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Choosing a dialect from day 1

  Tags: Dialect
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
45 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
KidRoberts
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 Message 41 of 45
06 September 2013 at 8:11am | IP Logged 
Is it odd that I don't have one dialect with my own English? I have 'standard' American
English with some Pittsburghese sprinkled in.
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eyðimörk
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 Message 42 of 45
06 September 2013 at 9:07am | IP Logged 
KidRoberts wrote:
Is it odd that I don't have one dialect with my own English? I have 'standard' American English with some Pittsburghese sprinkled in.

It's probably less odd than you'd think. Parents, education, work, friends, living situation, etc. all play their part.

Even if it's your native language you can have a mixed dialect, either in general or just with certain types of situational words... as is my case with English these days. Even if I were to make an effort to use RP, instead of a more standard British English, I can't say "Aberdeen" without an Aberdonian accent, because I've lived there and that's just how it's always been said in my head.

tarvos wrote:
I did get the vitriol.

I'm sorry to hear that!

tarvos wrote:
So maybe the differences between dialect are more marked than I expect them to be. You just change the things particular to the dialect.

As I have indicated in my posts, it is a matter of pronunciation, but also a matter of intonation, stress (KLT normally stresses the penultimate syllable, Vannetais normally stresses the ultimate), morphology (lenition and fortition differ between the dialects for example), idioms, and also vocabulary.

In terms of important vocabulary, for example, the verb "to be" in KLT is bezañ, but it's bout in Vannetais. Conjugating the verb in KLT and Vannetais, you get for example:

1 sing pres: on (KLT + V)
2 sing pres: out (KLT) — ous (V)
3 sing pres: eo (KLT) — ema (V)

The verb "to have", in the present, differs only once:

1 plur pres: hon eus (KLT) — hor beus (V)

But it differs more in other tenses, such as the conditional: it's "befe/pefe" in KLT but "behe/pehe/dehe" in Vannetais.

I'm just a beginner, and I haven't studied the differences any more than I had to in order to decide whether it was important enough to make the effort to find materials in the "right" dialect, so I don't want to make the differences out to be enormously dividing when they aren't necessarily. I don't know if those differences are more than you expected, or just about right, but to me it's a pretty significant difference (for the geographically invested, that is, which means most learners, but not necessarily the average polyglot).

According to a lot of people it's a significant enough difference that there shouldn't be a joint orthography to start with, but for the sake of learners and school children everywhere I for one am happy that there is one (or, you know, three-four). ;)
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tarvos
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 Message 43 of 45
06 September 2013 at 9:25am | IP Logged 
I have a Vannetais dictionary actually, I'm aware the differences are big between KLT and
Vannetais. I was thinking of dialects within KLT on a more micro-level.
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eyðimörk
Triglot
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France
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 Message 44 of 45
06 September 2013 at 10:04am | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
I have a Vannetais dictionary actually, I'm aware the differences are big between KLT and Vannetais. I was thinking of dialects within KLT on a more micro-level.

Aha. When I finally thought that we had stopped speaking completely past each other, every step of the way, it seems that I was wrong again. Well, since it's very rare for me to stumble into anyone learning Breton outside of the francophone Breton-learning communities, it was nice kind of but not really talking to you about things we apparently actually agree on but can't seem to agree on.
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
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 Message 45 of 45
06 September 2013 at 10:48am | IP Logged 
I think we do agree, if you live locally you pick up the local pronunciation, that
makes sense, and it's what I would do. However I am a rare breed who learns Breton at
home (although I do use the francophone materials because I did learn French).

But in general, even though Vannetais is fairly different in terms of stress and
pronunciation, pronunciation is something you can take a few months to get accustomed
to, maybe even less if you're good with phonology. I haven't studied Gwenedeg enough to
understand the grammatical differences though.

I learned the standard KLT orthography and pronounce it (poorly because I haven't ever
spoken in real life in Breton yet outside of Demat and Trugarez). But in general, the
québécois accent differs from the French, and the intonation and use of words in
Belgian Dutch is super different from standard Dutch.

Or to take an example from your native Swedish - if you're going to live in Skåne,
yeah, learn skånska. But for me who does not live in Sweden, a foreigner should not
blame me for learning rikssvenska, even though it might differ strongly from skånska or
nörrlandska or whatever. That was my point, and I got the feeling from the brittophone
community that they were being annoyed at someone learning a general version when you
have at least 2 if not 4 main dialects in Breton. Which differ strongly. But they do so
in Swedish, German, Dutch, English, French etc. and then nobody complains about
learning a standard variant unless you are living locally in an area where a particular
dialect is spoken. And a brittophone has even less right to do so because they're
trying to keep the language alive.

Edited by tarvos on 06 September 2013 at 10:50am



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