# Why no English dialects? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 12, 2004, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881 "2004-10-12T21:08:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/41 "2004-10-13T11:53:11Z")
> [@+MDI](#): > > Scots is a dialect. I’m an American native English speaker. I speak some, but not entirely fluent, German. I saw a movie while I lived in Frankfurt, _My Name is Joe_, set in Glasgow. For the first half of the film I had to read the German subtitles to understand what they were going on about in the story. After a while I was able to suss enough of it to get by without the subtitles. It was a combination of thick accent and different words. I worked with a few Glaswegians at the time and new what it was like when they got going talking at warp speed with each other, but this was an entirely new experience, to try and follow it and get the meaning. I don’t recall having a similar problem with _Trainspotting_ or speaking with anyone in or from the UK. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/42 "2004-10-13T14:38:01Z")
> [@Doparama](#): > > So - to drive this home - was there a time when Liverpool, London, and Manchester each had their own dialect? Yes - in the time before mass media tuned our ears to varied accents and mass transit systems and the car made us mobile a geordie might as well have been speaking martian to a cockney. Only a decade ago when Rab C Nesbitt (comedy with central character having a deep Glasgow accent) first hit the screens many including myself found him unintelligible. Now my ear is trained it’s fine. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/43 "2004-10-13T15:29:57Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > Only a decade ago when Rab C Nesbitt (comedy with central character having a deep Glasgow accent) first hit the screens many including myself found him unintelligible. Just be thankful he didn’t speak Aberdonian - it bears almost no relationship to any language on Planet Earth. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/44 "2004-10-13T15:44:21Z")
> [@Crandolph](#): > > What we seem to be left with in the US are differences largely in accent (i.e. “you sound funny”). One exception might be what I learned in a linguistics class as Black English Vernacular, which has its own consistent grammar (although largely the same vocabulary) seperate from Standard American English. Even then a BEV speaker can express meaning to a SAE speaker usually without much difficulty beyond some finer points of tense. > > It’s not as if Californians and Ohio residents need translators. We clearly have nothing going on as far as language divergence like it sounds has happened in Italy or Germany. I do know that the creole spoken by louisiana natives can be baffling, and a lot of the phrasing in plain english in new orleans is based on the grammer of creole…like I pass down meaning to go somewhere, or Im gonna pass with for to spend time with. I wish i could really remember more, but unfortunately I understand the creole as spoken and make the shift in my mind, but whenever I came home for a visit it took me a bit to switch back to standard english as my entire work crew were very old country creole and we pretty much spoke creole or creole-englishified all the time. Try watching some interviews of old time zydego musicians sometime and you can see what I mean. mrAru is from Fresno in California, and they have a cholo-english combination that is sort of baffling as it is colloquial mexican mixed with english, and it has a lot of the same features of englishified creole, different sentance tructure, cadences and letter shifts ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/45 "2004-10-13T15:45:32Z")
> [@Crandolph](#): > > Thanks for the Cumbrian reading link! It reminds me very much of what I assumed was all just psychedelic nonsense-talk on The Small Faces’ _Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake_ album; anyone know if this was simply a Cumbrian actor and/or an in-joke? **Stanley Unwin** was born in South Africa but grew up in Essex… his language is self-invented, rather than a dialect. [Stanley Unwin dot com](http://www.stanleyunwin.com/) has lots of info on him. [This site](http://www.scbd.connectfree.co.uk/unwin/) has some transcripts of some talks, etc. that he gave. Not sure if his **Small Faces** stuff is transcribed anywhere - not come across it. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/46 "2004-10-13T16:28:57Z")
> [@Jomo Mojo](#): > > The United States, for all its vast area, has only three dialects: Northeast, Midland, and Southern. There are four if you count Brooklynese (seriously). Southern dialect is subdivided into Coastal Southern and Highland Southern. What about BVE (Black Vernacular English aka “Ebonics”)? Then, of course, there’s creole languages like Patois (spoken in Jamaica, New York and Miami, primarily) and Kreyol Lwiziyen (Louisiana creole as spoken by blacks in Louisiana). Or are we keeping creoles out of this discussion? And how do urban dialects figure into this? I mean, Chicago English has some major divergences from Midwestern English. Different vocabulary, standardized use of double-negatives, use of “borrow” for “lend,” pronunciation of voiced “th” as “d” and unvoiced “th” as “t,” null expressions such as “can I come with?” and so forth. Almost all these characteristics seem to stem from either a German or Slavic influence on the language…at least that’s my guess. Then, of course, we have Pennsylvania Dutch English. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/47 "2004-10-14T02:18:06Z")
