Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

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Duckman
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Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Duckman »

I have noticed one thing about dialects: On finnish forums, more people than not use dialect more or less. You can freely use it without getting comments about it, unless you let it too strong, and you can use it just as if you were speaking. But at any english forum, obvivously as natural finlander I know only very few dialect words about english. But still, I have very rarely seen anyone using even a bit stronger dialect, thus even I am almost always able to understand what they say. And, if i try to use a even my very light dialect (because I know it very very little of course), I get, even from natural englanders, about as much comment about it as if I were using the strongest one I can on finnish forums. More than one time I have been said that it's too hard to understand me. Do you think it's about the english langague itself or is it because their different sense of forum langague compared to spoken one?

And, for french, polish, german, and other countries, do you notice the same thing about english too? or the opposite? What sort of dialect sense there are in your countries? Are you tongueful or bookish?
Last edited by Duckman on Fri Oct 02, 2009 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Gambit37
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Re: Engalnders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Gambit37 »

Dialect is confusing when used on a forum. It's best to keep to a fairly 'standard' use of English (or other language) if you want to be understood. If someone here tried to write in a phonetic version of Scouse, for example, you probably wouldn't understand them.

Your earlier posts, before we commented on it, sounded quite strange and were difficult to follow. I think some of us didn't understand why you were using WIT' instead of WITH, for example. If you are writing 4 characters in both of them, and one is easier to understand than the other, then it didn't really make sense why you would use a word that's HARDER to read in 'standard' English.

Perhaps we're language snobs, I don't know ;-)
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Re: Engalnders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by beowuuf »

I think due to the great bredth of english speakers in various countries, there are a greater number of accents even around standard words. Therefore, although people think they can write an understandable dialect word, and people should pronounce it correctly in their heads, unless you know the accent aimed for it can fall flat.

I remember a joke name in a book that took me ages to get. A character was called Aahz, and kept saying 'no relation'. The joke was an obvious wizard of Oz joke, but I could not work out why that would make sense. Of course, in a strong american accent aahz and oz sound the same, so it's funny, whereas in any english /scottish accent they infact sound even further apart.

If Trantor throws his Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation around, we tend to laugh at it and understand it because we get the dialect his words are in. I suspect anyone looking at the words he writes cold would not be able to understand them well until told, in which case they would get it pretty quickly.

It's the same if I tried to type in scottish dialect, I would only be stressing in a scottish way vowel sounds i normally make. It would probably not be read as intended by anyone south of the border. Vice versa, I am sure I would be puzzled by a few of their letter and word choices if they tried to impersonate a scottish dialect.

Language is a funny thing really!

Actually, that's an interesting idea. Everyone try and type the phrase 'I love the cows' in a scottish dialect. Hide it in spoiler tags so people aren't swayed by other's choices.
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Jan
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Re: Engalnders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Jan »

Duckman wrote:What sort of dialect sense there are in your countries? Are you tongueful or bookish?
The only thing that comes into my mind is that I'm from Moravia (eastern part of the Czech Republic), but because I work in Prague, everyone recognises my Moravian dialect here... (it's like someone from Scotland in London, heh)... for the first time, it was a bit strange, then embarrassing, then funny... and now it's a source of my sex-appeal :) (I wish it worked :x )

@ Site stuff: Someone should probably fix the misspelled title of this thread. For the first time I saw it I thought it was kind of an unsuccessful anti-anglo-saxon joke. :P
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Re: Engalnders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Duckman »

I am thinking, could it be because of that fact it's impossible to know how english words are said by just reading them? In finnish you say every letter just the same, no matter where they are used. Only exception is the C, which is however not used in standard words. It's probaly that written finnish dialect is easier to understand because you just have to imagine what it would sound like. With engilsh you cannot do that (or is it possible? not exactly sure)

EDIT: beowuuf that scottish pronouncion is much closer to how we would write it here. Here it would be "ai luv thö kuuws"

Hey Ian, thanks. I did not notice. i'll do that
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Gambit37 »

It's definitely impossible to understand a lot of written English if you don't already know how certain written couplets should sound - for example, the word "through", would sound something like "THROW-UGG" if you pronounce the letters according to their alphabet sounds.

