Languages like German and Italian have both a formal “universal” version as well as dialects that vary from region to region or town to town. I have heard that these variances are rather marked, and amount to more than pronunciation and choice of expressions. I have been told that different dialects are practically unintelligable to speakers of the same country who speak a different dialect.
Why did this same development not happen with English? As far as I know there are no dialects of our language in England where the above applies. Am I wrong about this, or is there a historical or linguistic reason for the lack of dialects? I suppose a third possibility exists: have the differences between dialects been exaggerated to me.
Any linguists, historians, or dialect speakers care to chime in?
The term “dialect” is not a scientific term, and the dividing line between an accent, a dialect, and a language can be political more than anything else. But the answer to your question might be that England and even GB was a unified country long before the other European powers. Germany and Italy were only united as we know them today in the past 150 years or so.
But if you go back in time, you would find English dialects, like Scots English, that would be difficult for people from the south to understand. In modern times, it’s generally not acceptable, politically, to ban or suppress a dialect. 200 Years ago, though, it was SOP.
I’m not certain that I am understanding your question correctly. There are many dialects in America and even more in England. I assume that is true in other English speaking countries.
Sometimes the dialects of English are so extreme that when one is spoken on television, there are captions to “translate” what is being said.
In the 1960’s, the state of Maine had a dialect that was different from any other state. That may still be true; I just haven’t seen recent studies.
Here in Tennessee, dialects differ from one part of the state to another.
IANAL (I am not a linguist) but I would imagine that English dialects would have been much more distinct before mass media.
Anecdotally, when my mother (at that time, a rather sheltered nun) who was born and raised in middle-class Pittsburgh came to teach high school in Columbus, GA, she literally couldn’t understand some of her students, especially the black kids. Couldn’t understand them at all, not just “had to adjust to their pronunciation of some words”. Of course, she got used to it soon enough, but at first blush they were entirely unintelligable to her. (And these were kids at a private Catholic school, reasonably well educated.)
English got a lot of standardisation after William Caxton introduced printing in 1476. His editions of various texts, but the Bible in particular, spread widely and evened out a lot of the differences.
Prior to this “English” was separated into quite a number of dialects which differed widely; in their vocabulary more than their grammar and syntax, but enough to make them mutually incomprehensible.
OK OK OK. In retrospect my question seems to have been based on an inflexible understanding of the word “dialect”. Thanks everyone for the “edumacation”!!!
Depends what you mean by “dialect”. Dictionary.com gives us:
So, if we accept that definition, there’s one for a start. Yes, Liverpool, London, and Manchester all differ from each other in terms of pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. Manchester and Liverpool are probably closer, but the accents are very different. Furthermore US English is very different from English English, which differs from e.g. Scots and Irish English in hundreds of ways. Engaging stereotypes now:
“How’s it goin’ ye feckin’ langer, I’m just after seeing a fillum. How’s about a few auld scoops in the local?”
Is somewhat different to:
“Owright tosser, I’ve just bin to the flicks. Do you fancy a pint of pig’s down the rubba?”
Indeed, unofficially I’ve heard of Honglish (Hong Kong), Singlish (Singapore), Japlish (Japan), and Taglish (Philippines).
I think there’s a fourth possibility: you’re just not familiar enough with dialects in Britain to be aware of some of the more significant differences. Scots English is different enough to be classified by some as a different language. Many of the other regional dialects in the British Isles can be nearly unintelligible to non-speakers.
I’m not so sure whether what you heard is entirely accurate. I mean, German has a slew of dialects, normally divided into Hochdeutsch (the official language) and Plattdeutsch (anything else), but can be more accurated divided into High, Middle, and Low German. The variation between the various dialects can be quite different, but I wouldn’t call it practically unintelligible. Swiss German is even more removed, yet still fairly intelligible to a German speaker. At least I was able to understand it with my rudimentary German knowledge (and, yes, they were speaking their own dialect.)
I don’t think the difference in dialect is much more exaggerated than, say, the difference between London English and Midlands English or Cockney English or Glasweigian.
On the subject of Swiss German , when watching German TV stations I have sometimes seen sub-titles on screen to enable German viewers understand what a Swiss speaker was saying.
I’d wager that an “English” speaker visiting the Black Country, an area of the English Midlands encompassing Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, would soon find that the populace spoke not just with an accent but with a distinct dialect.
Similarly, I recently visited Shetland (a group of islands in the United Kingdom 300 miles north of Edinburgh and, at 60 degrees North on the same latitude as parts of Alaska) where I understood probably about a third of what people were saying, not because of the accent - which was akin to Norwegian-English - but because of the words and constructions they used.
I’d wager that an “English” speaker visiting the Black Country, an area of the English Midlands encompassing Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, would soon find that the populace spoke not just with an accent but with a distinct dialect.
Similarly, I recently visited Shetland (a group of islands in the United Kingdom 300 miles north of Edinburgh and, at 60 degrees North, on the same latitude as parts of Alaska) where I understood probably about a third of what people were saying, not because of the accent - which was akin to Norwegian-English - but because of the words and constructions they used.
The original U.S. release of Mad Max was dubbed from Australian English to American English because the U.S. distributor was afraid that American audiences would have too hard a time following the original.
I can’t imagine how anyone could live in Britain and think that there wasn’t a huge variation in accent/dialect; a person from the highlands of Scotland can be speaking English, but his speech may be completely unintelligible to a person from the South of England. There are other accents/dialects combinations that are difficult; the West Country, East Anglia and even the midlands have examples of very specific linguistic quirks that make them very hard for non-locals to understand.