What is the difference between accent and dialect PDF

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WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACCENT AND DIALECT? “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” There’s not really a scientific way to split languages apart from each other. You can say that Japanese and Swedish are clearly different languages, but some languages are very similar. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are all very close, to the point where they’re pretty much!mutually intelligible. The dialects of Chinese, on the other hand, are not all mutually intelligible, but they haven’t earned the title of language. Really, there’s no exact difference between languages and dialects. In some writing, you might see that people say dialects are just spoken, whereas languages include both written and spoken aspects, but for linguists, they’re pretty much the same. Languages are just self-important dialects. It’s worth knocking out one pervasive myth about languages and dialects. What you’ll most commonly see is that a “language” is considered the ideal form of a way to talk, like Standard English, and a “dialect” is a deviation away from this ideal, like Black English or Southern English. This imposes a hierarchy on language that is, frankly, elitist. It’s better to imagine language as an umbrella category for all of the dialects of English, including Standard English. There is no one dialect that is superior to any other. In most uses, “accent” and “dialect” are used interchangeably. Accent seems to be used far more than dialect, as “dialect” sounds slightly more scientific. The definition of accents and dialects used most often by!people who work with language!is that accents are just one part of a dialect. An accent refers to how people pronounce words, whereas a dialect is all-encompassing. A dialect includes the pronunciations, grammar and vocabulary that people use within a group. Another definition!that has been used to explain the difference is that dialects refer to the way people speak their mother tongue, and accents refer to how someone speaks another language. A person speaking English with an Italian accent, for example. This doesn’t really capture all of the ways “accent” is used, however, because having a New York accent doesn’t mean you ever spoke another language. Closer to the the first definition, some people use “accent” for pronunciation and “dialect” for the words people use. This can be useful for writers to talk about these two aspects differently. Unless otherwise specified, however, the first definition is likely the one that’s being used. Many non-academic articles might use the words interchangeably, but for the most part, accent is how a person pronounces words and dialect includes a person’s pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDdRHWHzwR4 Accents is to do with pronunciation, how you pronounce the word. Dialect is when you have a word that only people in a certain area of the country use; it’s not a national word, it’s a local word that maybe people from other parts of the country, they won’t even know what it means, so that’s dialect. The one that you’re probably learning as you’re learning to pronounce English word is RP. “RP” stands for “Received Pronunciation”. It’s a slightly strange term. “Received” where do you receive it from? Well, maybe you receive it from your teacher. RP is usually referred to by the initials, and it’s the kind of accent you will hear if you’re watching BBC Television Programs or listening to BBC Radio. Not everybody on

the BBC speaks with an RP accent. The news readers tend to be RP speakers, but not always. But the strange thing is that in this country, only a very small percentage of people do speak with this accent, apparently just 3%, but they tend to be people in positions of power, authority, responsability, who earn a lot of money, live in big houses, some people like the Prime Minster. People who have been to Oxford and Cambridge Universities often speak in RP, even they didn’t speak in RP before they went to Oxford or Cambridge they often change their accent while they are there because of the big influence of their surroundings and the people that they’re meeting. RP is a very clear accent, so maybe it’s a good idea to either learn to speak English with an RP accent, or you may be learning with American/Canadian accent, all of those accents are very clear. RP is mostly used in the south of the country: London and the south. So, also “Cockney” and “Estuary English” are in the south. Also Cockney is the local London accent, and it tends to spread further out to places like Kent, Essex etc. There’s a newer version of Cockney called “Estuary English”: estuary is connected to a river, so the River Thames which flows across the country, goes quite a long way west; anyone living along the estuary, near the river can possibly have this accent as well. “The Midlands” is an area of the country about a hundred miles or more worth of London, which is the middle of the country. Let’s take an example of some words:

- “bath” and “path” —> which is the same as the American and Canadian pronunciation, but the RP pronunciation of these words is “baath” and “paath”, so there -

are a lot of these words where the “a” is not the “a” sound, but the “aa” sound. “a cup of tea” —> this is the RP pronunciation but in the Midlands it’s called “a coop of tea”. “a mug” —> this is the RP prononciation but in Midlands it’s called “moog”. “up” like “look up” —> in the Midlands is called “look top”. “love” —> in the Midlands and the north, people say “luv”.

Talking about the West Country, that’s a very sort of farming area, a kind of rural accent. So, moving on, apart from England, the country that has given the language its name, “English”, we have other countries:

- Scotland, in the far north —> a Scottish person with his Scottish accent says “Ah dinnae ken” instead of “I don’t know”; instead of saying “can’t” or “cannot”, they say “cannae” so “you canna be serious” = “you can’t be serious”; instead of saying “yes”, they say “aye” (ai); instead of saying “Oh!” As the exclamation, they say “Och!” And they make this sound in the back of their throat, which is like the German “ch” sound (another example is “lock” instead of “lake”).

- Wales, in the far west; - Irish, the other island to the west —> Ireland is the name of the country, and it is an island. There are various cities, which have their own distinct accents. Places like Liverpool, which is up in the northwest; Birmingham, which is in the West Midlands; Newcastle, which is in the Northeast, and Glasgow up in the Scotland.

In Birmingham, if you say “I’ll be there”, they actually change the vowel sound and say “Oil”; if we say “fine”, they say “foin”; if we say “makeup”, they pronounce it “mycoop”. In a big city like London, you get so many accents, many accents from the people who live in that country, the national accents and the regional accents from different parts of the country, and you also get all the international accents from people who have come from other countries. In a big city, it doesn’t really matter so much which accent you use, as long as you have these 3 things:

- clarity, cause you have to speak clearly; - pace or the speed, so you don’t have to speak too quickly and you can ask other people to speak more slowly for you to understand them; - volume, cause sometimes people speak very quietly and you need to ask them to speak more loudly, to speak up....