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Let's put English aside and look at other major European languages and their regional variations. How uniform they are across the regions where they are spoken in terms of accent, grammar and lexicon.
French: French within regions in metropolitan France (northern, southern etc. - I heard French has the most uniformity/least variance but southwest can have a different accent), Swiss French, Belgium French, Quebec French, African French (in different countries of course).
German: in Germany, Switzerland, Austria (I heard it can be quite different). How different is it really from Dutch?
Spanish: various part of Spain, Latin America. "S" is pronounced quite differently ("th" as in think in Madrid or "s" in Latin America?)
Italian: different accents in the north vs. south? They are at least intelligible?
Let's put English aside and look at other major European languages and their regional variations. How uniform they are across the regions where they are spoken in terms of accent, grammar and lexicon.
French: French within regions in metropolitan France (northern, southern etc. - I heard French has the most uniformity/least variance but southwest can have a different accent), Swiss French, Belgium French, Quebec French, African French (in different countries of course).
Where did you heard that ? Because that's not totally accurate you see.
Italian: different accents in the north vs. south? They are at least intelligible?
It Italy more we are used to talk about "dialects", but this definition doesn't show at all how complicated the situation is. In practice we have several regional languages, each one with a different accent, grammar and lexicon.
Standard Italian is just one of those dialects, the one spoken in Tuscany (and that after Dante and other writers was used as a literary language in a lot of courts of Italy), that with the unification of the country was elected at the level of national language.
about the mutual ineligibility of those dialects, usually it is really limited. For example I live in Piedmont, so in the north-west of Italy, and for me the dialects of the north-east and south Italy are as difficult to understand as Spanish (so you can get some parts, because they are all related languages, but it is really difficult to get the whole meaning).
(not sure about the last two, I have looked for them online. I only know piemontese)
With my dialect I can also do a more articulated example
This one is a quite famous quote in our dialect:
"Dite a Turin che da sì nojà utri bogioma nen" (piemontese)
"Dite a Torino che da qui noi non ci muoviamo" (italian)
"Tell in Turin that from here we are not moving " (english)
In particular I wanted to comment the last part, because it is a good example of different grammar rules.
The last part of that sentence is negative, and negative sentences in Italian follow the scheme "non + verb" ("non ci muoviamo")
Instead in Piemontese negative tense is "verb+nen" or "verb + pa" ("bogioma nen" in the example).
Anyway, a lot of people (in particular the elder, or the people who live in more isolated areas) speaks well their dialects, but they are starting to declining. For example here in Piedmont the most of young people can still understand dialect, but they can't talk it (we have mainly a passive knowledge of it).
The official language is Italian, and nearly everyone can speak it. So that Italian was imposed as a standard language just 150 years ago, there aren't strong regional variations in it. The most recognizable regional trait on Italian language is usually the accent, that usually reminds the one of the dialect spoken in the same area. When we speak a more informal way we can also add some little dialectal word too, but this is optional.
Spanish: various part of Spain, Latin America. "S" is pronounced quite differently ("th" as in think in Madrid or "s" in Latin America?)
S in Spain is sometimes pronounced a little heavy, almost like a slight "shhh" sound. The "lisp" you are referring to is with C's and Z's. I've heard that there are some parts of Spain where this isn't the case though.
it all depends on your familiarity with the regional accents and how good you are at picking those up...
I live in Belgium for quite a long time now and I am able to make the distinction among people from Brussels, Liege area and Flemish speakers speaking in French. But most Belgians will be able to identify lots more accents, even from city to city within the same area.
From my native city of Seville, Spain, I can sometimes pick up the neighborhood where this person is coming from, or if they are coming from the city itself or the metro area (very different accents). I am able to tell about 10/15 different accents from Spain, but I wouldn't be able to say from which of the Canary Islands' island one given person is coming from (a Canarian will be able to do so with no problem)
So... basically, lots of different accents everywhere.
Outside of France, doesn't all of Western Europe have regional dialects? I think the "one France" ideal since the revolution had kind of standardized French (I know there is slight regional variation but not like the other countries), but I think every other country has a high degree of variation.
In Germany or Italy, if you travel even only 30km, the people are probably speaking a little different.
Outside of France, doesn't all of Western Europe have regional dialects? I think the "one France" ideal since the revolution had kind of standardized French (I know there is slight regional variation but not like the other countries), but I think every other country has a high degree of variation.
In Germany or Italy, if you travel even only 30km, the people are probably speaking a little different.
There is still regional dialects/languages you know, they're just not spoken by many and protected. Alsatian, Breton, Occitan, Picard, Franco-provençal, langues d'oîl, langues d'oc, etc.
Last edited by Eden Morlevent; 07-23-2015 at 12:17 PM..
Let's put English aside and look at other major European languages and their regional variations. How uniform they are across the regions where they are spoken in terms of accent, grammar and lexicon.
French: French within regions in metropolitan France (northern, southern etc. - I heard French has the most uniformity/least variance but southwest can have a different accent), Swiss French, Belgium French, Quebec French, African French (in different countries of course).
German: in Germany, Switzerland, Austria (I heard it can be quite different). How different is it really from Dutch?
Spanish: various part of Spain, Latin America. "S" is pronounced quite differently ("th" as in think in Madrid or "s" in Latin America?)
Italian: different accents in the north vs. south? They are at least intelligible?
Portuguese: Portugal vs. Brazil.
Since as the child of immigrants Macedonian is not my native language, I am more sensitive to regional variations. The language of southwest Macedonia is very easy for me to understand and to speak. 10 miles south in Greece, it is virtually the same words but the dialect is so muddy sounding that it makes it hard for me to understand.
Likewise when I hear "proper" Macedonian such as watching something on the news. It is very difficult for me to follow, but when they interview the "man on the street" it becomes much easier.
Likewise with Croatian, Serbian and Bulgarian. The formal dialect is virtually impossible for me to understand, but when they interview the "man on the street" it is very easy to follow but not 100%.
Rita Wilson (Tom Hanks' wife) was trying to trace her father's heritage. It sounds like he was a Pomak (Bulgarian Muslim). They did a TV show on NBC (I believe it's online) where she tracked down a still-surviving brother of her dad's. (It was presented as being a surprise, but I'm sure that was just to make the TV show interesting.) She went to their village in Greece and tracked the brother down to Bulgaria and went there ...... I understood her uncle pretty well but not perfectly.
In Holland we have many accents and dialects. Every province has its own accent and within the provinces the accent varies from city to city. And we have the Frisian language, Limburgs, Low Saxon.
I work in South Holland and live in Brabant and i'm still sometimes surprised how much the accent varies just crossing the river by one mile.
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