Rare Dialects

[Jonathan Lighter]

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:

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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.
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> 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?
> >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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