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Most people think of an accent as something that other people have. In some cases, they speak disparagingly about one accent compared with another. The truth is that everyone has an accent, because an accent is simply a way of pronouncing words. The reason that you can tell the difference between people from Boston and the Appalachians, or between London and Manchester is because each group of people has a different way of pronouncing the same words. In other words, accent is all about sound.
When it comes to changes in vocabulary in different regions, then you’re talking about dialect. Dialect refers to differences in accent, grammar and vocabulary among different versions of a language. For example, depending on where you live in England, one type of baked goods could be called buns, cobs or rolls. It is likely that when you speak in the dialect of a particular region, you will also speak in the accent of a particular region. However, incomers may speak the dialect of a region with a different accent. This may also apply to people who have emigrated from one country to another. They may speak a different form of a language from those born in that country.
So, what does all this have to do with writing? It’s simple. Most written English is based on a dialect of English. The variety of English known as standard English uses a certain type of grammar and vocabulary which is taught to students of English all over the world. They may speak with a different accent, but the dialect is basically the same.
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A book that illustrates your point:
In Lori Wick’s Sophie’s Heart, English was the heroine’s second language. The author did a beautiful job of conveying Sophie’s accent by selectively inserting extra words and omitting others, leaving the sound of the mispronounced words to the reader’s imagination. There were no weird, distracting spellings, just a masterfully conveyed accent.
Thanks for the example, Inspirational Editor.
And is “standard English” based on the American English superdialect (color, meter, elevator) or the British English superdialect (colour, metre, lift)?
Good question, I think this subject deserves a post on its own, like what is exactly “standard English,” “Queen’s English,” etc.
A good post, except that grammar differs across US/UK English and so isn’t quite ’standard’. (I.e. the puncutation belongs inside a quotation in US English, but outside of it (unless it is a direct part of the quotation) in British English.)
Good point, Alan. The whole notion of standardisation is laughable, as language is always evolving. The Alliance Francaise have faced that issue head on when trying to remove certain English phrases from the French language.
“Standard English” usually depends on where a book is published. Books published in the UK follow UK conventions, those published in the States follow US conventions, and those published in Canada often follow a mix of conventions depending on the book’s target market.
As a child, you can very easily pick up accents. I was born in Manchester, though my parents are Scottish. I had a scottish accent. By my first few weeks of school, I had picked up a Manchester one! then, when we moved to the Netherlands, thus only hearing Manchester accents on Dinnerladies (a comedy), i began to pick up a scottish accent from my parents again. I now have half a scottish accent. i’m not quite sure what the other half is. all I know is that my English teacher does a feeble attempt at immitating my accent lol
I’m in much the same boat, Kirsty, combining a British accent with the accent learned from my Trinidadian mother.
I know as it stands, this is absolutely right… but I disagree with the way ‘accents’ and ‘dialects’ are recognised in general (in the UK at least). In my opinion, the reason why most regional variations in the UK are described as accents is because we all use the same spelling conventions, that happen not to be regular for any of us. Therefore whenever people from different ends of the country say a word, they are said to be pronouncing the same word differently (accent). But what would happen if we had a spelling reform? There would be no possible way of having one spelling for the whole country, we would need several to keep everyone happy. Whereas Northerners would be happy to keep words like ‘grass’, ‘bath’ etc the same, Southerners would not. They could turn out something like ‘grahss’, ‘bahth’ or ‘grarse’ and ‘barth’. Take a word like ‘castle’ and it could turn out very different; maybe ‘kassel’ in the north and ‘karssol’ in the south. How would the situation be described now? Would we be pronouncing the same word differently, or would we have two different words? As far as I’m concerned, it’s the latter… and that to me is a situation that makes far more sense. Of course, it wouldn’t be in the government’s interests to do that to the most powerful language in the world… but my point is, it would be possible. And that alone to me undermines the whole argument that ‘accents’ and ‘dialects’ are different. Compare Castillian Spanish ‘playa’ (beach) with Catalan ‘platja’. They could easily be said to be the same word, if they were spelled the same, just pronounced differently. However, dialects are given more recognition in Spain whereas they are suppressed in England. Feel free to shoot my theory down