By Dialects, Idioms

There are some differences in vocabulary and idiom across the British Isles, and you might encounter some regional words and expressions that you're not familiar with. But the core vocabulary and grammar are not hugely different, and you might find that a bigger problem is pronunciation. If...

There's some truth in that article. My parents, for instance, used to speak in Sardinian (not a dialect, but recognised as an endangered language by the UNESCO) when talking to each other or to their relatives, but they would only speak Italian with my brother and me. I grew up monolingual,...

Write your dialogue as you might speak it, then post it, asking for comments from native Brits. There are idioms and speech patterns that are different.

General Canadian English is extremely similar to General American English. However, there are a number of differences between the two dialects. Firstly, GCE (General Canadian English) exhibits a linguistic phenomenon called Canadian Raising. Basically, the diphthong “ai”--as in "by" or "lie"--is...

Milky wrote: 1. I bought the shirt in the blue. 2. I bought the shirt in the blue they are famous for. #2 made sense to me on the first reading; it supplies its own context. But I presumed that "in the blue" in #1 was an unfamiliar idiom from another dialect of English, till I read the...

Which of the following three descriptions best describes dialect? 1 'One of the subordinate forms of varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities of pronunciation and idiom.'

dialect n : the usage or vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific group of people; "the immigrants spoke an odd dialect of English"; "he has a strong German accent" [syn: idiom, accent

Julielai wrote: Just out of curiosity, Mr. P, how do you distinguish a native speaker who's learned a non-standard form of English from a decent non-native speaker? (e.g. How can you tell if a speaker born in India, Singapore or other Asian countries is native?) Hello Julie I'm not sure I...

This isn't an idiom, just an expresion. And btw: it's desperation started JUMPING OUT OF THE Wall Street windows THEM in this context is African-American speech/dialect, also used in South, I think; it seems that the author is an African-American.

Hmmm... I know what "bloke" and "pub" mean (and would venture to guess that so do the overwhelming majority of Americans), but I must admit to having no idea what those idioms mean.