So hello everybody. How are you? I hope you're all great. So by this topic i'd like to start a very interesting theme for me.As i wrote in one of my notes here on italki i like to know more about different accents and dialects in the Engish language. So i once read a good article somewhere on the internet that some British American Austarlian people have some problem in undestanding each other and sometimes very funny situations. For example a word Thongs in Australia means a pair of flip-flops and some Americans couldn't understand a sign on the shop that one can't go into the shop without thong. I think situation like this is really funny. And one should be aware of it anyway. So that is the question: Have you ever been in some situation like this? Or can you tell us any funny moment because of accent difference you had or you friend or anyone?Ok everyone welcom!)
Yeah Jmat thanks for your entry. I'm a little aсquainted with Austarlian English and i know what Root for means there)))
When I was a kid, I was playing a Pokemon game and in it the mum of the character you play said "I'm rooting for you, baby!"
I now know what "to root" means in the US, but at the time I was horrified :-D
I found this video about Scots in Scots yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cENbkHS3mnY
Scots is related to English, both being descended from Middle English. Scots shouldn't be confused with Scottish English (the Scottish variety of modern English) or Scottish Gaelic (which is in a different language group altogether). I've read about Scots before, but I've never heard it spoken out loud. I can understand most of the video, but it's interesting how so much of it sound more Dutch than English. It's also interesting that 'gh' is pronounced in Scots when the sound it used to represent in English doesn't exist anymore.
A few years ago, the New York Times presented a very interesting online "dialect mapping" exercise. Every native U.S. speaker I know who's tried it has found to be almost eerily accurate:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=0
It asks a series of 25 questions such as this:
What do you call the small road parallel to the highway?
frontage road
service road
access road
feeder road
gateway
we have them but I have no word for them
I've never heard of this concept
Do you pronounce "cot" and "caught" the same way or differently?
For each question, it shows a little color-shaded map showing what regions of the U.S. tend to answer the same way you did; then finally, it shows you an overall picture of what regions have the closest to your overall patterns of answers.