> [@](#): > > What we seem to be left with in the US are differences largely in accent (i.e. “you sound funny”). There are plenty of differences in vocabulary across the US, though some of these (particularly in the case of consumer products) tend to get squished by mass culture. Check out the differences between a dragonfly and a darning needle sometime - or a glowworm, firefly, and lightning bug. There are even some differences in syntax (at least with regards to spoken language) – of which I think the most striking is the area where “to need” is followed by a past participle rather than a progressive (“that fence needs mended”, for example). Interestingly, English Canada is approximately the geographical area with the _least_ dialectal variation in the world, since much of it was settled so recently – and still there are interesting distinctions (parkades, snard lumps, bunny hugs…) ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/48 "2004-10-14T06:24:48Z")
> [@Jomo Mojo](#): > > The United States, for all its vast area, has only three dialects: Northeast, Midland, and Southern. There are four if you count Brooklynese (seriously). Southern dialect is subdivided into Coastal Southern and Highland Southern. That’s a much too narrow definition of dialect IMHO. It doesn’t account for differences between, to take only one example, Northern and Southern California. Dialect differences aren’t anywhere near as noticeable in the US as they are in Britain or Ireland, but they’re there if you really look for them. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/49 "2004-10-14T06:47:19Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > or a glowworm, firefly, and lightning bug As I understand it, a lightning bug and a firefly are the same thing, but a glowworm is the immature form of the beetle that flies around flashing its rump. As the dictionary has it, the glowworm _can_ be the immature form, but it’s apparently more commonly applied to the flightless female of the species: > [@](#): > > [dictionary.com](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=glowworm&r=67) > Any of various luminous female beetles or beetle larvae of the families Phengodidae and Lampyridae, especially the larva or wingless grublike female of a firefly. > > **and, in a different definition** > > A coleopterous insect of the genus Lampyris; esp., the wingless females and larv[ae] of the two European species (L. noctiluca, and L. splendidula), which emit light from some of the abdominal segments. > > Like a glowworm in the night, The which hath fire in darkness, none in light. --Shak. > > Note: **The male is winged, and is supposed to be attracted by the light of the female. In America, the luminous larv[ae] of several species of fireflies and fire beetles are called glowworms. Both sexes of these are winged when mature. See Firefly.** Emphasis mine, of course. I’m an American, always have been, so I was never actually around any fireflies where the mature females are flightless. Thus, I learned of the larval form being called glowworms. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/50 "2004-10-14T07:51:30Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > There are plenty of differences in vocabulary across the US I seriously doubt you’ll find more than 0.05% difference in total vocabulary across even 3000 miles in the US. If you have to go to “dragonfly” before you find words to use as examples of variation in vocabulary, I think that suggests that American English is pretty well homogenous. We tend to fixate on the differences. I could go several years before needing to say “dragonfly”; consider that variations on Hochdeutsch have different forms of “to have.” Saying that these both constitute language barriers at the same level strikes me as incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/51 "2004-10-14T08:35:42Z")
> [@Capt B. Phart](#): > > Yan, tan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick. Probably just a coincidence, but Welsh for five is "pump’ (pronounced “pimp”), and ten is “deg”. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/52 "2004-10-14T09:58:56Z")
Now I’m going to re-confuse matters again. I can actually see where the OP was coming from. There is a difference between an accent and a dialect. In Dutch I speak with my native south-east accent, but I can’t speak the dialect from my home city very well (because my parents where not from there we didn’t speak it at home). I think _some_ of the examples being given of “dialect” are just accents with some odd words thrown in. I don’t know about other European countries, but I do think Dutch has this more strongly than English. Every city will have its distinct _dialect_ in Holland. We’re talking dictionaries, poetry, prose, the lot. Villages will have their own dialect too. Of course places nearby are similar enough for mutual understanding, but natives will assure you their town or village’s dialect is unique. This does not mean that I think English sounds the same everywhere, heaven forfend, just that actual _dialect_ rather than accent, though it does exist, is much more rare. ---
