the further north you go the harder it is to understand what people are saying :P

why aye mon?

Haha is that so :)

The further south you go the uglier the women get too. Scotland for life.

thinner/healthier*

:) Fixed

thanks

u mean scotland

the further north you go the harder it is for people to understand what you are saying

the further south you go the easier it is for people to understand what you are saying

from a northern perspective, the average accent in the south appears to be 'posh', because of the way they pronounce their a's (eg ball, glass). but they dont consider it a posh accent. there are areas of the south where there are regional accents the 2 that come to mind are the west country (farmer accent) and london. in my experience, in the south east they pronounce their a's like u's, so there is very little difference between 'ball' and 'bull', you have to listen very carefully if you want to hear the difference.

but in the north imo there are many more regional accents, even right next door to each other can be quite different. scouse, mancunian, lancashire, yorkshire, geordie, (and brum if you count birmingham as being on the north side). i would agree with nicky that the northern accents are more different to 'textbook english' than the southern accents are.

this may help http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH_kOjsXakM

very well put :)

GO TO RA


MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE

haha that guy knows accents wow :)

a shame youtube hasnt got a german accents version. germany has some crazy accents :P

thanks man ^^;

Dun listen to him m8 it's all lies

Southern softie!

just remember midlands != north

just to piss off drew

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Who says Gluss?

.

?? make sense dird :((((((((

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Oh righto

obviuosly that doesnt apply to all words with an 'a' in them

its all about phonetics, spelling is irrelevant. its the aaa sound in words such as 'ball' that i was refering to. southerners pronounce it like 'bowl' rather than 'baaaaaaaaaaall' in the north.

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but you chose to apply what i said to the word 'glass' which you did based on spelling, not on phonetics. obviously glass has completely different 'a' sound to the one i was referring.

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I don't know that many people how pronounce it in such a way to be honest.

I've never heard anyone say 'bowl' for ball. It's b-all.

this was based on my experience in kent, they were all at it. one of my housemates is from bristol, and he pronounces his a's like a northerner.

i did all this shit in college, shame i aint got my work anymore :(

sif u went to college

Was a requirement of his parole.

english wanka.

Us cumbrians apparently have an accent. I was shocked when some Southern lad said that they couldn't understand me as I had a thick accent. I always thought I spoke 'normal'.

dont forget pikeys!

northern UK is scotland, morans

north/south divide is in the middle of england, moron

steg lives in scotland, it might aswell be a black hole.

the further east you go the easier it is for people to get drowned completely

nothern monkeys!

I 'ate these fuckin' southern fairies.

(I came to this post specifically to quote both those bits :D)

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so you're calling yourself shit?

There are 25 pages dedicated to accent and social issues, regarding language variation, in one of my English text books, and that was pretty brief. 4-5 minutes is basically doing to rape any intelligent thought process, and you're bound to over generalize, but it's a very large subject are so meh..

Age, gender, occupation, educational background and geography influence variation in spoken English. There are of course idiosyncratic features (individual traits only to them) as well, but we'll ignore that for now.

Pronunciation is extremely variable, and people subconsciously vary the way they say even the same words to better fit context. When you're analyzing accents, you should focus or group your experimentation on

personal accent (context, mood, physical reasons [sore throat/mouthful of food])
Convergence - accent change where people change their accent to become more familiar (people speaking 'posh' on the phone for example)
Divergence - basically the opposite, people will exaggerate their accent to emphasis something.

social accent (class, educational background, occupation, gender)

People of lower classes with less education tend to have broader accents (specific features - elision/ assimilation/liaison/reduction [wiki if you don't know what they mean)

RP (received pronunciation) is basically what 'standard' English you hear, and people tend to emulate. There is an entire area developed to this specifically, but just make note of hypercorrection.

regional accent

For the United Kingdom, linguists split it into broad area.

South-West > South > East > Wales > Midlands > North > Ireland > Scotland (I've included a stolen map and edited it, so hopefully it will be approved, though obviously paint skills at 03.49 are amazing, so it's only rough)

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/8701/activeukmapxu9.png (if they don't approve)

These broad areas are called isogloss, and the best example of why there aren't more lines is because even though I can differentiate easily between all Northern accents, to someone else, it just appears 'Northern'. So they group the areas by when the shift of accent is substantial.

