Rare Dialects

[Wilson Gray]

I don't think that true "mainstream" exists. Once that you've been
around enough, local dialects cease to be a problem. But, if you've
lived in only one place, regardless of its size, people from elsewhere
will be hard for you to understand, people from elsewhere will have a
hard time understanding you, or both.

When I first heard the Bronx dialect spoken by a cousin visiting Saint
Louis, we couldn't understand each other, she having never heard a
dialect not used in New York, before, and I had never heard before a
version of English not spoken in Marshall, TX, or Saint Louis and
Jefferson City, MO. When I first went to Los Angeles from Saint Louis,
I understood the locals perfectly, but they could understand me only
with difficulty, even when I was talking to other black people. The
first time that I heard Bostonian spoken, in a lecture on *firing
furnaces* at the now-defunct Fort Devens, MA, I thought that the
lecture was about *fighting fires* and I couldn't make any sense out
of it at all.

Labov, in a lecture at the Michigan Summer LSA Institute in 1973,
demonstrated that, taken out of context, a string in any American
dialect except one's own can be impossible to understand.

I have found both Englishmen and Australians to be quite friendly
people, except that, ofttimes, I simply can't understand a word that
they're saying. Well, I've managed to figure out that "nigh" in Strine
means "no," "yace" means "yes," and "shewpa!" means "super!"

I've seen English and Australian movies supplied with subtitles for
American audiences. It seems to me that any number of American movies
likewise require subtitles for British and Australian audiences.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 8:11 AM, David Metevia <djmetevia at chartermi.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       David Metevia <djmetevia at CHARTERMI.NET>
> Subject:      Rare Dialects
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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