How do dialects arise

But language—and its development—retaliates against that concept. Regional dialect separates people, to an extent. One region speaks this way, another region speaks that way; and the differences between the cultures that have influenced those regions become obvious in the language alone. James Lantolf, Ph. He can be reached at jpl7 psu. Research Probing Question: How did regional accents originate?

August 29, By Sarah Etter. An English speaker might be tempted to think, for example, that a language is basically a collection of dialects, where speakers of different dialects within the same language can all understand each other, more or less. I have a Swedish pal I see at conferences in Denmark. A Dane who moves to Sweden does not take Swedish lessons; she adjusts to a variation upon, and not an alternate to, her native speech.

The speakers of these varieties of Scandinavian consider them distinct languages because they are spoken in distinct nations, and so be it. Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, are more different than Spanish and Italian.

There are cases of the Scandinavian and the Chinese kind worldwide. In order to understand each other, a Moroccan and a Jordanian would have to communicate in Modern Standard Arabic, a version preserved roughly as it was when the Koran was written. A Czech and a Slovak can usually converse. An example is certain languages—um, dialects? The upside-down e is pronounced a lot like the oo in foot. The East Midlands were ruled by the Danes in the ninth century.

The Danes, however, did not rule the West Midlands, where the Saxons continued to hold sway, and words of Danish origin are largely absent from that region. Dialects and accents are not restricted to UK English, of course. In the US, Australia and New Zealand, where English has been spoken for a much shorter period of time than in the UK, you would expect less variation as English has been spoken there for a shorter period of time.

But even there, dialects and accents occur and the linguistic influence of settlers who came from certain parts of the UK such as Scotland or Lancashire helped to determine local varieties. A similar phenomenon appears in the UK. During the s, Corby in Northamptonshire received a big influx of Scottish steelworkers. Other factors influence language use, too. One of them is social class. Very many local accents are now associated with working-class speakers, while middle and upper-class speakers tend to use a more standardised English.

But this is a relatively recent development. Indeed, until the standardisation of English from the 16th century — when one variety of English came to be used in official situations and by printing presses for the wider publication of books — it was acceptable for speakers of different social classes to speak and write in their own dialects. Then, Latin and French were regarded as prestigious languages, applied by the elite in education, law and literature.