(via victoriousvocabulary)
![yeahwriters:
jirasol:
it’s called AAVE, you [oh let’s censor this]
I hate how people here think that “proper general English” is the only way to speak English and all the others are considered “idiocy” like if language has anything to do with intelligence. I’m not even from the U.S. and I know this better than most of you.
Below is a list of all English dialects in North America:
American English - Standard American English is the general form
Cultural
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)
Chicano English
New York Latino English
Pennsylvania Dutch English
Yeshivish
Yinglish
Regional
New England English
Boston accent
Boston Brahmin accent
Hudson Valley English
Lake Dialect or Lake Talk
Vermont English
Inland Northern American English (includes western and central upstate New York)
Northeast Pennsylvania English
Mid-Atlantic dialects
Baltimore dialect
Philadelphia dialect
Pittsburgh English
New York dialect
New Jersey English dialects
Inland Northern American English (Lower peninsula of Michigan, northern Ohio and Indiana, Chicago, part of eastern Wisconsin and upstate New York)
North–Central American English (primarily Minnesota, but also most of Wisconsin, the Upper peninsula of Michigan, and parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa)
Yooper dialect (Upper Peninsula of Michigan and some neighboring areas)
Midland American English
North Midlands English (thin swath from Nebraska to Ohio)
St. Louis
South Midland (thin swath from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania)
Southern English
Appalachian English
Tidewater accent
Virginia Piedmont
Virginia TidewaterCoastal Southeastern (Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia area)
Cajun English
Harkers Island English (North Carolina)
Ozark English
Southern Highland English
Gullah or Geechee
Texan
Yat dialect (New Orleans)
Ocracoke
Western English
California English
Boontling
Pacific Northwest English
Hawaiian Pidgin
Canada
Canadian English:
Newfoundland English
Maritime English
Cape Breton accent
Lunenburg English
West–Central Canadian English
Northern Ontario English
Quebec English
Ottawa Valley Twang
Pacific Northwest English
Bermuda
Bermudian English
Native/American indigenous peoples
Native American/indigenous peoples of the Americas English dialects:
Mojave English
Isletan English
Tsimshian English
Lumbee English
Tohono O’odham English
Inupiaq English
From the New England accents Wiki:
Some speakers of the Western New England dialect—especially those from the region surrounding the major cities of Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut, along theConnecticut River—replace “t” with a glottal stop and replace “-ing” with “in’”. This would mean that those who do such would pronounce (for example) “sitting” as “sih-in’”, New Britain as “New Brih-nn”, and Clinton as “Clin-nn,” etc. T-glotallizing is found in other parts of the country as well, to varying degrees; however, it is prevalent in Southwestern New England.
I totally do this. I can’t say “mountain” or “kitten”; I say “mau-in” and “kih-en”. My parents always give me a hard time and it’s SO FUCKING ANNOYING. One time my stepmom told me that it made me sound less smart, which is ironic because I’m the most educated person in my entire extended family, and I wouldn’t think that a speech affect that makes you sound like you’re from Connecticut would dumb you down.
Seriously though, I met so many ultra-intelligent people with thick Southern accents when I was at UNC, and met so many idiots with perfect British accents when I lived in London. The accent=intelligence stereotype has totally been broken for me, which I’m quite thankful about.
Okay sorry /end rant.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/05045839904737a7e3389f952367d125/tumblr_ml1onoOWo01rg83yuo1_500.png)
it’s called AAVE, you [oh let’s censor this]
I hate how people here think that “proper general English” is the only way to speak English and all the others are considered “idiocy” like if language has anything to do with intelligence. I’m not even from the U.S. and I know this better than most of you.
Below is a list of all English dialects in North America:
American English - Standard American English is the general form
- Cultural
- Regional
- New England English
- Inland Northern American English (includes western and central upstate New York)
- Mid-Atlantic dialects
- Inland Northern American English (Lower peninsula of Michigan, northern Ohio and Indiana, Chicago, part of eastern Wisconsin and upstate New York)
- North–Central American English (primarily Minnesota, but also most of Wisconsin, the Upper peninsula of Michigan, and parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa)
- Yooper dialect (Upper Peninsula of Michigan and some neighboring areas)
- Midland American English
- North Midlands English (thin swath from Nebraska to Ohio)
- St. Louis
- South Midland (thin swath from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania)
- Southern English
- Western English
- Hawaiian Pidgin
Canada
Bermuda
Native/American indigenous peoples
Native American/indigenous peoples of the Americas English dialects:
From the New England accents Wiki:
Some speakers of the Western New England dialect—especially those from the region surrounding the major cities of Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut, along theConnecticut River—replace “t” with a glottal stop and replace “-ing” with “in’”. This would mean that those who do such would pronounce (for example) “sitting” as “sih-in’”, New Britain as “New Brih-nn”, and Clinton as “Clin-nn,” etc. T-glotallizing is found in other parts of the country as well, to varying degrees; however, it is prevalent in Southwestern New England.
