Dialect
Jeju Regional Account
Play videoJeju, as an island separated from the mainland of Korea, has developed both a strong regional accent and dialect overtime. Older speakers tend to retain strong manifestations of both even in the modern day. This video is an example of a Korean elder speaking; you can see in the comments, however, and in the video itself, that modern day non-Jeju speakers have difficulty understanding her speech, even going as far as to compare it to English instead of Korean.
New Language: Academese
Play videoYoutuber and amateur linguist provides an example of Academese, or the academic register.
Why so many Americans speak Chicano English
Play videoChicano English is a dialect largely spoken by and associated with Mexican Americans. Chicano English is not the same as "Spanglish," which is more related to code switching. Instead, Chicano English is characterized by several features, including pronunciations, word meanings (ex. "barely"), and rhythm of speech. Recent research is suggesting that other Californian dialects are being influenced by Chicano English! In this video we hear from several Chicano English speakers, as well as an expert linguist.
Belize Accents
Play videoShort with samples of speech in Belize associated with different ethnic groups; speakers seem to be using different codes but are framed as just speaking in different "accents"; artifact for contact languages reading: Schneider, Britta. 2017. Kaleidoscopes of Indexicality: Multiplex Symbolic Functions of Language and Unfocused Social Categories.
Leftovers from Older English
Play videoVideo mentioning different features in English that are inherited from older dialects of English but are either fossilized or are particular to specific communities.
Playlist of Linguist Erik Singer on Wired
Play videoErik Singer talks about accents and idiolects, explaining how actors learn and perform with accents. Several videos involve actors playing real people with side-by-side footage of the person and the actor performing their idiolect.
Kobayashi City PR Commercial
Play videoThis is a commercial made to promote the city of Kobayashi in Miyazaki prefecture (southern Japan). The main character claims he's from France, but is revealed to actually be speaking in the Nishimoro dialect instead of French (hence why the French subtitles transcribes Nishimoro). This dialect, along with Aomori Prefecture's Tsugaru dialect, are incomprehensible by the average Japanese speaker and can be mistaken for Korean or French. However the Nishimoro dialect is still Japanese, unlike the Ryuukyuuan languages (ethnic Okinawa) or Ainu (ethnic Hokkaido).
Aaron earned an iron urn Baltimore accent meme
Play videoA video showing several guys with a strong Baltimore accent saying "Aaron earned an iron urn." Shows some features of the Baltimore accent really well
Double Spam Musubi
This is a pretty good example of the pidgin (Hawaii Creole English for technicality) I would hear back at home! I thought it would be pretty interesting to share. There's a bit of swearing, but the swearing is commonly used in the language. [Published on 04-16-2024]
Americans Weigh In on Their Favorite Global Accents
Results of a survey of 1,000 Americans on their opinions about different accents (of English). Participants rated accents on scales such as attractive, beautiful, annoying, boring, and funny, among many others. Participants also rated celebrities on the enjoyability and intelligibility of their accents. [Published on 08-08-2023]
Kamala Harris criticized for style-shifting to voters
Play videoThis is a Fox "News" segment in which Kamala Harris is criticized/mocked for style-shifting in a speech at a political rally. The host argues that Harris switches rapidly from "a San Francisco elite to a Southern belle." It's not clear that the shift Harris performs is really into what some people call "Southern English," but the hosts use this claim to argue that Harris is artificially pandering to voters. Arguably, the r vocalization "four" and absence of copula could also be features of AAL, which the hosts are ignoring, deliberately or not, to characterize Harris as deceitful/unauthentic. Whose speech is most stringently policed? Why? See this book for an examination of President Barack Obama's language use and the public's response: Alim, H Samy and Smitherman, Geneva. 2012. Articulate While Black. See this paper for an analysis of (ing) and released /t/ in the campaign speeches of Obama, Romney, and McCain. D’Onofrio, A., & Stecker, A. (2022). The social meaning of stylistic variability: Sociophonetic (in)variance in United States presidential candidates’ campaign rallies. Language in Society, 51(1), 1–28
How is "Appalachian" pronounced?
Youtubers disagree on the pronunciation of the word "Appalachian" and refer to the authority of first their mothers and then the internet in order to determine the "correct" pronunciation. Example of language ideology at work. [Published on 04-02-2024]
[First 50 seconds] Nicholas Angel (Hot Fuzz) trying to understand a farmer's speech
Play videoAngel, a Londoner, has to go through two layers of translation to understand the speech of an elderly farmer from the Welsh border, showing both regional and diachronic variation.
American Comic in China Comparing Northeastern Accents
Jesse Appell, an American comic, performs a standup routine speaking Mandarin Chinese, comparing the Northeastern Boston accent in English with the Northeastern Shandong accent in Chinese. Particularly, he jokes about the rhotics in Boston are almost completely omitted, whereas the Shandong accent emphasizes and adds rhoticization.
