dialects?!?!?!?!?

Question

hi! I'm italian, I began to study english 3 years ago... In italy there are a lot of local dialects...they are interesting! Are there any dialects in England? If there are, can you make me some examples? I'm curious! HI, THANKS!

Answer 1

There are plenty of dialects in English. There are hundreds in the United Kingdom alone before you go to the USA. Many of them are mutually unintelligible, just as many of the Italian dialects are but there is the base language English that everyone understands. If you took a person from Belfast, one from Hull and one from Penzance and sat them down together, they would not understand each other if they spoke their local dialect.

Added
There is a dialect chain through the UK. Each dialect is completely understandable to the people next door but the dialects at the ends of the chain are almost different languages. You see this in Italy and many other parts of Europe. There is a classic dialect chain in Fiji.

While people know their own dialect, they modify it when speaking to outsiders to bring it closer to the standard so it is understandable. There are certainly many dialects in the UK and even more accents.

I only have a BA(Hons) in Anthropological Linguistics so I suppose I am not really qualified to discuss such matters.

Answer 2

I have been to Scotland and I really struggled to understand people when they spoke fast and used words I didn't know.

I stayed there a while and made friends and someone from Glasgow (west of Scotland) who has moved to Aberdeen (North East of the country) told me she couldn't understand the jokes and the accent there!!!

I guess that when everyone makes an effort they can understand each others. But if locals go into full mode local linguo, forget it you're lost. Bear in mind that there is also another language spoken in Scotland (not a dialect), which is Gaelic (especially still in the Western Isles).
London east end is a nice piece of work too, innit ;-)
But the best dialect is the one spoken in Windsor. Jolly good, what? LOL

Answer 3

There are hundreds of accents but dialects are less common.
There are areas such as Newcastle where their strong accent is supplemented by their own vocabulary, but it's not a large addition to or replacement of English. This is true of many places where certain words and phrases are particular to that area. The west country (Cornwall and Devon). Liverpool, the East end of London, East Anglia etc. Almost all areas of Britain have their own words and phrases but there's nothing of a true dialect really.