Accented standard language varieties versus dialects

[Travis B.]

One thing I have noticed is that the North American English I am used to is far more innovative phonologically than morphologically or lexically, where morphologically and lexically it is quite conservative and standardized. If I speak like I do informally at home my speech is far enough from Standard English that it is not always understood by non-native English-speakers. Yet at the same time, even my most informal speech is almost identical to Standard English morpheme-by-morpheme (after one takes reduction, elision, and assimilation into account) and lexically, with practically the only exceptions being the use of guys (but that is almost standard at this point anyways), the use of the word /ja/, the use of come/bring/take with (without an object), tag or, and a double-'ve construction I've noticed ("I'd've never've done that", for instance). In essence it is a regional variety of Standard English spoken with a strong accent. In this way it reminds me of similar varieties that have arisen in other language areas where local dialects have been replaced by essentially accented standard language varieties. Somehow I would not be surprised if other people here on the Zeeb spoke similar varieties in places where traditional dialects would have been spoken generations ago. So what are your thoughts on this?

[Linguoboy]

I was just having a conversation this morning about how I've had to learn to modify my native speech in order to be more understandable to an international audience--and since the context was discussion boards like this one, the modifications are solely lexical and morphosyntactic and not at all in the realm of phonology. A lot of it is idiom, but I also have no shortage of dialect words and also some syntactic constructions like needs Xed, ought/might could, and protasic inversion (e.g. "Were I you...") which tend to throw people who have only been taught contemporary varieties of the standard language.

Moreover, I've been in the position of translating between NAE and British, Irish, or Scottish English before. There's more general awareness of the differences now than when I was younger, but there's still a lot of terms NAE speakers haven't really been exposed to.

[Nortaneous]

I don't think I have any such constructions, but I live in enough of a bubble that I wouldn't know.

AmEng is very lexically innovative, but its lexical innovation is much less geographically localized than its phonological innovation.

[Travis B.]

I don't think I have any such constructions, but I live in enough of a bubble that I wouldn't know.

AmEng is very lexically innovative, but its lexical innovation is much less geographically localized than its phonological innovation.

I should have qualified when I spoke of Standard English I meant Standard NAE.

[Travis B.]

Moreover, I've been in the position of translating between NAE and British, Irish, or Scottish English before. There's more general awareness of the differences now than when I was younger, but there's still a lot of terms NAE speakers haven't really been exposed to.

In recent years I have watched a lot of British TV, so I have become much more familiar with SSBE (in some shows they throw in some Northernisms for good measure, such as pronouncing me and my as homophones and overusing love, but I am pretty sure it's just some locally-flavored SSBE).

[Travis B.]

A lot of it is idiom, but I also have no shortage of dialect words and also some syntactic constructions like needs Xed, ought/might could, and protasic inversion (e.g. "Were I you...") which tend to throw people who have only been taught contemporary varieties of the standard language.

I do have a small number of dialect words, such as the aforementioned /ja/, bubbler, and soda (a dialect word even though it is part of Standard English because the typical Midwestern word is pop). Almost all the morphological and syntactic differences from Standard English in my lect are due to morpheme loss and contraction due to reduction, assimilation, and elision. I do have protasic inversion - I wasn't aware that this wasn't part of contemporary Standard English.