Prescriptivism in the Wild
In another Kent Rollins video about whether beans belong on chili, some commenters get into it over subject-verb agreement and differing dialects! [Published on 11-15-2023]
Creative Pronunciations of Worcestershire Sauce
Kent Rollins, a self-proclaimed cowboy from Oklahoma, has a little trouble pronouncing a notorious English condiment's name. [Published on 09-08-2023]
Tory MP fails to understand Glaswegian accent of SNP's David Linden
Play videoIn a UK parliamentry session, British-NZ Tory MP Paul Beresford fails to understand the Scottish/Glaswegian accent of MP David Linden. Linden repeats his question twice with no success, before the Commons deputy speaker Lindsay Hoyle suggests 'the answer might be helped if you can reply in writing'
News Interview of Jamaican speaker using Patois
Play videoWoman speaking Patois and English talking about a flood in a news interview
Venecia speaking English and Jamaican Patois
Play videoAnother great video talking about Jamaican English and Patois. She reads a poem in Patois starting around 5:15.
Omar Speaking English and Jamaican Patois
Play videoGreat metalinguistic commentary on English and Patois.
Cape Coloured Lingo
Play videoa video by a native speaker of Cape Flats English covering some slangs and CFE specific features
Siya & Rachel - #SmarterChallenge
Play videointerview between Siya Kolisi (SA Rugby captain) and Rachel Kolisi. Example of General Black South African English and English South African English
'I have a Weird Accent' - Riaad Moosa Comedy
Play videoRiaad Moosa, South African comedian from the Cape Flats, make jokes on accents
BBC Episode: The Lost Cockney Voice
This BBC production gives background, history and examples of the Cockney accent and the direction in which the accent is heading now. [Published on 04-28-2017]
Parody of Cockney dialect in Phineas and Ferb
Play videothis episode of the American TV series Phineas and Ferb features a parody of the Cockney dialect as perceived from an American perspective
LENGTH and LINKING in British, American and Australian accents!
Play videovideo explaining the differences in vowel lengths in Am/Br English and the underlying linking/intrusive/diphthong liquids. not sure how true it is but it's interesting
Pin/Pen Merger Skit
Play videoSilly little skit about the PIN/PEN merger by a speaker with a Southern Accent.
Rhyming slang in Cockney English
I was looking at the etymology of the phrase "blowing a raspberry" and it turned out it comes from Cockney slang, raspberry
"11 Difficult English Accents You WON'T Understand"
Play videovideo featuring 11 English accents (and dialects) around the world
Why are British place names so hard to pronounce?
Play videoJay and Mark explain British place names with context for the historical development of the English language and dialect formation
Spanish Dialect of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado
A dialect of Spanish produced by the meeting of the Mexican Spanish of the New Spanish kingdom (heavily influenced by Nahuatl) and indigenous people in the region during Spanish colonization, later shaped by the introduction of English in the 1800s. [Published on 10-03-2022]
"American" Story Time
A short video of an Australian mimicking what he thinks Americans sound like. This relates to our discussion about the "standard American accent" and how everyone has an accent to someone from another country. I also was trying to pin down where the accent in this video sounded like it might be from, and I kind of heard a mix of California and Northern midwest? It was interesting to consider.
Surfer Bro Makes Plea for House Parties
Play videoExcellent example of back vowel fronting. Listen to his last name “Kroger”!
Arabic Varieties: Dialects or Languages?
I was talking with the Arabic language scholar Rihab (رحاب) about the differences between Modern Standard Arabic (فصحى)and her native Moroccan variety when she mentioned that all varieties of Arabic are merely dialects and not languages, despite the fact that there are varying degrees of mutual intelligibility and most Arabic-speaking children have to spend years in school to learn MSA. She even said learning MSA was just as difficult as learning French, indicating major differences between Moroccan Arabic and MSA. The Ethnologue recognizes 30 distinct languages as part of the Arabic macrolanguage, including her Moroccan variety. There may be dialects within these, but Moroccan Arabic is not merely a dialect in itself.
