Reference.com

List of dialects of the English language

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

This is a list of varieties of the English language. Dialects are linguistic varieties which differ in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar from each other and from Standard English (which is itself a dialect).

British linguists distinguish dialect from accent, which refers only to pronunciation. Thus, any educated English speaker can use the vocabulary and grammar of Standard English, but different speakers use their own regional accent; the one accent considered geographically neutral, Received Pronunciation, is marked instead by class. American linguists, however, include pronunciation differences as part of the definition of regional or social dialects (better called varieties).

International classifications

Europe

North America

Caribbean

Central & South America

Asia

Africa

Oceania

Constructed

Manual encodings of English

These encoding systems should not be confused with sign languages such as British Sign Language and American Sign Language.

The "Lishes"

The following are portmanteaus devised to describe certain local variants of English. Although similarly named, they are actually quite different in nature, with some being genuine mixed languages, some being instances of heavy code-switching between English and another language, some being genuine local dialects of English used by first-language English speakers, and some being non-native pronunciations of English. A few portmanteaus (such as Greeklish and Pinglish) are transliteration methods rather than any kind of spoken variant of English.

See also

References

External links



Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 06:22:16 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation