Search results for 'tag:Dialects tag:Difference between' matching tags 'Dialects' and 'Difference between'

Re: Lack of emphasis on NPs in ESL

Kooyeen — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:38:55 GMT

I obviously agree with Forbes: it depends on your first language. I have never had any problems with passive sentences, subjects and objects, the difference between countable and uncountable, etc. because those are all features I have in Italian too. It is not difficult at all for me to use conditional structures (= modal verbs) in polite requests, like in "Could you lend me 1,000 dollars?", because very similar structures are used the same way in Italian too. On the other hand, I know some Asian languages don't even have past or future tenses, so it's easy to imagine how much more difficult it must be for them to learn English.

So instead of focusing on noun phrases, shouldn't we rather focus on the real difficulties, which happen to vary from learner to learner according to their native language and past experience with languages in general?

Anonymous

How about this student?

<<I assume many of you have watched the cartoon "Totally spies", right?
I just wonder why it is "Totally" here. "totally" is always an adverb, so what do they imply when using "totally" here? How can it go with the noun "spies"?>>>

Heh, good question! I don't know! Could somebody tell me more about that, as a side note here without going completely off topic? Otherwise I will open another thread. I would say "Total spies", but if I suspect that "totally" in "Totally spies" is used informally in some dialects to mean "definitely", like in, like " Are you, like, coming to my awesome party tonight? - Oh, yeah, totally!"
If that is the case, then I don't think that "totally" has anything to do with proving learners have trouble with noun phrases. It would suggest learners have trouble with informal English, and if you ask me, that's true.

Re: Assimilation

Kooyeen — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:00:58 GMT

Have you actually heard someone say "teng cars" instead of "ten cars", Kooyeen? "Cam be" strikes me as weird, too. Where did you get this from?

Hey Amy,
well... I don't know! You know, I have problems with n's because of my dialect, so it's very difficult to pay attention to natives' speech. It sounds like a minor difference to me, and it's a pain in the back to listen to every minor feature instead of listening to understand the meaning. Also, I listen to too much music, and singers don't pronounce words carefully.
I found several sites that said that kind of assimilation is very common, but they all seemed to be British websites.
Actually, I think I hear something similar from African Americans. Their "man" sometimes sounds like "mang" to me, but I think that N is actually nasalized, as I've heard.

CalifJim
The mastery of these patterns -- if mastery is even needed -- is not to focus on the individual combinations that are theoretically possible, but to imitate a native speaker in a more mindless way.

Hi Jim,
yeah, I think that's what I do, but then I realize I might be doing weird things with my mouth, and so I feel the need to ask someone. I don't think I have big problems in sound production, if I try carefully and consciously. I notice the difference between un-believable and um-believable, when I try to say them, but when I try to "hear" that difference... heh, if it's in fast speech, I might assume it could be either way. The problem seems to become a major problem when I don't think too much about the way I'm pronouncing words, and I end up asking myself... "Is this something I picked up somewhere or is it just me?" - LOL, you know, I think I might "unconsciously" have some features of Canadian rising.

Well, I've been trying to pronounce the N's correctly, and it seems to me I sound better. I really got them all wrong. I realized I said "since" as "sing-s". Now I finally say "prince" basically the same as "prints"!

And thank you all!

Re: Petal and Pedal - Difference?

Learner100 — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:18:38 GMT

Is was wondering if there is any difference between 'better' and 'bed or...' in American English. At least previously I thought that the vowel preceding the letter 'd' is longer in 'bed or', since it is followed by a voiced consonant in any English dialect. After these replies to the original post I am in doubt however. Could someone tell me if these sound the same too?

Re: Canadians and their English

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:56:02 GMT

Well, you are supposed to write about the *new* trends in Canadian English. Not the history of CE. I think that the Canadian Shift would probably be your best bet--it is a very recent innovation, and thus is one of the few features of CE that could be considered new. It also has many interesting Sociolinguistic variables associated with it--for example, young women are leading the change, whereas males, older women, and young children are much more conservative. You could include information on the early interviews--e.g. where they first discovered it. It is also interesting because this shift moves the vowels in the opposite direction from that of the Inland North dialect in the US. The Canadian Shift also affects some speakers in the Western US. There is also a related shift in California as well that contains many of the same features. The Canadian shift is thought to be triggered by the cot-caught merger. This is because, the merger of "cot" and "caught" leaves a hole in the vowel system, and many other vowels have to move around to maximize the difference between them. The cot-caught merger is an innovation in certain North American dialects. What is does is to cause speakers that have it to make no distinction between the vowels in words such as "cot" and "caught", or "bot" and "bought" or "tot" and "taught". They still have both vowels, but they apply them indiscriminately to those words: so if they were speaking to someone without the merger, and they said the word "cot" the non-merged individual would sometimes think that they were saying "cot" and at other times think they were saying "caught". Fortunately this rarely causes confusion, because most of the words are not able to be confused: e.g. because of context, it's impossible to confuse the words "cot" and "caught". The c-c merger is one of the mergers that is an innovation in North American English. It affects all of Canada. It is unknown exactly why. One hypothosis was that it was imported from Pennsylvania (which also has some c-c merged individuals). The merger is also universal in the Western US. The Midwest however, is predominately unmerged--most Midwesterners still have a distinction between those vowels. Several decades ago, there was no such thing as the c-c merger, but since then it has spread to cover a large section of North America. However, due to the configuration of vowels in other dialects, such as in much of the Midwest, it is unlikely to spread to those areas. This means, that crossing the border in many places between the US and Canada will immediately change dialects. The most extreme case is that between Detroit (US), and Windsor (Canada). Although they are so close geographically, the accent changes immediately, with no transitional area right at the border. Detroit is affected by the Northern Cities vowel shift, which is triggered by the fact that the "a" in "cat" is raised and is diphthongized. Detroit is completely c-c unmerged as well. Windsor is completely merged. The Northern Cities vowel shift (US) shifts many vowels in opposite directions as that of the Canadian shift. Thus the word "mop" in Detroit, sounds like how someone from Windsor would say "map". I even remember reading someones blog (that was from Windsor), and what happened when they asked for a "map" in Detroit. Just a few decades ago, when neither shift existed, this confusion would be impossible. You can read more about the Canadian shift, by going to Wikipedia. Go the the article on the English Wikipedia entitled "Canadian English", and find the section called the Canadian Shift. It then links to an article that contains a technical description of the shift. In fact this is one of the only places on the internet that contains info on the shift. And because it is such a recent innovation there are very few books on it. Then check out the Bibliography in that Wikipedia article. Then if you go to scholar.google.com you can type in the Bibliography items and in many case read the full text of the actual studies on the CVS!

Re: /ae/ vs/a:/

Mister Micawber — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:23:11 GMT

It varies with the region and dialect, etc but for my midwest American English, it is the difference between cat and father.

my accent?

Saska — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:44:56 GMT

The recording is about 50 seconds long. And I know it's of crappy quality.

Could any/some English speaking people help me out? For long I've been wondering about my pronunciation, but we never ever talked about that in class (and now my school no longer offers English as subject), so I would REALLY appreciate if you could listen to the audio piece, and let me know how it sounds. I myself know nothing about accents, in most cases I can hear the difference between an american and a british accent, but I can't hear the difference between lets say an australian and a brit, or a canadian and an american. Er, and at times I have mistaken an american for a briton ... I've been asked about my dialect and find it embarrassing when I myself don't know what accent my language most resembles.

Thanks in advance

http://demo.cermak.cx/img/mrmanaf.wav
http://www.soundupload.com/download/mj2dibi37l3ek85 (1.14MB)

oh and you are more than welcome to critisize me, but if you do please give me tips on how to improve rather than "u suck" ^^

Re: British v. Australian

Anonymous — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:56:50 GMT

There is no single English accent. The difference between a northern English Accent (or dialect), such as "Geordie" and the "Cockney" accent is far, far greater than the difference between the Australian and the South East English accent.

The Australian accent does not sound exactly like cockney, no it sounds a bit posher, exactly like the Essex accent, innit.

It is a bit like the difference between Mexican Spanish and the Iberian Spanish. There is a difference but regional Iberian Spanish dialects have far greater differences because the language started there. Catalan is related to spanish and is spoken in North East Spain but is less similar to Southern Spanish than Mexican Spanish is, both in the grammar and spoken accent.

Re: Learn various accents/dialects

Saska — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:44:28 GMT

You should find this wiki article on British English accents and dialects useful
Yep, already finished that one yesterday.

I don't know how many different English accents there are. Some areas have their own accent and even some cities/towns have their own accent.
I thought you only had a few. Like I said I suck at accents. I don't even know what accents we have here where I live! So what are the major accents? And how can I distinguish them from eachother?

Scottish (two t's) - again there isn't a single Scottish accent.
Well you learn something new every day. I honestly though that in Scotland, there was one accent and it was Scottish. Proved me wrong, which I noticed when browsing this site for 3 hours during my all nighters, http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/scotland . There are indeed several scottish accents.

I haven't noticed my Scottish friends doing this?
Like I said I know basicly nothing about accents but this,I am positive about. I've heard it a few times before. I don't know from where in Scotland the people were from but I'm positive they had those traits when speaking.