I totally do this. I can’t say “mountain” or “kitten”; I say “mau-in” and “kih-en”. My parents always give me a hard time and it’s SO FUCKING ANNOYING. One time my stepmom told me that it made me sound less smart, which is ironic because I’m the most educated person in my entire extended family, and I wouldn’t think that a speech affect that makes you sound like you’re from Connecticut would dumb you down.
Seriously though, I met so many ultra-intelligent people with thick Southern accents when I was at UNC, and met so many idiots with perfect British accents when I lived in London. The accent=intelligence stereotype has totally been broken for me, which I’m quite thankful about.
Okay sorry /end rant.
- spanish and italian: So THESE words are feminine and THESE words are masculine, and you ALWAYS put an adjective AFTER the noun.
- french: haha i dont fuckin know man just do whatever
- german: LET'S ADD A NEUTRAL NOUN HAHA
- english: *shooting up in the bathroom*
- gaelic: the pronounciation changes depending on the gender and what letter the word starts and ends with and hahah i dont even know good fucking luck
- polish: here have all of these consonants have fun
- japanese: subject article noun article verb. too bad there's three fucking alphabets lmao hope your first language isn't western
- welsh: sneeze, and chances are you've got it right. idfk
- chinese: here's a picture. draw it. it means something. it can be pronounced three different ways. these twenty other pictures are pronounced the same but have very different meanings. godspeed.
- Arabic: so here's this one word. it actually translates to three words. also pronouns don't really exist. the gender is all in the verb. have fun!
- Latin: here memorize 500 charts and then you still dont know what the fuck is happening
- Sign Language: If you move this sign by a tenth of an inch, you'll be signing "penis"
- Lithuanian: Oooh, all those extra consonants and vowels! Have grammatical numbers nor just for nouns but also for adjectives, verbs, etc. You like the cases of declined words? Here, have SEVEN of those. Participles? Have THIRTEEN of those, some declined, some not. Don't get me started on the prefixes, we slap them on almost everything. You're a woman? Your surname will always reflect your marital status from special suffixes and endings (and will often be twice as long than your spouse's surname). Oh and you thought you knew everything about different endings? NOPE. They depend on gender, number, case of declension, tense, participle, wind speed, distance above sea level, day of the week, etc. Basically you can just give up and no Lithuanian will ever blame you.
I’m an English major. It is a language of conquest.
What does it say that I’m mastering the same language that was used to make my mother feel inferior? Growing up, I had a white friend who used to laugh whenever my mother spoke English, amused by the way she rolled her r’s. My sister and I tease Mami about her accent too, but it’s different when we do it, or is it? The echoes of colonization linger in my voice. The weapons of the death squads that pushed my mother out of El Salvador were U.S.-funded. When Nixon promised, “We’re going to smash him!” it was said in his native tongue, and when the Chilean president he smashed used his last words to promise, “Long live Chile!” it was said in his. And when my family told me the story of my grandfather’s arrest by the dictatorship that followed, my grandfather stayed silent, and meeting his eyes, I cried, understanding that there were no words big enough for loss.
English is a language of conquest. I benefit from its richness, but I’m not exempt from its limitations. I am ‘that girl’ in your English classes, the one who is tired of talking about dead white dudes. But I’m still complicit with the system, reading nineteenth-century British literature to graduate.
Diversity in my high school and college English literature courses is too often reduced to a month, week, or day where the author of the book is seen as the narrator of the novel. The multiplicity of U.S. minority voices is palatably packaged into a singular representation for our consumption. I read Junot Díaz and now I understand not only the Dominican-American experience, but what it means to be Latina/o in America. Jhumpa Lahiri inspired me to study abroad in India. Sherman Alexie calls himself an Indian, so now it’s ok for me to call all Indians that, too. We will read Toni Morrison’s Beloved to understand the horrors of slavery, but we won’t watch her takedowns on white supremacy.
Even the English courses that analyze race and diasporas in meaningful ways are still limited by the time constraints of the semester. Reading Shakespeare is required, but reading Paolo Javier and Mónica de la Torre is extra credit. My Experimental Minority Writing class is cross-listed at the most difficult level, as a 400-level course in the Africana Studies, Latina/o Studies, and American Studies departments, but in my English department, it is listed as a 300-level. I am reminded of Orwellian democracy: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
— Monica Torres, “Majoring In English,” The Feminist Wire 3/29/13 (via racialicious)(via paintwithwords)
Can we talk about the word queue
How many of those letters are really necessary
I count one
(via tyleroakley)
Benjamin Dreyer is the VP Executive Managing Editor & Copy Chief of Random House Publishing Group. Below is his list of the common stumbling blocks for authors, from A to X.
- One buys antiques in an antiques store from an antiques dealer; an antique store is a very old store.