**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/53 "2004-10-14T11:38:17Z")
> [@PookahMacPhellimey](#): > > I don’t know about other European countries, but I do think Dutch has this more strongly than English. Every city will have its distinct _dialect_ in Holland. We’re talking dictionaries, poetry, prose, the lot. Villages will have their own dialect too. Of course places nearby are similar enough for mutual understanding, but natives will assure you their town or village’s dialect is unique. I have a theory that this has to do with the Netherlands federal history. (United provinces, and all that.) The same phenomen is very clear in Italy, Germany and Switzerland, just to mention three countries where the provinces for a long time have enjoyed significant independence. ) For an example of the opposite, look at France. The rule has been centralised to Paris for almost a millenium, and the Parisian dialect has become the norm all over the country. (Sure there are still other dialects in places like Brittany and Marseille, but not at all to the same extent as in e.g. Germany.) ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/54 "2004-10-14T11:58:52Z")
> [@PookahMacPhellimey](#): > > This does not mean that I think English sounds the same everywhere, heaven forfend, just that actual _dialect_ rather than accent, though it does exist, is much more rare. This is very true - the discussion has veered towards accents rather than dialect. It’s possible to speak with an accent in English without using a dialect, and it’s possible to use a dialect without the relevant accent (although you’d sound silly doing so). But there are definitely many distinct dialects in England - there’s a few audio examples of northern dialects [here](http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects/). ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/55 "2004-10-14T13:07:10Z")
Just thought I’d mention the Carribbean as an English dialect, mon. ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_B.Phart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Capt\_B.Phart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_B.Phart)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/56 "2004-10-14T13:49:15Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Probably just a coincidence, but Welsh for five is "pump’ (pronounced “pimp”), and ten is “deg”. IIRC the “Yan, tan, tethera” counting is originally Celtic in origin (rather than being taken from one of the various “off-comers” like the Vikings, who left their mark on the language and place names e.g. “Mun-Grisedale” originally meant “valley of the monk’s pigs” in Norse I think) The number system differs slightly from place to place in Cumbria (and some areas beyond) BTW Wordsworth, although he wrote in Standard English rather than dialect, did rhyme **water** with **chatter** – suggesting he had a broad Cumbrian accent ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/57 "2004-10-14T14:04:39Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > Just thought I’d mention the Carribbean as an English dialect, mon. Good point. I had a Jamaican roommate in college who, as best as I could tell, spoke three different dialects. To me and other non-Jamaicans she spoke British English with a Jamaican accent. When talking to her mother on the phone she spoke what I think of as “Jamaican English” (not sure what linguists call it), which was intelligable to me but obviously differed from standard British English not just in terms of pronunciation and vocabularly, but grammatically too. For instance, “No mummy, him no go there.” With her Jamaican friends she spoke Jamaican patois, which was completely unintelligable to me. In fact, if not for the political reasons alluded to by others in this thread, Jamaican patois might be considered an independant lanaguage and not an English dialect at all. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/58 "2004-10-14T14:26:13Z")
> [@Crandolph](#): > > Thanks for the Cumbrian reading link! It reminds me very much of what I assumed was all just psychedelic nonsense-talk on The Small Faces’ _Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake_ album; anyone know if this was simply a Cumbrian actor and/or an in-joke? Similar site for Wigan dialect: [http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/stuff/dialect1.asp?opt=dialect1](http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/stuff/dialect1.asp?opt=dialect1) ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/59 "2004-10-14T17:56:16Z")
> [@](#): > > IIRC the “Yan, tan, tethera” counting is originally Celtic in origin > (rather than being taken from one of the various “off-comers” like the Vikings, who left their mark on the language and place names e.g. “Mun-Grisedale” originally meant “valley of the monk’s pigs” in Norse I think) > The number system differs slightly from place to place in Cumbria (and some areas beyond) Indeed. The Cumbrian language was a Celtic language akin to Welsh and Cornish, and was even around as late as the 1000s, though it went extinct soon after. The Cumbrian counting system is one of the only traces of it left. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881/60 "2004-10-14T18:42:03Z")
> [@z\_z\_z](#): > > A litte nitpick: Plattdeutsch is not “anything else” from standard German. It´s a specific dialect spoken by some (mostly elderly) people in northern Germany, and is somewhat similiar to Dutch. > . Mostly elderly? When I was doing my junior year abroad at Goettingen, a few students in my area proudly displayed stickers proclaiming their ability to speak Plattdeutsch. Of course, that was in 1977, so maybe we are getting ‘elderly’! 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-english-dialects/268881.md?page=4)