I was watching some of the Roberts's posts that Cathy recommended and realized how focused I was on understanding what he was saying. Admittedly the video quality is distracting, but I was really having to pay attention to understand what he was trying to communicate. It was even worse than last week when John and Diane from New Zealand visited...admittedly the visuals were better.
So I though I would explore the varieties of English, especially since, after London, we are headed into the heartland where locals are supposed to have kept more of the dialects.
A Google search shows I'm not the only one exploring it. In fact, it seems like an entire academic discipline, with lots of linguistic description I don't understand one bit.
Due to my limitations, I'll begin with a British Library site
The new British Library is a great place....near Euston Station, but it certainly won't be open when we rush to catch our train to Manchester, so we'll have to schedule another time to visit.
But for the time being, let's look at this one section of their website "Sounds Familiar."
From here you can listen to 71 sound recordings and over 600 short audio clips chosen from two collections of the British Library Sound Archive: the Survey of English Dialects and the Millennium Memory Bank. You’ll hear Londoners discussing marriage and working life, Welsh teenagers talking with pride about being bilingual and the Aristocracy chatting about country houses. You can explore the links between present-day Geordie and our Anglo-Saxon and Viking past or discover why Northern Irish accents are a rich blend of seventeenth century English and Scots. You can study changes in pronunciation among the middle classes or find out how British Asians express their linguistic identity.
In Regional Voices you can explore the differences that exist in spoken English as you move across the country, while Changing Voices gives you the chance to hear how English has changed in different parts of the country over the last fifty years. The Case Studies section provides an in-depth look at three specific varieties of contemporary English: Received Pronunciation, Geordie Dialect, and English as spoken in the UK’s minority ethnic communities. A selection of suggested activities and research tasks will help you investigate speech in your own community. Your Voices offers you the exciting opportunity to contribute your recordings and language investigations to the site, as part of the BL Sound Archive's ongoing survey of speech patterns across the UK.
OK....was that a bit much? How about an article from Babble Magazine, "The Royal Family of British Accents: the Amazing Variety of Accents Across the British Isles." "What does a “British accent” sound like? It depends who you’re asking and where you are in the British Isles. Here’s an overview of 7 regional varieties of British English. If you ask people what they think British English sounds like, most would probably mention the Queen, or Harry Potter at the very least. However, across the British Isles there is a massive variety of accents and dialects; so, in actual fact, most Brits do not speak like the Queen." Well, what do you know!
And if you want to zero in on Yorkshire accent, there is a amusing, youthful video and article on that. And a You Tube on London Accents. And one can really fall down the rabbit hole watching all the other videos running in a list down the right side of the page.
Now for a bit of fun:
So I though I would explore the varieties of English, especially since, after London, we are headed into the heartland where locals are supposed to have kept more of the dialects.
A Google search shows I'm not the only one exploring it. In fact, it seems like an entire academic discipline, with lots of linguistic description I don't understand one bit.
Due to my limitations, I'll begin with a British Library site
The new British Library is a great place....near Euston Station, but it certainly won't be open when we rush to catch our train to Manchester, so we'll have to schedule another time to visit.
But for the time being, let's look at this one section of their website "Sounds Familiar."
From here you can listen to 71 sound recordings and over 600 short audio clips chosen from two collections of the British Library Sound Archive: the Survey of English Dialects and the Millennium Memory Bank. You’ll hear Londoners discussing marriage and working life, Welsh teenagers talking with pride about being bilingual and the Aristocracy chatting about country houses. You can explore the links between present-day Geordie and our Anglo-Saxon and Viking past or discover why Northern Irish accents are a rich blend of seventeenth century English and Scots. You can study changes in pronunciation among the middle classes or find out how British Asians express their linguistic identity.
In Regional Voices you can explore the differences that exist in spoken English as you move across the country, while Changing Voices gives you the chance to hear how English has changed in different parts of the country over the last fifty years. The Case Studies section provides an in-depth look at three specific varieties of contemporary English: Received Pronunciation, Geordie Dialect, and English as spoken in the UK’s minority ethnic communities. A selection of suggested activities and research tasks will help you investigate speech in your own community. Your Voices offers you the exciting opportunity to contribute your recordings and language investigations to the site, as part of the BL Sound Archive's ongoing survey of speech patterns across the UK.
OK....was that a bit much? How about an article from Babble Magazine, "The Royal Family of British Accents: the Amazing Variety of Accents Across the British Isles." "What does a “British accent” sound like? It depends who you’re asking and where you are in the British Isles. Here’s an overview of 7 regional varieties of British English. If you ask people what they think British English sounds like, most would probably mention the Queen, or Harry Potter at the very least. However, across the British Isles there is a massive variety of accents and dialects; so, in actual fact, most Brits do not speak like the Queen." Well, what do you know!
And if you want to zero in on Yorkshire accent, there is a amusing, youthful video and article on that. And a You Tube on London Accents. And one can really fall down the rabbit hole watching all the other videos running in a list down the right side of the page.
Now for a bit of fun:
Quiz: Do You Know The Proper Names For These British Food Items? Britain may not be exactly famous for its food, but it is for its food names.
And before I loose you completely, you must practice up on the Pronunciation of Popular Place Names in London. Just in case you get lost, your phone dies, and you have to ask for directions.