- He stayed awhile; he stayed for a while.
- Besides is other than; beside is next to.
- The singular of biceps is biceps; the singular of triceps is triceps. There’s no such thing as a bicep; there’s no such thing as a tricep.
- A blond man, a blond woman; he’s a blond, she’s a blonde.
- A capital is a city (or a letter, or part of a column); a capitol is a building.
- Something centres on something else, not around it.
- If you’re talking about a thrilling plot point, the word is climactic; if you’re discussing the weather, the word is climatic.
- A cornet is an instrument; a coronet is a crown.
- One emigrates from a place; one immigrates to a place.
- The word is enmity, not emnity.
- One goes to work every day, or nearly, but eating lunch is an everyday occurrence.
- A flair is a talent; a flare is an emergency signal.
- A flier is someone who flies planes; a flyer is a piece of paper.
- Flower bed, not flowerbed.
- Free rein, not free reign.
- To garner is to accumulate, as a waiter garners tips; to garnish (in the non-parsley meaning) is to take away, as the government garnishes one’s wages; a garnishee is a person served with a garnishment; to garnishee is also to serve with a garnishment (that is, it’s a synonym for “to garnish”).
- A gel is a jelly; it’s also a transparent sheet used in stage lighting. When Jell-O sets, or when one’s master plan takes final form, it either jells or gels (though I think the former is preferable).
- Bears are grizzly; crimes are grisly. Cheap meat, of course, is gristly.
- Coats go on hangers; planes go in hangars.
- One’s sweetheart is “hon,” not “hun,” unless one’s sweetheart is Attila (not, by the way, Atilla) or perhaps Winnie-the-Pooh (note hyphens).
- One insures cars; one ensures success; one assures people.
- Lawn mower, not lawnmower.
- The past tense of lead is led, not lead.
- One loathes someone else but is loath to admit one’s distaste.
- If you’re leeching, you’re either bleeding a patient with a leech or otherwise sucking someone’s or something’s lifeblood. If you’re leaching, you’re removing one substance from another by means of a percolating liquid (I have virtually no idea what that means; I trust that you do).
- You wear a mantle; your fireplace has a mantel.
- Masseurs are men; masseuses are women. Many otherwise extremely well educated people don’t seem to know this; I have no idea why. (These days they’re all called massage therapists anyway.)
- The short version of microphone is still, so far as RH is concerned, mike. Not, ick, “mic.” [2009 update: I seem to be losing this battle. Badly. 2010 update: I’ve lost. Follow the author’s lead.]
- There’s no such word as moreso.
- Mucus is a noun; mucous is an adjective.
- Nerve-racking, not -wracking; racked with guilt, not wracked with guilt.
- One buys a newspaper at a newsstand, not a newstand.
- An ordinance is a law; ordnance is ammo.
- Palette has to do with colour; palate has to do with taste; a pallet is, among other things, something you sleep on. Eugene Pallette was a character actor; he’s particularly good in the 1943 film Heaven Can Wait.
- Noun wise, a premier is a diplomat; a premiere is something one attends. “Premier” is also, of course, an adjective denoting quality.
- That which the English call paraffin (as in “paraffin stove”), we Americans call kerosene. Copy editors should keep an eye open for this in mss. by British authors and query it. The term paraffin should generally be reserved for the waxy, oily stuff we associate with candles.
- Prophecy is a noun; prophesy is a verb.
- Per Web 11, it’s restroom.
- The Sibyl is a seeress; Sybil is Basil Fawlty’s wife.
- Please don’t mix somewhat and something into one murky modifier. A thing is somewhat rare, or it’s something of a rarity.
- A tick bites; a tic is a twitch.
- Tortuous is twisty, circuitous, or tricky; torturous is painful, or painfully slow.
- Transsexual, not transexual.
- Troops are military; troupes are theatrical.
- A vice is depraved; a vise squeezes.
- Vocal cords; strikes a chord.
- A smart aleck is a wise guy; a mobster is a wiseguy.
- X ray is a noun; X-ray is a verb or adjective.
I usually never reblog these bc I’m way too awesome to make mistakes, but omgosh there’s some I didn’t know here!!!
Holy useful Batman!
English Is Essentially __________.
“English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.”—Benct Philip Jonsson
“English is essentially a language that uses vowels no other language would accept.”—Luís Henrique
“English is what you get from Normans trying to pick up Saxon girls.”—Bryan Maloney
“English is essentially a French menu stuttered by a fish-and-chips dealer.”—Kala Tunu
“English is essentially the works of Joyce with the hard bits taken out.”—Jon Hanna
“English is essentially all exceptions and no rules.”—Jonathan Bettencourt
—A selection of “Essentialist Explanations.” Thanks to the Penguin Press for pointing out this gem.
Yet not my favorite:
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”—James D. Nicoll
(via absentlyabbie)