If you want specific(technical) features of spoken language then concentrate on

Consonants
The phoneme /h/ (RP pronounces it whereas most regional dialects don't) - air/hair, eat/heat, hear/here

The phoneme /n/ (the n has a little arc on the second part so it looks like a j [can't be arsed to find specific linguistic characters for you) Almost all dialects bar RP will pronounce this (informal RP might even use it as well) - crying, seeing, running ('ning' sound [ articulating the ng at the end of words]

Consonant follwed by /u:/ (Decided to ignore this, since it isn't common)

The post-vocalic /r/ (reference back to liaison, all accents even RP pronounce the post-vocali /r/ after a vowel, but RP does something differently - this is to do with how we link words)

glottal stop (common in regional accents)

Vowels

phoneme /i:/

vowel a (RP pronounced the a as /a:/ rather than /ae/ where it precedes a voiceless fricative such as /f/, /0/, /s/ or consonant cluster with phoneme /m/ or /n/

trance, bath, sample, grass

Northern accents use /ae/ instead (this is probably one of the things you should talk about)

I can tell you specific features of certain accents, but the main thing is to talk about is the 'vowel a' difference, and highlight how Northern accents shorten words.

Dialect != accent

Dialect focuses more on grammar and lexical differences in different regions and is much more interesting in my opinion than accent differences. I can get a lot more complicated/helpful if you need specific things explained or you want to impress.

If you want it generalized, I can probably split it into 5/6 questions, so when you listen to 2 accents, you read the questions and it should be able to explain the differences (though you would need to know about certain language features).

Personally, most Southern accents are horrible. They're strained and harsh on the ears. Over emphasizing vowels is probably the worst language feature you can hear, it's like my ears being raped.

Most Northern accents are softer and tend to cut sounds off which makes language flow much better (imo). Generally they (Northerners) appear lazy with language though, because Southern ears aren't trained or used to the differences and see it as an inaccurate use of language, the fact there are lexical differences as well, only confounds this prejudice.

Personally, since you've only got a short period of time, I would ignore accents. Focus on dialects and lexical choices which certain areas make in order to achieve things, since you're foreign, it might seem familiar since most non English speakers often do the same thing.

e.g. Scottish dialects use no or nae to construct a negative sentence "He's no coming."

Very very nice, thank you!

cheater

northern ireland*

what do the points on that map depict?

Rail stations if I remember right. It was just the first map of a decent size with little 'detail' on it. No significance what so ever ;)

ucl and imperial aren't railway stations B<

"see it as an inaccurate use of language"

Could be because it is. Also cheater.

There's no such thing as an inaccurate use of spoken language. Unless you've got a background in English language, please don't bother replying to me again.

Well what's the point of dictionaries and grammar if everyone is equally correct using their own version of the language?

The function of language is self expression and communication. The use of dictionaries (and the like) is to somewhat regulate written language.

There's no such thing as wrong or bad language, only non-standard or inappropriate language.

Spoken language is pretty much ungoverned, irrespective of what language you're using or where you're from. It takes too much time and effort to be right, unfortunately.

Communication and expression are enhanced by clear and accurate use, once you know the rules you can play with them. What you're talking about is an excuse for poor usage.

wan the north

wed lad, WWWWEDDDD

http://www.challenge-tv.com/index.php?mode=de...demo=25498

AHA

everyone in the north is poor :[

The variety of deep fried foods becomes significantly larger the further up north you travel, so do the women.

The UK isn't unique with regards to dialects. It's a similar situation wherever you go in the world.

The further you go north, the more deep fried the women are ?

http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=24880

The further south you go the more people sound like they have a toilet for a mouth :)

You fackin wot, you cant (cunt).

Funniest most common sounding accent ever, offense intended if you took it that way :P

Shutup coont

hehe, fack owf before i throw you down the fackin apples n pairs!

plz dunt that hurts :(

How'd it go m8?

It went okay, i wasnt the best.. but i sure as hell wasnt the worst :D

Thanks for your help everyone ^^!

Glad to hear read!

hearing your own voice/accent on tape or whatever can be a real shock..

insightful post btw... maybe should do an aussie one.. euros and yanks prob dont care tho..

i remember asking dreg/blokey/jay if they had a cup, they all looked at me like I was some kind of retard from poland

then I done the hand motion for a drink and they were like "ahhh a cap" :(

Devon > *

I never liked the north, blah!

Can't understand a damn thing anyone from the UK says TBQFH.

Oooo arrrrr