If you want to see a map of where these languages are spoken look at the wikipedia page for Varieties of Arabic! (Ethnologue makes you pay:( ) [Published on 2022]
Don't Be a Rachel Jeantel
This blog post written by a Black woman, "Don't Be a Rachel Jeantel," advocates for the importance/necessity of being able to code-switch when speaking with and interacting with white authority figures. It's an extremely interesting (but frustrating) blog post that criticizes Rachel Jeantel for a number of qualities that the writer perceived to harm Rachel's credibility/public image; mainly in terms of her apparent inability to be understood because of her native AAL. It follows in the same linguistic vein as many of the critical comments that the Rickford/King paper presented (with the added layer of being from a Black woman). As such, I would just like to note that the post contains many microaggressions towards Rachel. [Published on 07-04-2013]
TikTok: Puerto Rican Accents
Alejandra Baez, a young Puerto/Rican Boricuan woman, gives an overview of four different regional Puerto Rican accents: Bayamon y Carolina, Guaynabo, Manati, and Condado (an upper class neighbourhood in San Juan). The accents are fascinating to watch, but even more interesting in the things being indexed. For the Bayamon and Carolina accent, Alejandra wears a baseball cap, slouches, and talks in rapid-fire Spanish about a woman (her grandmother?) that she can't stand, to the point of violence; for Guaynabo, she rolls her eyes, twirls her hair, and talks about a girl she met who was (in english) "super cool", mentioning the use of "daddy's credit card"; the Manati accent is a story about a car getting stuck in the mud due to a huge pothole in the road; and the Condado "accent" is in "Valley Girl English", where she derides the use of Spanish in Puerto Rico. The phonological variation of the four accents is paired with the presentation of four stereotypes of the people who speak them: tough, streetwise, low-SES urban puerto ricans; valley girl/fresa puerto ricans; rural farming puerto ricans; and rich, americanized puerto ricans. In the complex and tense social landscape of Puerto Rico, mired in the stresses and stressors of being an active colony, social class can oscillate in many different directions along urban/rural, high-income/low-income, coastal/inland, mountain/valley, and african/indigenous/americanophile/hispanophile lines. Fun fact: my accent is closest to Manati Spanish, but doesn't quite align with any of them! [Published on 05-22-2021]
What Language Am I Speaking
Play videoThis video primarily explores assumptions that people make based on simply hearing the phonology of another person's native language (without seeing the person speaking). In particular, starting at 6:54, one of the speakers is speaking Russian and many of the guessers remark on its harshness/anger. However, many people in the comments who claim to be native Russian speakers are offended by his focus on only the curse words and (stereotyped) vulgar nature of Russian that has been a hallmark of prejudice against Russian speakers. We discussed this in class on Tuesday: that languages like Russian or German are no more harsh than any other language is (but here we can see the perception in
action). Among a variety of other linguistic topics, a native speaker of Makah, a tribe indigenous to Washington briefly discusses how he is one of only seven people teaching the language (and none of them fluent speakers). This isn't something directly connected to our conversations on accent and L2 accent discrimination, but something that I find really sad/interesting.
What Accents do the England Players Have?
Play videothis video looks at the different accents of the players of the English national team, examines the features and links them to geographic, socioeconomical, and cultural/race/ethnicity factors, and also intra-speaker variation
In the yard, not too far from the car
A favorite scene from Jaws. I feel like this is a really interesting example of indexicality. Brody and Ellen are clearly aware of (r)-0 in coda position, though they probably wouldn't call it that, and they seem to have some idea of what it indexes and joke about that with each other.
A Zine Piece Written in Hawaiian Pidgin
Pages 12-13. Written by a native Hawaiian in [Published on 03-01-2022]
American pop culture LOVES these 10 accents
Play videovideo explaining how different accents are used to portray personae in American pop culture media
Linguistics prof. analyzes Blink-182 Accent
Article about regional dialect and vocal stylings in pop-punk music. Goes into non-rhoticity and California Shift (article mentions Eckert!) [Published on 06-18-2015]
Chaoju Tang, Vincent J. van Heuven, 2009: Mutual intelligibility of Chinese dialects experimentally tested
a study on mutual intelligibility of 15 Chinese varieties, which the graph shown in the tiktok video is based on
Why some speakers can't understand speakers who understand them - Asymmetric Intelligibility
Play videoThis video explains the phenomenon of asymmetric intelligibility.
Fred Armisen Does Every North American Accent
Play videoComedian Fred Armisen gives us his take on the regional accents of the US, with brief descriptions of the differences between them.
Naked mole-rat colonies have their own dialects—selected by their monarch
Play videoRodents exhibiting use of dialect in verbal communication. Would be cool to index dialects in naked mole rats..
Spongebob Squarepants - I Can't Understand Your Accent
Play videosponge bob being discriminated against due to the unintelligibility of his "accent" (probably more like a dialect).
MLE
explaining how London youth speak: "One of our most interesting findings," she says, "was that we'd have groups of students from white Anglo-Saxon backgrounds, along with those of Arab, South American, Ghanaian and Portuguese descent, and they all spoke with the same dialect. But those who use it most strongly are those of second or third generation immigrant background, followed by white boys of London origin and then white girls of London origin."
Instructional Video on Beijing Dialect
Play videoThis video is part of an instructional course on speaking "Beijing Dialect", presented by a young man with background music. This video focuses on a specific rhotacized word, but the presenter uses rhotacized speech throughout the video. I think this relates to our reading on rhoticity as relating to a "smooth" characteristic that goes in hand with other character traits to form a "smooth" persona.
Different Chinese Dialect Groups in Malaysia
Play videoThis video shows different Chinese dialect groups in Malaysia and their respective histories. From the video, the relationship between language and immigration can be seen clearly, addressing the importance of social environment in the process of forming different Chinese dialect groups in Malaysia.
Southern Dialect Pt. 1
Play videoStudy of Southern accents - rhotic or “r” pronouncing Mountain Southern, and non-rhotic or “r” dropping Plantation or Tidewater Southern.
Mapping How Americans Talk - Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke
Play videoThis video shows the numerous dialects found in and around America. The video also shows us that despite speaking the same language, we can have multiple different words to describe a single product or object.
Are There Internet Dialects?
Play videoA run through of different internet communities of practice and different.