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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

Isolation is probably an important factor for the development of an accent

I grew up in a small fishing village in the north of Scotland - an area notorious for its very strong accents (to the point of some documentaries filmed locally having to be subtitled in English!).

However, people who lived on farms spoke with a noticeably different accent (at least to the ears of locals) - even though they might be physically on a kilometer or two from the nearest village.

NB This was in the 70s - I suspect none of these communities are quite as insular as they used to be.

The movie "Hot Fuzz" played up variations in regional accents in England. There's a scene (1) where the London cop (Simon Pegg) has to use two rural cops in order to interpret the dialect of an old farmer.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw

That scene is only a slight exaggeration. Rural West Country accents can be almost totally unintelligible to users of standard English.

https://youtu.be/WjTIFkWJctY?t=40s

Its amazing how diverse the accent can be in such a tiny part of the world. Its extremely easy to tell if someone is from Bristol, Gloucester, Swindon or Salisbury immediately.

Yeah I've always wondered why that has happened in Britain but not so much in the US in that people on different ends of the country can often sound not too dissimilar,

I would guess that parts of the UK haven't had any serious external influences in terms of culture or population for a very long time indeed - at least until fairly recently.

e.g. In my mouth I remember my parents joking that anyone whose family hadn't been in the village for at least three generations were still regarded as "incomers".

It used to be that way in the US, too, up until radio and TV began exposing everyone to the accents from the Northeast (politicians) and California (Hollywood).

The accent of Hollywood wasn't actually the accent of California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

The west coast was settled barely 200 years ago, and at that time they would have spoken essentially the same mix of accents as those on the east cost. That's not a lot of time to differentiate. In addition, there's a lower population density in th US and people need to move larger distances, e.g. to shop at the nearest town, so the areas of mostly similar pronunciation should be expected to be larger.

Then there are travel and long-distance communication, which cause linguistic convergence in essentially every country, so there dialects in the US are never going to be as fractured as they used to be in Europe.

I went to BYU which has mormons from all over the US, it was really rare for me to be able to tell where someone was from (and even noticing someone having a non-standard but still American accent was fairly uncommon).

This is a hypothesis about how variation relates to the period of time in which a language has been in an area. Simply put, the more diversity within a region, the more likely that place is the origin [1].

So in this case, England will have the most linguistic diversity within English since it originated there.

This hypothesis has an analogue within population genetics, e.g. Africa has the most genetic diversity compared to other regions.

I don't know if this effect has been given a name yet, but it would seem to apply to any system where 1) mutations accumulate over time 2) populations tend to be stable but 3) groups occasionally move about very large distances.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/3dq1ko/why...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220...

Wow. There's a linked video of farmers from Kerry, Ireland as well. I can't understand the first one, the second just barely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUvcjk8J5c

Haha, I ran into a couple of Irish lads in a club in the weekend.

I know it sounds like a stereotype, but with a few pints down them I swear I couldn't understand a thing they said when they were talking to each other. I had to check they weren't speaking Gaelic or something.

You definitely get used to accents quickly though. After a couple of weeks of hanging out with a bunch of Scottish people, I could understand Glasgow patter like it was normal English.

and Robert Newton can be thanked for turning it into the pirate voice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Newton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Country_English#Social_st...

Communication technology has undoubtedly had an effect on the Scots language, but I think that education is a far bigger factor. For generations, children have been taught exclusively in English and chastised for using Scots. Like Welsh and Cornish, Scots was a victim of linguistic imperialism.

I think at times it’s difficult to separate imperialism from economic dominance. Sometimes these things are due to economic might (for example Brazilian Portuguese is more influential than peninsular Portuguese, however, Brazil is hardly the imperialist in this scenario)

Is it imperialism or economic influence which might make an edinburger accent more prevalent in Scotland?