To be honest, what you are saying here sounds more like an Irish accent to me than Scottish?
I have no idea how Irish sounds. :O Anywhere I can listen to it?

Thank you nona the brit for your reply.

Bldudas: thanks so much. I'll def. check them out. I've been staying up all night browsing the web for sites that can help me.

You cannot recognise US accents? Where are the people from you hear? You should be able to recognise New York and Boston. Maybe not Philadelphia.
Well, I might recognize that the accent is a US one, but not anything more specific than that. The american accent is the easiest to recognize. I'm having a hard time telling the difference between for example Australian Eng and Brit Eng. I can't even tell the difference. And Scottish, I don't even understand what they're saying. I watched "Green Street Hooligans" (lovely lovely film) but I didn't understand half of what they were saying, same goes with "This is England". No idea what accent they had in that film, but it must have been a scottish one (?) cause I did not understand much.

I can guarantee you that I do not recognize New York/Boston/Philly accents. I only know of the "regular" american accent and the southern one. That are all american accents that exists for me, unfortunately.

I know they roll r's, which is one reason why I cannot understand them.
I just LOVE the scottish accent, but I can't understand a dime. What does "rolling" something means? Rolling r's?

You are from Philly? Do you know of West Chester? How does a Philadelphian accent sound like?

Thank you for the reply!

EDIT: I also wanted to ask if there is any way of finding out what accent I have? I have absolutely no idea and I feel like it's a mixture between several accents. Is there anything I can do in order to find out what accent I have? I spotted this website but it doesnt make much sense to me: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/scotland/selkirk/

Re: Learn various accents/dialects

nona the brit — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 08:08:28 GMT

accent: a way of speaking typical of a particular group of people and especially of the natives or residents of a region

dialect: a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language

Dialects need a greater variation from the 'standard' or other varieties, whereas accent is more about pronounciation.

You should find this wiki article on British English accents and dialects useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English

I'd disagree that RP is the standard English accent - only about 2% of us speak it. And certainly the other dialects did not develop from RP - they developed over hundreds if not thousands of years for a variety of reasons. For example, there is still a language difference between the areas that were ruled by the Vikings and the rest of the country. The history of English as spoken in England is a very interesting one due to the constant influence of other languages.

I don't know how many different English accents there are. Some areas have their own accent and even some cities/towns have their own accent. 'Lots' would be my best answer, although many of them can be loosely grouped together. I know someone who reckons you can tell which side of her village-street people were born on, as the accents are slightly different! She could be pulling my leg though...

Scottish (two t's) - again there isn't a single Scottish accent. Someone from Glasgow sounds different to someone from Edinburgh, for example, but there are some overall similarities. All I know is that they often do not pronounce the letter "h", so here becomes 'ere - I haven't noticed my Scottish friends doing this?,

and my becomes 'me', *** sounds like fock, up like op and so on. That's pretty much all I know. Also, is there any place online where I can listen to this accent? I don't care what I listen to, may it be a podcast, or an audio book, I really don't care, I just want to grasp the accent. To be honest, what you are saying here sounds more like an Irish accent to me than Scottish?

Also, with British accents you have to factor in class as well as geography. That makes a difference to how people speak. My Scottish friends are two sisters with quite different accents, even though they grew up together. One went to a local private school and has a posher accent than the one who went to the local state school.

Learn various accents/dialects

Saska — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:58:32 GMT

So hey people, I am new to this forums, and I hope to learn a lot during my time here. I wonder if I could get some help on accents. Recently my interest in them has grown, but I also suck at it! I can't hear the difference between accents, may it be someone from Wales, UK, Scotland or Australia who speaks. I would also like to revise my own pronunciation, and learn to keep myself to ONE accent, and not mix, lets say Am english / Brit English.

I'd love to get some tips on how to achieve what I wish. Maybe some links to sites where audio is available? Anything that could help

Furthermore I have a few questions,

- what's the difference between accent and dialects?
- How many "British" accents are there? And what's the difference? I have only heard of cockney, but I don't know how it sounds like. And what the heck is "RP"?
- I find "Scotish" (not even sure if you say scotish) very charming. Are there any specific traits that is characteristic for a scotish accent? All I know is that they often do not pronounce the letter "h", so here becomes 'ere, and my becomes 'me', *** sounds like fock, up like op and so on. That's pretty much all I know. Also, is there any place online where I can listen to this accent? I don't care what I listen to, may it be a podcast, or an audio book, I really don't care, I just want to grasp the accent.
- What kind of US accent are there? I really can't hear the difference. I recognize a southern US accent but that's all.
- How can I distinguish various accents from oneother?

THANK YOU in advance!
EDIT: I also want to point out that atm I want to focuse on British English, as well as the australian accent, and also Scotish