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Dialects you can’t understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ofdw Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5857 days ago 39 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English*, Italian | Message 25 of 54 13 June 2009 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Geordie English (that of Newcastle and surrounding areas in NE England). A strong Geordie accent is really impenetrable, and there are a lot of dialect words and phrases, too!
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| Caveben Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5667 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Romanian, Slovenian | Message 26 of 54 14 June 2009 at 6:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say in French I can understand a Quebec accent just as well as I can understand the standard RFI (I don't know what else to call it) French. Partly because I live close to there currently so most of my real life native speech is of that variety and partly because I usually listen to Quebec radio instead of French. Same for Senegalese, Cameroonian.. ect. The dialects I have the most trouble with are Arabic influenced French.
Incidentally, does Quebec French have an English influence to the ear of French speakers? I'm not really qualified to say. In my native English I can understand pretty much all dialects I have heard. Obviously not all the local idiomatic usages though. I've found some native English speakers from outside the UK to have trouble with mine though. Edited by Caveben on 14 June 2009 at 6:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yobar Diglot Groupie United States Joined 7034 days ago 52 posts - 54 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: German, Spanish, Irish | Message 27 of 54 14 June 2009 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
I can honesty understand the Geordies better than some of those Glaswegian Scots. Maybe because some of my ancestors came from that area and some ancient memory kicks in. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AntoniusBlock Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5925 days ago 31 posts - 36 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 28 of 54 14 June 2009 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe the most unintelligible Swedish dialect is Elfdalian, the Älvdalen dialect. It has retained a lot from Old Norse. I think it is on the verge of becoming officially defined as a separate language, the smallest North Germanic language perhaps, only 3000 speakers.
Looks like this in its written form: "Råðstemną ir för boð fuoskerum og allmenietn. Eð djäller boð diem so dieltågå min föredraę og diem so irå min autå föredrag. Nogų åv föredragum kumå tä oldas åv nogrum so åvå uort įekum inbuoðner. Men dar attrað ryömes eð föredraę og an so will old iett, wetenskaplit eld populärwetenskaplit, ir uvliuo’tt welkumin stjikk in ien stutt sammanfattningg (abstract) åv dyö að ..., sie’nnest 29 februari 2008. Kumum tä wel föredraę auti diem. Råðstemnspråtję irå övdalską, swenską og ainggelską. Mier informasiuon fið du jen." (Source) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 29 of 54 15 June 2009 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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If at all possible, people who speak extremely thick accent should be decent enough to tone it down a few notches when speaking to others who are not locals or native speakers.
It can be very awkward not to be able to communicate with your own countrymen and I suspect some of them get a kick out of confusing non-locals on purpose. I swear this happened to me in Dalarna in Sweden although I forgive them for having a laugh at my expense. ofdw - I am not British but I live here. I used to work with a Geordie and I had no trouble understanding him although this guy was of course a university grad and could adapt his speech. I think the reason nobody's mentioned it is because the accent is not familiar to most people outside of Britain, plus there are other UK accents that are harder (Glaswegian or rural Cornwall) Antonius - never met anybody from Norrland I couldn't understand, that must be very unusual and the speakers can no doubt switch over to standard Swedish if necessary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 54 15 June 2009 at 7:38am | IP Logged | ||
I latched on from around the word "Skogsarbet", and after that I could more or or less get the meaning, but not understand every single word. To my ears the melody of the language form had something Norwegian about it, but it definitely had its own character. However as most dialectal texts samples the quote given above tends to exaggerate the differences from standard Swedish because it desperately tries to show the pecularities of the pronunciation. If you made a similar phonetic transcript of standard Swedish as seen from an Älwish perspective it might also look slightly weird. Edited by Iversen on 15 June 2009 at 7:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5647 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 31 of 54 15 June 2009 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Bao, how do you find the Zürideutsch Swiss dialect? I've got to admit I can only grab a few words hear and there...
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| Tezza Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5680 days ago 41 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 32 of 54 15 June 2009 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm from Newcastle and sometimes I hear that apparently Geordies are hard to understand. I don't have the strongest accent but I can see how, with the way some people up here talk, that would be the case. Most of the phrases and weird slang which only seems to be used up here is really for the older generation though (such as canny, pet, hither, netty, clarts, etc). To be honest, the worst offenders by far are the 'charvers' (most people call them chavs since The Sun had a huge love affair with that word for a while). But, happily, they're the very people you don't ever want to talk to. I do find that when Scottish people talk really fast then I have no idea what they're saying, that's really the only English I can't get, maybe some parts of Ireland too. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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