I've always been fascinated by the variety of dialects within a region. My current research brought me to an article on Wikipedia. The number of different dialects in the United States blew my mind! I am a native English speaker, yet there are several of these dialects I have not heard of before. I have a Northern accent, but my favorite accent has always been and will continue to be the Southern accent. (You always want what you don't have, right?) This brings me to a couple questions that I would love to get feedback on from English learners.
First, as an English learner, how difficult (or easy) is it for you to detect different American dialects? Second, of all the dialects in the United States, do you have a favorite? If so, what is it?
* If you are interested in the Wikipedia article listing the different dialects found in the United States, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_English_language
* If you are interested in developing a Northern accent, I offer English classes daily for beginners, intermediate, and advanced learners. I also offer conversational lessons for those looking for a native speaker to just converse with. Please visit my profile page for more information: www.italki.com/teacher/katyv or www.italki.com/teacher/3239587. I look forward to meeting you!
I speak a dialect of Scots English called Doric, albeit a watered down version of its original form.
I only really speak it when I visit my mother in Aberdeen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_(Scotland)
Your topic is really interesting. I would say that I can detect the different dialects but I can't exactly say from which part they exactly come.
But I can easily tell you from which country a speaker comes (NEw Zealand, USA, Ireland etc. ) And there are a lot of native English people who can't exactly say from where the different accents come...I find that funny.
We have hundreds of different accents/dialects here in Switzerland. And lots of other Swiss German speaker can't understand me completely due to my very strong accent/dialect. Where I grew up I could tell you from which village people came (even if the villages were only 5 minutes far from each other). There were massive differences.
