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Category Archives: Miscellaneous Accents and Dialects
Drunken Speech
Speech changes during intoxication. We slur, we stammer, we curse. Our normal, everyday speech patterns differ markedly from our drunken idiolects (the word’s similarity to ‘idiot’ never seemed as apt as it does in this context.) You may wonder, then, if … Continue reading
The Christmas Dialect Divide
Christmas greetings differ on each side of the Atlantic. Here in the U.S., ‘Merry Christmas‘ is used almost exclusively, while ‘Happy Christmas‘ seems more common among dialects in UK. But wait. Didn’t the very British A Christmas Carol feature the term ‘Merry … Continue reading
‘Couple Dialects’
Couples speak their own languages. Whether these could be called ‘dialects’ or not is up for debate. But couples certainly seem to engage in code shifting, the act of changing one’s mode of speech depending on context. They engage in different … Continue reading
The Changing Dialect of Hip Hop
This morning, I stumbled upon the newest music video of Irish hip-hop artist Lethal Dialect. Take a listen: As you may notice, this young man raps in a thick Dublin accent. Anyone accustomed to American hip hop is likely to … Continue reading
Dialect Work in the Old Days
Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is a wonderful piece of classic moviemaking, but there is something amiss with the accent (not to mention dialect) of its leading man, Robert Donat: Donat is the handsome chap who remarks, ‘Daaahhhling, fancy seeing … Continue reading
Foreign Accents
As much as I hate to admit it, ‘foreign’ accents don’t pique my interest the way ‘native’ accents do. That’s not to say I don’t love foreign languages. I’m fascinated by the grammatic intricacy of Navajo and the differences between … Continue reading
The Rise of ‘Be Like’
We dialect nuts scrutinize features of individual dialects, while perhaps ignoring features emerging in many dialects simultaneously. One of these is the meteoric rise of the phrase ‘be like‘ in many types of English. You may not recognize what these … Continue reading
Anna Karenina … in a British Accent?
This week, British actress Keira Knightley revealed that the upcoming film adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina will feature British accents instead of Russian. Quoth Knightley: “It’s going to be an English accent. It’s always very tricky when you are doing something that is … Continue reading
Great Minds Who Kept their Accents
Open Culture posted a fantastic video of the late Arthur C. Clarke discussing the future. The clip is remarkable for its prescience (Clarke seems to predict the emergence of the internet), and is fascinating on all levels. Given my interests, … Continue reading
How Do Falkland Islanders Speak?
English has a number of isolated speaker communities throughout the world. Among the most isolated are the Falkland Islands, which comprise a sparsely populated British territory of about 3,000. To date, I’ve only found one speech sample of someone truly … Continue reading