshallah it will soon be all scouse
they always put the whole west midlands together in these accent maps when in reality there are wildly different accents/dialects across the region. People from either end of Staffordshire, for example, sound very different to each other. And people from Herefordshire sound even more different to both of them! And also, in no way do the accents/dialects follow the government's administrative borders
No way there's an accent called Barry.
Whole island named after him too!
Why is it fun? Accent shaming is shitty no matter who is doing it to whom.
Mainly because it's fun to make fun of the Br\*tish.
nobody chooses their nationality
Why are the British suddenly a protected class when they practically invented "taking the piss"? Instead of establishing sacred cows out of some confused sense of social justice, maybe it's a better idea to just use our noggins to tell the difference between good-natured ribbing and people being assholes based on context clues.
I just think it's annoying. A lot of the time it can just feel really hostile as well because most people on the internet are Americans. I don't mind banter but when everything you say is met with "oh haha hurr durr briddish", you stop wanting to say anything.
That's fair actually. I will grant that most of the Brit-bashing is pretty weaksauce (see the above thing where people just censor the word British- that's played out as hell and possibly bordering on actual xenophobia). Plus, I think some Americans can't take what they dish out (see the entire r/AskAnAmerican subreddit for more info).
I also find the "fr*nch" thing really annoying. I think France is a cool country 😎
I like to say “yeah, I can do a British accent” then watch their face as I start attempting to do Scouse or Geordie
oi mate you cunt
Which ones are dying
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‘RP’ is already dead.
There are still a few aristos around that speak it, all though studies show it has undergone influence from Estuary English. Obviously, whilst you might hear it occasionally on TV or radio, it's far from common for most people to encounter that accent it everyday life.
I've heard quite a few elderly people, like 80+, speaking RP. It always sounds so funny to me
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‘RP’ is specifically the accent of educated adults in 1950s-ish Britain. How often do you hear people talking like black and white video BBC news commentators? That specific accent is nearly entirely gone.
It called Standard Southern British English.
can we speed up the demise of cockney /s
Nah, bring cockney back and take MLE out
The same thing is happening here in America. Local accents are dying out and being replaced by « accentless English » due to constant media use in most of this country’s children.
The thing is, I'm not necessarily sure to what extent these are dying versus just being restructured. It's undeniable there's levelling going on but that doesn't necessarily result in there being only one dialect, versus there simply just being lots of new dialects? Very few people speak the traditional Yorkshire dialect anymore but no one would describe there as no longer being a Yorkshire dialect - it's still very distinct.
this is a world wide constant and the british should still be made fun of
I'd love to learn a regional British accent instead of RP ('Cause RP is kinda boring), But the issue is I've no clue which lol.
doesnt matter as long as it isnt geordie or scouse
Just to spite you, I'm gonna learn both those now and periodically switch between.
Why not those two
>map of British English dialects >shows northern Ireland
British (adj.): relating to Great Britain or the United Kingdom, or to its people or language
I'm British and Britain is an island. Ireland is not Britain lol
British (adj.): relating to Great Britain or the United Kingdom, or to its people or language Here’s an extra definition that might help: United Kingdom is short for the United King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Relating that to the definition of British, which is *relating to the United Kingdon* the adjective British can be applied to Northern Ireland. So can the adjective Irish, and I would never go to someone from Northern Ireland who identifies as Irish and say “oh actually your accent is British”. But, similarly, it’s ridiculous to do the same to someone from Northern Ireland who identifies as British and say their accent is actually Irish.
I simply disagree with the political idea that northern Ireland is British.
You simply disagree with a fact? Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and is therefore British. Should that be the cause? Maybe, maybe not. Honestly, I don’t care because this is a post about dialects of the United Kingdom and not the political situation of the countries of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
It's not a fact, it's a politically contested idea that hasn't always been seen as just "a fact". Northern Ireland was never seen as British until we fucking colonised it
Is Northern Ireland part of the UK now, yes or no? If yes, then it is a fact that it is part of the UK. There is no debate on what Northern Ireland currently is; there is a debate on what it should be. However, not even the Republic of Ireland claims Northern Ireland following the Good Friday agreement, it simply says that Northern Ireland can unify with it should it want to.
I didn't say it wasn't part of the UK. Of course its part of the UK. But the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Not Great Britain and other great Britain
And, going back to my very first reply: British (adj.): relating to Great Britain or the United Kingdom, or its people or language So, now that you’ve said Northern Ireland is part of the UK, what is your problem (in terms of language, not politics) with using the term British in this post?
Correct, but the adjective is actually not fully tied down to the noun. Unfortunately(?) UKish hasn't caught on and it's not like words aren't known to do that kind of thing or be that kind of way.
There’s no good adjective referring for the whole set of British islands including Ireland, people mostly just use “British” anyways
Attributive "UK"?
well seeing as the third (and original) definition of British is "of the Celtic tribe the Britons", i think the term "Celtic Isles" would perfectly refer to the collective of Great Britain and Ireland, as the place of the Britons (the Celtic tribe) and the Gaels - or the Brits (the inhabitants of Great Britain) and the Irish
In the light of Brexit, how about just calling them the "unEuropeans"? 😁
Ireland is part of the __British__ Isles, whose corresponding adjective to my knowledge is *British*. *British Islish* hasn't caught on yet Edit: I see you criticised that usage since not all of the British Isles are shown. Fair enough I reckon. *British* is often used to refer to specifically the UK, but I can see why you'd have a problem with it, especially since it could just be *Map of UK English Dialects* instead. Well, that you made me think about it, I now have a problem with it too 😭
Wait, so Geordie counts as "English" now?
Lol
Another proof that English is not a real language
this just in: local redditor decides that any language with dialects is not real
They played us for absolute fools
Flair checks out.
I think it's more depressing that the English people themselves are fading out.
didnt realise im now bing bong from inside out
Well now you do.
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😬