Rare Dialects

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Feb 23 16:46:09 UTC 2009


Many of us remember the best episode of the otherwise blah "Story of
English" on PBS many years ago. The old Chesapeake dialect sounded
relatively unintelligible to me, though I assume it would not be too hard to
get used to after a day or so.

The Gullah dialect may be/ have been the least intelligible to outsiders.
Inner-city and deep-south "basilects" are pretty hard for outsiders too.

Of course we're only talking about English in the U.S.

JL
On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 11:27 PM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Rare Dialects
>
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> Unitelligible dialects? absolutely.  I attended a talent show at a local
> college with my parents and wife.  The MC was a black man and much of the
> audience was black.  He must have been funny because they were having a
> ball.  Meanwhile we kept looking at each other wondering what he was saying.
>  I will never forget it.
>
> It happened in England as well.  I had to avoid this fellow member of a
> society I belong to because I couldn't understand a word he was saying.
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
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> ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:11:41 -0500
> > From: djmetevia at CHARTERMI.NET
> > Subject: Rare Dialects
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: David Metevia
> > Subject: Rare Dialects
> >
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> >
> > An interesting article in the LA Times yesterday:
> >
> > http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-interpret21-2009feb21,0,5139254.story
> >
> > This man could communicate easily in his home town and even somewhat
> > outside of that as he knows some Spanish. However, it is a big culture
> > shock to be in California.
> >
> > Are there examples in the US of AmE dialects so isolated from the
> > mainstream that most of us would have difficulty communicating?
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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