Somebody once told me about an Australian in England who was travelling to Loughborough (pronounced LUFF-BER-A) who pronounced it "LOO-GAR-BA-ROO-GAR". :D

You're right, too many words in English do not sound like the way they are spelled, which makes it a very hard language to learn.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Jan »

Gambit37 wrote:You're right, too many words in English do not sound like the way they are spelled, which makes it a very hard language to learn.
Actually, English is a relatively simple language to learn (but I agree that things like spelling or word-order or tenses are quite challenging). I mean, most of the foreigners make a lot of stupid mistakes, but they can use it after only a few months of studies and their (our) English is more or less understandable. It's a big luck that English is the global language. I mean - I can't imagine a World where Latin or Czech or Finnish would be global tools for communication. It would be a disaster! The World would collapse in a few weeks if the people had to learn something more complicated!

I have studied English, German, Portuguese, Latin, Russian and Catalan languages (well, most of them only for a year or two :oops: - as I said before, I only start things and never finish anything :( ) - now, I can use only English, and I can swear that English is definitely the easiest one of all these languages.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by oh_brother »

I agree English is a relatively easy language to learn. Of course it is hard to be objective when it is your first language, but I am basing it on learning other languages with much more difficult grammar. Most non-native speakers will say English grammar is very easy to learn, at least the basics. Look at the regular verbs in the present tense - there is almost no difference when conjugating (I run, you run, he/she runs, we run, they run, you run)...just one little "s" for the second person singular. But the same people complain non-stop about the pronunciation. And they are shocked that you cannot know the spelling of a word from its pronunciation - spelling tests in Spain (and I assume other countries with a phonetic language) are non-existent since it is trivial.

In theory that should make it much easier when writing on forums - pronunciation does not come into it. And while spelling does, mis-spellings do not get in the way of understanding.

@beowuff...if I was Scottish (if I were Scottish?) I would pronounce it
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Duckman »

The best "global" langague would probaly be sweden. It's words are about as easy to learn as english ones, but it does not have those annoying exceptons and exceptions of the exceptions everywhere, and is mostly like finnish: spoken and written the same way.

Imagine if some african ar asian langague would be the "global" one. After that estonia, russia, finland or czech would be a delight!

Really funny thing this langague, we finns speak dialect if we change the words and englanders speak dialect if they change the pronouncing rules!


By the way, why not to give a little show of your langague and dialect? first write something in simple english, then write in your own book langague and then in dialect.

My example
In book english:
No wonder this vaccuum does not work with all this excess junk collected in it

In very simple book finnish:
Ei ole ihme että ei tämä imuri toimi koska siellä on noin paljon turhaa roinaa.

In colourful finnish but without dialect:
Ihmekkös tuo ettei vimpain vedä kun on noin paljon niellyt ylimääräistä roinaa.

In strongly coloured and dialected middle ostrobothnian finnish:
Ihimekkö tuo ettei vitkutii vejä ko on nuin tolokuttomasti hörppiny ilimaa-aikustta tilippehöörijä.

None of these phrases contain swear words however.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by beowuuf »

How are you? (book english)

Hoore yeh? (doric scottish accent, same words)

Fit like? (doric scots dialect words, literally 'what like'?)


I'm not sure about other languages, but for english accents they always say it's all in the changing sounds of the vowels.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Jan »

First of all, you have to train the Czech characters: :)

ě š č ř ž ý á í é ů ú ť ď ň - I hope they are displayed correctly on your screens. If not, the fault is on your computer! :)
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Gambit37 »

How are you? (book English)

How do you do? (South East England, middle class)

Alright? (South East England, colloquial)

:)
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Duckman »

Ian, please give the show anyway, at least my computer has been awake in lessons! It would be cool to see.

Gambit you englanders surprise me once again. I did not even know that is considered dialect! If we had soundtrackers it would probaly be more interesting...
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Trantor »

Ok, I'll throw some German view into this interesting thread. On German forums, I very rarely see anyone writing in dialect, and even then it happens only slightly with very few words. The very idea of writing in dialect seems very weird to me, and I'm glad it doesn't happen. However, you can find certain words that are only used in certain regions, and of course there are abbreviations. I'd say it's about the same as it is in English forums, and I'm very glad about that. Reading can be hard enough when bad grammar, punctuation and typos are present, and trying to discern written dialect on top of that would just annoy the hell out of me.

In general, I agree that English is a very easy language to learn because the grammar is very simple. The pronunciation can be difficult at times, but French is worse at that. Hey, at least in German you usually pronounce everything your write and vice versa! :P One of the complicated things about English is the sheer number of words. I once heard that there about 8 times as many English words as German ones! :shock: Good that most of those are so obscure that you never need them...
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by PaulH »

If I go abroad and speak in broad Yorkshire, no bugger understands a word I am saying.

