I find regional accents interesting (even in prairie dogs, but am quite ignorant of the phenomena in languages other than English, as I don’t speak any other languages fluently enough to detect it.
Does the French spoken in the various regions of Canada sound accented to other Canadians from other regions? How about to someone from France?
I imagine that the dialectical differences from France to Canada (or Spain to Mexico) are similar to the differences between the English spoken in the UK, Australia and here in the States.
Is there any way to visualize the differences between inter-region dialects and intra-region dialects? How do dialects like Creole or Cockney map in such a system? Are there instances of inter-regional differences being more pronounced than intra-regional for a given dialect? I.e. When compared to “US Radio broadcaster English”, is “Creole Radio Broadcaster English” more different than “UK Radio broadcaster English”?
Are certain languages more diverse in the regional pronunciation spectrum than others?
Just a vague supporting reference…last fall, at the beginning of the TV season, I heard a radio feature about the show Cane – and how dialect coaches were brought in to help the cast (all of whom were of various Hispanic backgrounds) – speak English with Cuban accents. They went into depth on how Cuban Spanish sounds radically different from Mexican Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, etc.
I found it fascinating and surprising…but then on second thought, there are huge dialectical variations in English, so why shouldn’t there be in Spanish?
Probably the most interesting dialect I have ever encountered is that spoken by the long-time locals of Ocracoke, North Carolina. It’s a very interesting combination of the “low country” Carolinas dialect spoken in the eastern part of the state, and what I call the “old salt” dialect which was probably handed down by English mariners several generations ago. I would say that the Ocracoke brogue is vastly different from many other Southern U.S. dialects, but you can tell that it borrows from other Southern dialects as well.
I’ve come across passages in translated books where it’s obvious someone’s origin is being identified at least partly by their speech. The Three Musketeers comes to mind (d’Artagnan’s bearnese accent), as does the Bible story about Gileadites and Ephramites (from whence we get the word “shibboleth”).
I was in a summer theater production of Moliere’s The Doctor in Spite of Himself that brought this sort of thing into sharp relief. I played a sort of provencial rustic, and the translation we used rendered all my lines into the broadest stream of down-home bumpkinesque English interjections that I ever heard.
Amateur productions of French settings in America can be a problem. Unless the director puts his foot down, the actors come up with a jangly mix of American, fake English and fake French accents. Throw in a few enthusiastic “by gum” and “by gollys,” and you get a real hodgepodge.
There are various German accents both within that country and in neighboring Austria and Switzerland. In fact the latter is so different that I have seen Swiss German subtitled when shown on German TV.
The “old salt” dialect that you mention may not be maritime, but rather residue of a migration to the area from Cornwall, where what Americans think of as a “pirate” or “mariner” accent is just the way people talk (or used to).
As an illustration of dialectical variety, I just came across the Wikipedia entry for Languages of the Netherlands. A look at the map in that article suggests to me that we in America have a very diluted sense of dialect. Which makes sense, if you think about it. Most of our dialectical variation is merely a reflection of the Old World regions from which we or our ancestors emigrated.
BTW: I found my way to that article by clicking randomly on a link in the Asterix and Obelix website. I had heard that series had many translations, but… wow!
I suppose this is a bit anecdotal for GQ, but it does seem relevant:
German friends of mine have been able to identify Austrians by accent pretty easily. A Parisienne friend tells me that francophone Canadians do have a noticeable accent to her, although she says that French people can understand them fairly easily. My wife (who speaks a little Spanish) tells me that she can communicate with folks in Mexico, but the accent and dialect in San Juan made it very difficult for her. She’s never been to Spain, so no idea how she’d get on there.
Yes it does. My accent while speaking French is a Western Quebec accent. I also recognize an Eastern Quebec accent, as well as the Acadian accent and the “francophone outside Quebec” accent. I can’t readily describe the differences though; it would be easier with audio samples. As for Europeans, they have an accent to me (and I have an accent to them) but of course I notice the difference between the different European accents much less than a European would. I can still tell the difference between a Parisian and a Marseillais, though.
This is what I’d say as well, about the differences between the French spoken in France and the French spoken in Canada at least. It’s mostly a question of accent. Some French people apparently have a lot of trouble with some Canadian French accents. The reverse is much less common, probably because the amount of French culture we are exposed to is greater than the amount of Canadian culture the French are exposed to.
If you want to hear some “Quebec broadcaster French”, consider this video of the immortal Bernard Derome (complete with sneeze!).
Before visiting Vienna several years ago, I took a course in German. The instructor warned me that the Viennese would understand me, but I’d have trouble understanding them. He was exactly right.
Pretty much the only reasons people had to live in Ocracoke in the days before tourism was that it was a (quite isolated) lightering station and fishing town, so I assumed that many of the original inhabitants worked in trades associated with the sea. I’ve noticed that a dialect spoken by some old-timer coastal New Englanders also appears to have been influenced by the same British Isles accent, perhaps the Cornwall dialect that you mentioned?
Could be, I suppose. What I’ve heard about the maritime accent is sketchy–essentially that Cornwall contributed its dialect to our stereotype of “pirate talk.”
I hadn’t looked up Ocracoke, sorry. From what you say, its maritime connection is stronger than I suspected.
Come to think of it, I think the Cornish connection I heard about was to a plantation dialect. Gullah, I think. The comment was in an audio CD lecture series so it’s hard to look up. The idea is that plantation dialects were more influenced by lower-class English emigrants (foremen and whatnot) than by upper class plantation owners.
They certainly are. There is hardly any dialectical/pronunciation variance worth mentioning among speakers of Russian. From St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, from Murmansk to the Caucasus, Russians speak essentially the same language. Slovenian, on the other hand, is spoken by roughly 2 million speakers in a tiny area, yet (or so I’ve heard) it displays remarkable variance, up to the point where the dialects are no longer mutually comprehensible. Also, in the Netherlands, people who are not from the West tend to get subtitled because what they’re saying is too hard to follow even for native speakers. Also, people who are from the big cities in the West get subtitled if they speak the lingo of their city well enough.
ps ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies, while pasting yr username just now, I noticed that the exact same txt is on a t shirt I am wearing today
My wife is German and I learned German as an adult. When she or her family speak directly to me, I can understand almost everything. When they speak to each other, I can’t understand a word.
Not just Scottish, either. I’ve seen particularly broad regional English accents and dialects, particularly north-eastern ones, subtitled on occassions.
