via: liuzhou laowai, read the post here: Wee sleekit courin' tim'rous beastie
after reading liuzhou's post, i can't help asking a question to myself, is the difference between English English and Scottish English bigger that the difference between two chinese dialects, and i did a little research on that. quite interesting but still don't have the answer based on what i read.
Scottish Dialects and Accents
Scots tongue
Janet Menzies has investigated what school children in Scotland think about attitudes towards Scots and Glasgow dialects. The investigation was carried out at Lochend Secondary School in Glasgow. Menzies wanted to know the status of Glasgow dialect and Scottish dialects, and the children's feelings of national identity.Most of the children considered themselves to be Scottish (68%), while 32% considered themselves British. It was mostly the older children who considered themselves as Scottish, since they apparently had a greater sense of nationality.The children listened to tape recordings on which people talked with different English dialects, some with more English English and some with more Scottish English. The children thought that the person who spoke with a more English English dialect sounded snobby, however, they thought that if they spoke like that they would more easily be able to get a job in the future. This is quite interesting since almost half of them disliked English English or even found it to be unpleasant. When they were asked why they talked the way they do, most said that it was due to peer pressure (from friends) and that their parents and teachers have no influence or power over the way they speak. Menzies also asked whether they wanted to live in a city, town, suburb or in the country and 80% said they preferred to live an urban life. The ones that wanted to live in a rural area were almost entirely males, it seems that girls want to live in a city instead. Finally when the children were asked whether a word was English, Scottish, Gaelic or slang many of them thought that the Scottish words were slang words, this may indicate the status of the Scottish dialects today. I guess that the English spelling system is more difficult to learn and use if you are Scottish, since their pronunciation is even further away from the spelling. If English children have problems with it so must the scots.If you want to read Menzies's investigation just klick on her name at the beginning of this paragraph.
there was a discussion of how to preserve shanghai dialect in john's sinosplice site, but i can't find it any more, that could be a very interesting comparsion, i mean the dialects in britain and china, their history, influence on today and their future.
but what is an english dialect? we often hear American English, British English, and so on, but never know english dialect, what's the difference?
oh, finally happy birthday to Mr Robert Burns, and enjoy his world-famous "Auld Lang Syne"