Unless for comic effect, writing in dialect is frowned upon on most English forums, as is using 'txt talk' as it just looks a mess and is hard to follow.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by PaulH »

I was walkin dahnt street tother day when ah met me mate.
"Hows tha bin"? he asked.
"I feel like an 'os" ses I
"An 'os" ses he
"Aye lad, Champion".
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by linflas »

Interesting thread. I may be a little different from my fellow-countrymen - they learn some kind of "BBC" english - because i had an american teacher for my 3 first learning years.

And that's the reason why i find "englanders" very.. you know... they always love using words like "nevertheless", "therefore", "indeed" and so on as a pause in their sentence... ;)

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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Sophia »

Duckman wrote:Imagine if some african ar asian langague would be the "global" one. After that estonia, russia, finland or czech would be a delight!
I'm not sure, I think this is difficult to say objectively. Many Asian languages have simpler grammar and pronunciation. Japanese, for example, has simple consonant-vowel syllables most of the time, and a very regular grammar. There are only three irregular verbs in Japanese, and they're come, go, and do, so the sheer amount of usage will make sure you remember them. The thing that makes Japanese horribly difficult is its writing system, with the thousands of imported Chinese characters. It makes English spelling seem sane. The other thing is just a matter of familiarity, of course-- Swedish is naturally going to seem easier if you speak English because so many of the words look so similar.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by beowuuf »

I think that is a little unfair, nevertheless your point is taken onboard, and indeed from now on I shall therefore endeavour to stop.

Bum.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Ameena »

I usually tend to write how I'd speak, I think...though I think I do tend to put letters in that I might omit in speech. Like the word "letter" I'd pronounce as "le'er", but that just looks weird and people would most likely not have a clue wtf I was talking about. I can't stand when people type using "text speak" - I just can't be arsed to sit and try to translate that. Well, why should I, if they can't be arsed to write it properly in the first place? ;)
I remember once staying with a friend up in Newcastle and going with her to her parents' flat. I think her aunt and uncle (or grandparents, I can't remember) were there too at the time, or something. And someone, either her dad or uncle, I think, said something to me. My friend had to translate. Both ways, because he couldn't understand me either :D.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Gambit37 »

Duckman wrote:Gambit you englanders surprise me once again. I did not even know that is considered dialect! If we had soundtrackers it would probaly be more interesting...
I was sort of joking a bit with my example. :-)
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Duckman »

PaulH wrote:I was walkin dahnt street tother day when ah met me mate.
"Hows tha bin"? he asked.
"I feel like an 'os" ses I
"An 'os" ses he
"Aye lad, Champion".
Well that's truly something interesting. Very hard to understand but you can still get an idea what they say.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by PaulH »

The accent and dialect around north Sheffield and Barnsley in the UK is very very strong. Even just moving to the next village you can get words you have never heard of!
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Duckman »

Hmm in finland the closer you are to the beach where most of the very big cities (+20000 inhabitants) are the less the speech varies from area to other (but imay be wrong). At south beach you cannot always even tell where you roughly are. But inland if you have very good dialect sense you can tell which river valley you are on, perhaps even how far from beach. But usually more by what letters people use in certain places of words, (for example, to forest: in book langague: metsään but in dialect it can also be mettään, mehtään, mehttään, mehtähän and so on) not so much by what words are used as they mainly divide to eastern and western ones.
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by Adamo »

Dialect is confusing when used on a forum. It's best to keep to a fairly 'standard' use of English (or other language) if you want to be understood.
I agree!! There are not only native english speakers on the forum! I can hardly understand the regular "literacy" english, and it already takes a lot efforts for me to understand many things here, so if people starts speaking dialect, I probably wouldn`t understand a word!! :(
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Re: Englanders seem very bookish sometimes

Post by sucinum »

linflas wrote:And that's the reason why i find "englanders" very.. you know... they always love using words like "nevertheless", "therefore", "indeed" and so on as a pause in their sentence... ;)
I find myself using those fillwords quite often. I don't even do this by purpose, they just sneak into my sentences. Sometimes i overread a forum posting and remove 3* "actually" from it, because it overdid it a bit. ;)

In German forums, dialect isn't used too often, because German dialects are very different from each other. There are surely 10 different words for bun (Semmel, Schrippe, Weck, ...) for example, all of them only used regionally. In the town i grew up, there were two different dialects and this was a town of maybe 10000 residents.
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