|
 |
Choosing a dialect from day 1 | ||
Tags: Dialect | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Tahl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4099 days ago 26 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Spanish, Finnish | Message 25 of 45 02 September 2013 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes. More of the communities in Wales where Welsh has survived as a local, community language are in the North, so (1) a smaller percentage of the population in the North needs to learn Welsh in adulthood, and also (2) the North has a smaller population, so the majority of people, period, are in the South (in the band from Llanelli to Swansea to Cardiff to Newport). As you'd expect, Southerners do understand Northerners, and vice versa, though there are some local dialect words and some regional accents (for instance, northern Pembrokeshire) that even first-language speakers from elsewhere find tough to handle. But you really *don't* hear anybody who uses Southern grammatical structures but speaks in a Northern accent -- people keep a basic consistency in their own speech. Individual regional words are more idiosyncratic, and sometimes both first-language speakers & learners will consciously or unconsciously adopt vocabulary or idioms not from "their" region, as a matter of choice. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4820 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 26 of 45 03 September 2013 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Thanks, Tahl. As such high % of Welsh speakers are second language speakers, how did they manage to learn just the one dialect so well and without disturbance by the other one in order to get where they are? (I mean, clearly Southern speakers and clearly Northern speaker)
Perhaps a few more questions would put more light into the matter for me: Are there sufficient learning materials to get you to the point of switch to the "real things" available in both dialects? Is there sufficient amount of the "real things" for both dialects allowing you to limit yourself at some point (and of course temporarily) to only one without too much of a loss? Are there already enough Welsh speakers so that a new learner can get immersed naturally? Do some Welsh families already use Welsh as their language at home? Thsnks 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5145 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 27 of 45 03 September 2013 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I read through this yesterday, but waited until today to comment, as this was an issue I had to ponder on.
To a certain extent you are forced to chose a dialect from day one if you deal with a language with very different dialects. If you learn Spanish you cannot not chose between pronouncing c/z the Spanish way or as an s, in French you need to know whether to use the regular standard French accent, or the one from let's say Provence, in Swedish it would make sense to chose between the dialect from Skåne or the one from Stockholm pretty quickly, and in Norway if you chose the dialect from Vågå, only 3000 souls will fully understand what you say, so not making a deliberate choice is not really an option. I am sure there are lots of languages where this would be insignificant, but you really need to find out for each individual language. For English it doesn't make all that much of a difference in my opinion. I guess that in Europe most of us start out learning British English in school, but we end up speaking American English - or my personal dialect - mid-Atlantic :-), due to the influence from the media. I suspect most of us aim for a neutral accent, unless we learn the language in a specific place. The good part about the latter case, is that people sometimes get positively extatic, when they realize that you speak their dialect. I have had so much positive feed back because of my Andalusian, that I would not trade it for the poshest of accents from Salamanca. The only negative response I have ever had was from a Brit who literally wriggeled in disgust when he heard me speak in Spanish, and looked at me like I was the most revolting worm he had ever seen. I refrained from doing the same to him over his VERY British accent in Spanish, which I did not find particularly appealing... 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4518 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 28 of 45 03 September 2013 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
For French Québecois, Suisse-romande, etc. are also options...and they don't seem to be
minoritarian compared to the Provence. Edited by tarvos on 03 September 2013 at 2:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Tahl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4099 days ago 26 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Spanish, Finnish | Message 29 of 45 03 September 2013 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The differences between the dialects aren't huge, but they are basic/fundamental. What that means is that you encounter the genuinely important differences within the first couple of months of learning, and from then on, it's just a matter of figuring out which of the three words for "gate" people tend to use in "your" area. How does that happen? Exposure. Which dialect is being used is obvious when you listen to someone on the radio, or read a novel (including one of those written for adult learners -- my favorite is the 'Nofelau Nawr' series). Materials for learners tend to attach (N) and (S) to idioms and vocabulary that are specific to a region.
Yes with learning materials -- the SSIW courses (which come in Southern and Northern variants), the official Welsh for Adults texts. No with grammar reference materials, but again, authors will generally note if a particular form is regional. Yes for audio input: on Radio Cymru, you'll hear all sorts of accents and dialects, especially on the call-in discussion shows. Sort-of for novels for learners: it's hard to pick something Southern or Northern unless you are in a bookshop and can flip through it. Again, sort- of for novels not for learners. I didn't find that a big problem, because learning to understand the other dialect is crucial, and you get used to what differences there are very, very quickly.
Yes, many families are first-language Welsh, especially in the northwest and along the west coast. The easiest way as a learner to immerse yourself naturally is to go on vacation to, say, the area around Pwllheli, and make yourself speak Welsh in the grocery store and everywhere else. This won't always work, because there are non-Welsh speakers in those areas, too, but if you start a conversation in Welsh, you will often get people to reply to you in Welsh whereas otherwise they would assume you don't speak it. One more comment about dialects: I don't want to overemphasize the differences between Northern and Southern Welsh. I think people often do that, just as I think they overemphasize the difficulty of Welsh in general. It's something to be aware of, rather than worried about -- and like Solfrid Cristin, I have gotten very, very warm and positive reactions to my identifiably-regional accent and word choice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3910 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 30 of 45 04 September 2013 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It is my understanding that this is also very much true for Welsh's overseas cousin, Breton. The two dialects (KLT and Gwenedeg) differ not only in pronunciation, but sometimes also in morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. Originally they even had separate orthographies, and since there is no official recognition for Breton, and still technically no official orthography, I guess you could say that this is still the case. While one could probably say that there's an amount of standardisation going on, starting with the mutually inclusive orthographies (created 1941, 1953, 1969 respectively) and continuing today to some extent with people learning a more geographically "washed out" Breton as they learn it as a second language... my experience from francophone fora is that there's a fair bit of disapproval towards dialect mixing amongst native speakers. I recall one person stating that the only thing worse than a mixed accent was speaking Breton with a French accent. Now, if I were just learning Breton for the fun of it, or hoping to speak some Breton while travelling in Brittany for a while, I might not care much about whether or not I was mixing KLT with Gwenedeg. Nor would I care if I was spelling my words according to Peurunvan or Skolveurieg. It is difficult enough to find good Breton beginner's study material without starting to worry, unless you have to (like me), about which orthography and dialect is used. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4450 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 31 of 45 04 September 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Cristina, I agree with you, you cannot not choose. However the way I read the question in the title and the OP, the issue is whether there is any sense in deliberately choosing a dialect from day 1. Let me put it like this. Do you speak Andalusian because you decided to go to Andalusia and you learnt Spanish when living there, or did you go to Andalusia because you had decided to learn this particular dialect of Spanish? I went to Spain to study Spanish for the first time when I was 19, and I was hesitating between Granada and Salamanca. Finally a friend convinced me to go to Salamanca because it is such a nice city and the nightlife is great, party until 5 in the morning... So I've ended up with a "posh Salmantino" accent rather than an Andalusian one. If I had had loads of money at the time, I might have ended up speaking Argentinian, because my dream was to go to Buenos Aires. My point is, the accent you end up with will often be dictated by factors that have little to do with your choosing to speak that way from the beginning, at least if you are easily influenced by your surroundings, as I am (linguistically speaking). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4518 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 32 of 45 04 September 2013 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Among natives is one thing, among learners it should be another. I study Breton too, and I think, given the scarcity of speakers, that if you happen to study Breton that if a native isn't being accomodating (you're learning an ENDANGERED LANGUAGE) then he's shooting himself in the foot. Let's worry about it being actual Breton first before we work out the details. And I think a unified orthography for Breton helps with that. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