I think the point on linguistic imperialism was referring to things like the Welsh Not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not

I can remember a girl in a class when I was at school in the late 70s being asked a question by a teacher and she clearly had been day dreaming a bit so replied "fit?" (i.e. "what?"). The teacher got very angry and threw a wooden blackboard cleaner at her head which just missed by a few cm.

I can also remember some kids getting far worse treatment in primary school for slipping into dialect (e.g. one chap who mispronounced something was told by the teacher to look at the blackboard more carefully so he went right up to it and the teacher went behind him and slammed his head into the blackboard).

[Edit: I should have said "loonie" rather than "chap" - a "loon" being a boy, a "loonie" a young boy - similarly "quine" and "quinie" for girls and young girls - aye it's a sair fecht ;-)]

Another small, fishing town in the north of Scotland alumni here - Wick, Caithness, this I suspect is "much" further north than arethuza. He lived near the Big City of Aberdeen ;)

Just to give you a sense of how local accents can be. The Caithness accent (mostly Norse origin with a little bit of Gaelic thrown in) is often confused for Irish - even by people who live within 50km of the county. (Personal experience, no references).

I'm from Portknockie (an interesting name in itself) not sure I would describe that as "near" Aberdeen.... ;-)

Should have said North East rather than North!

Even in populated areas there can be professional differences, my favorite being Pitmatic, a variation on the dialects of Northeast England that derives from coal miners. It is indeed disappearing, if not disappeared (along with most of the coal miners)

Definitely. I live in Atlantic Canada we're quite isolated from Canada plus geographically it's difficult to move between the provinces.

On top of that my province is an island, rural, small population, lots of isolated towns, farms and fishing towns. For an island of only 150,000 and 170km long I can easily spot dialects from other parts of the island.

Broadly speaking west is more French and east is more English. Add in Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Lebanese, First Nations and now more recently Chinese.

At least 50% of the population lives in the capital city region so the remaining rural areas are quite small in population and isolated. Cars have changed a lot of that but in the olden days horse and buggy meant a few days between towns, add more time in the winter.

We have the inhale yes sound which is fairly rare. I'm not sure what other unique terms or patterns are here but out isolation certainly has made this area of Canada unique language-wise.

This is true, and not just in language - Africa has some of the highest genetic diversity found in relative short distances because of isolated villages. I can imagine local accents and by extension languages form even faster than detectable genetic traits.

I'm sure it may be, but physical isolation is certainly not a necessity. E.g. London has several separate recognisable accents ignoring the ones tied to specific ethnic groups. What physical isolation tends to give is much clearer lines - the London accents blur into each other a lot, and people moving around a lot makes it more a game of averages.

I agree. I live in Rhode Island, the smallest state I the US and we have multiple distinct accents that are clear to those who grow up here. Even from adjacent towns!

Many people in RI down even travel within the state very far.

I've spent a lot of time in RI myself. Can you say more about the differences you have in mind?

All I can think of is Cranston vs. elsewhere.

Well I’ve noticed the accents mostly with people who’s family have been here for at least a few generations. Cranston acccent is quite different than providence even though they are adjacent. Johnston also has a similar accent to Cranston but a little different still to an acute ear. I don’t know how to really describe them in words.

I’ve also noticed quite bit of difference in accent by age group. For example, my grandmother is from providence and is 92. She pronounces “bottle” as “baw’ull”. Many of her friends around her age speak similarly.

My wife’s family is from south shore MA, about 30 minutes from providence. Their accent is way different too (and different from Boston). They pronounce “bath” as “bawth” (almost British) but Boston says “Baath”.

Thanks. I spend most of my time in South County, so I'm not exposed to a lot of the accents you're talking about.

Yes I haven’t heard much variation in south county accents. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cranston and Johnston and providence accents sound the same to many south county residents.

I find it amazing that there is so much difference in so small a distance.

Also a factor in retaining the accent while the rest of the world moves on ( e.g. Canadian French )

I would add that isolation is a fundamental factor in the theory of evolution.

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