It's a tiny ass island yet whenever a British person hears another British person they'll be like "Oi guvenor! I know exactly where in Merry-ol-England they are from! Clearly they're from Bovinshire-upon-Weavilton!" And Bovinshire-upon-Weavilton is a town like 10 minutes away from where they live.

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[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 18 points 20 hours ago

Regional accents are good.

They connect people to a history, the landscape and the world around them. They're basically the only non-toxic and commonly accepted form of identity politics a lot of British people have, on of the last threads connecting people beyond culture war bullshit. They're the primary way most people ever hear or think about working class history and pride (in a non made up tabloid way).

Also, they make the language interesting with lots of regional words and idioms plus lots of them sound funny or nice.

[–] keepcarrot@hexbear.net 12 points 19 hours ago

Nah, I think that's how people are. The French had a nationalist unifying project where they obliterated a large amount of variation, and settler colonies (by virtue of a bunch of people coming together to occupy land) also have less variation than most other places.

It's just the english speaking world is mostly settler colonies that it seems weird to us.

(I don't like nationalism very much)

[–] HoiPolloi@hexbear.net 14 points 20 hours ago

The huge number of regional accents are one of the few things I like about the UK. I just think it's neat.

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 11 points 20 hours ago

There are like 4-6 accents in London alone

[–] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You should see Wenzhounese in China.

Completely indecipherable to me.

It's a Wu language, but not mutually intelligible for other Wu languages like Shanghainese, let alone Mandarin or Cantonese. Furthermore, within Wenzhounese, there's 3 dialects for north, central and south.

[–] coolusername@hexbear.net 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I was watching the Chinese movie eight hundred and I was thinking, how did people communicate with each other back then? Did most people even know mandarin?

[–] baaaaaaaaaaah@hexbear.net 10 points 19 hours ago

As far as I understand, China's had state-enforced lingua francas for centuries, and Beijing 'Mandarin' has been dominant for at least the last couple of hundred years.

But yeah, I've met people today who barely speak mandarin, so it must have been wild back in the early 20th century. I'd imagine heavy use of local translators. I might be misremembering but I feel like Mao brings it up in one of his works about the Long March while they pass through Yunnan.

[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 20 points 1 day ago (5 children)

This is normal. In fact there used to be more divergent dialects. Oh and americans speak like 17th century brits. The modern english accent is newer than the american one.

[–] huf@hexbear.net 9 points 19 hours ago

Oh and americans speak like 17th century brits. The modern english accent is newer than the american one.

this is entirely incoherent.

americans do not speak like 17th century brits. which brits anyway?
there's no such thing as "the modern english accent". which one?
you cant have an accent that's newer than another, they've all changed with time, they're the same age.

this stupid meme comes from ONE feature of the accents. rhoticity. all english dialects used to be rhotic until a few hundred years ago, when non-rhoticity started spreading. it spread out from london and gradually covered most of england. wales, scotland and ireland are still rhotic.

it also spread into the american colonies, which is why the old new york accent is non-rhotic, as well as the boston accent and at least some of the southern accents. and of course AAVE. the rest of america retained its rhoticity.

but this is just one feature of the accents, not the whole thing. each accent is conservative and innovative in turn, keeping some old features that others lose, innovating some new feature that others lack.

[–] Mardoniush@hexbear.net 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Americans speak a little like 17th-18th century Brits but honestly Devon or Cornwall is closest. Just talk literally like a pirate and you're mostly there. The John Adams tv series is painfully lib but gets that right.

Also if you go back to Henry Viii things start going Dutch/Frisian. which is concerning

[–] BoxedFenders@hexbear.net 24 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The US is probably the outlier here with too few regional accents given the vast land mass. I would attribute it to the population growing alongside the successive innovations of rail, radio and television so that regional dialects blended into each other.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 4 points 15 hours ago

media tends to lump "the south" into a single, monolithic accent that always seems to be some affected-as-hell Texas twang (where they pronounce "onion" like it has a "g" in it), but IRL there is a lot of variability between low country, piedmont, Mississippi delta, and southern Appalachian.

that doesn't even get into who uses what idioms.

mass media has a way of flattening regional differences.

[–] Dessa@hexbear.net 10 points 22 hours ago

And is probably why the east coast has more accent variation in a smaller area. New York even has accents that vary from borough to borough I am told!

[–] Mardoniush@hexbear.net 5 points 22 hours ago

Australia is worse some say we have 3 which isn't true, but it's certainly less than the USA.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you want to make a British upset, tell them their accent is wrong and Americans are closer to Shakespeare's accent than they are.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 2 points 15 hours ago

what light from yonder window breaks, bro?

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I LOVE the early modern English dialect and accent. I use it sometimes as a gag when pretending to be olde timey and it turns out no one csn understand a word I'm saying. People really don't pay attention

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 4 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Is that like Canterbury Tales accent?

[–] huf@hexbear.net 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

i dont think there's a canterbury tales accent. IIRC chaucer has characters speaking in at least two different accents in it.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 2 points 13 hours ago

The more you know!

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 5 points 23 hours ago

No its the Shakespeare accent. Canterbury is if I recall Middle English and the next earliest.

[–] regul@hexbear.net 27 points 1 day ago

This is probably true in any country that's more than a few hundred years old.

[–] imogen_underscore@hexbear.net 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ireland is like this too

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago

I'm from the Canadian maritimes and a cape Breton accent and a Belfast accent are basically the same thing.

[–] Owl@hexbear.net 6 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Nah it's neat.

What sucks is when they make media that assumes everyone else knows which goofy accent belongs to which corner of their country and what pile of stereotypes they have against each other.

[–] Euergetes@hexbear.net 12 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

its nice when regional sterotypes are so easily identifiable, in the US it can take half a conversation before you get to make fun of where they're from

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago

Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot.

[–] CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

On the one hand yes, on the other hand it makes for a lot of fun in Redwall (I'm thinking 'bout those moles' accents)

[–] Z_Poster365@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago

mmm bur scrumptious vittles