Hacker News Reader

Comment by heurisko | Hacker News Reader

> And there are dialects that are pretty much incomprehensible to people who grew up in the mainstream dialect (true of many other languages as well)

I think there are differences in accent, but I don't recognise anywhere as being "pretty much incomprehensible".

I speak "standard" German as a foreigner, and have definitely found dialects that are "pretty much incomprehensible". I haven't found differences to such a degree in English.

View on HN

> I haven't found such differences in English.

Find yourself a native Glaswegian to chat with, and see if you still feel the same way.

My brother's wife is from the Shetland islands. He'd always know when she was on the phone to her family, because she would drop straight into the dialect without realising it. The thing is, the Shetlanders know that their dialect is sufficiently different, so they learn TV English as well so they can make themselves understood to outsiders.

I had it happen to me with a taxi driver in Newcastle.

Obligatory Limmy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YfRbNipdOg

NSFW language, if you can understand it.

also hilarious if you can understand it

I've watched the entire show 4 times and can understand everything by now, but I still can't say I get the humour.

Limmy's humour is wilfully niche even among Scots and the Scots-adjacent. He has no intention of appealing to a wide audience. He's a great example of Twitch being good at finding an audience for the long tail of creators.

I wouldn't find them "pretty much incomprehensible", although there might be one or two variations in accent or words that we might trip over once or twice.

It would be much different experience from speaking with someone with a different German dialect, so I'd feel the same.

I was in Glasgow years ago for a conference. Wonderfully friendly locals, I didn't understand a word they said.

What English speakers refer to as dialects is milder than what other languages do, as English wiped all of its actual dialects out pretty early on. On the other hand, what's called in German a dialect might often be considered a language by linguists.

If you mean in English, I would say look to the poorer corners of blighty, or deep enough into Australia, and you may find what you need. Or, if you're in Los Angeles and white, ride the bus from Santa Monica to DTLA on any given weekend and just listen to people talk: that's English just as sure as mine is, but I get maybe half.

(Also, is Scots not a dialect of English? I'm not sure -- a mix at the very least. Great tutorials on TikTok for that as it's apparently endangered.)

If you mean German, haha that's easy, just go to Switzerland with a short stop in Swabia on the way, though in both places you'll have to practically beg people to speak their native tongue in front of a foreigner. The Swiss Germans especially will reflexively speak one of the major foreign tongues, namely Hochdeutsch or English, though in my experience the Swabians will still say stuff like schaffe gell and assume you can grok it since Germans know that much from TV.

For the benefit of confused Americans like myself: English as it is spoken in Scotland, Scots, and Scots Gaelic are three different things.

Interesting, I think Wikipedia is saying it's a distinct language that shares a lot of words etc with English:

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

And I admit I have no idea where the line is between a dialect, and that.

> And I admit I have no idea where the line is between a dialect, and that.

It's usually based around a combination of factor - mutual intelligibility, orthographic conventions, etc. Also, of course, "a language is a dialect with an army and navy."

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

The US mostly doesn't really have true dialects but there can be a fair bit of localized slang in some groups. And some accents, especially heavy rural Southern accents, can be tough especially for a non-native speaker.

> The US mostly doesn't really have true dialects

I think speakers of Cajun, Gullah, or High Tider dialects would seriously beg to differ.

And those are just a few of the "true" dialects of the American South.

Outside of that there are many dialects that mix Spanish and English throughout the southwest.

Also dialects spoken by yiddish speakers, most frequently found in east coast cities like New York.

>Also, is Scots not a dialect of English? I'm not sure -- a mix at the very least.

Scots and English are two dialects of the same language.

>. Or, if you're in Los Angeles and white, ride the bus from Santa Monica to DTLA on any given weekend and just listen to people talk: that's English just as sure as mine is, but I get maybe half.

Eh.

It's nothing more than repetition for the most part, along with certain parts of speech being implied. If your trying to overhear someone else's conversation you'll miss key points of context.

Having been to London , and South Central LA , I can't imagine any scenario where people from these places couldn't communicate with each other. A few words are definitely going to be different.

I grew up in an orthodox jewish community pretty near an even more, what might be termed "ultra orthodox" jewish community, and the dialect of english spoken there would probably be incomprehensible to native english speakers, both because of all the yiddishisms and also because of the accent.

I'm curious as to whether the practice of ultra orthodox men moving to a different community to marry does anything to standardise the Hebrew/English/Yiddish dialects between different communities/countries.

Does Newfinese fit the bill? Particularly the older generation. Listen to the first 10 seconds of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvnDy7PXiTc

Part of the imcomprehensibility stems from their wide use of sayings that aren’t really deductible. “Who knit ya?” is “who are your parents?” It makes sense in retrospect, but I don’t think many people would think that in retrospect.

I moved to Ireland 4 years ago. And for at least 2 years, I could not understand ( or hear ) a word my - not direct - Irish manager said. It was alien to me.

And you probably got off lightly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pit0OkNp7s8

Ha ha :) That video is priceless. And I experienced this first hand. If you get 5 or more kms outside Dublin, people start sounding gibberish.

> If you get 5 or more kms outside Dublin, people start sounding gibberish.

What a dumb and ignorant thing to say.

It comes across as more egocentric than "I had difficulty understanding them," but it is often the case that away from the more international areas it can become really difficult to understand the locals, whether that is rural Eire, Picardy or West Virginia.

Sorry If I sounded that way. As it's clear I am not native and meant "I can unfortunately hear gibberish with my untrained ears", not "they don't know how to speak proper". It's my dumbness.

You can definitely find dialects that are "pretty much incomprehensible" in the US just by traveling around Appalachia.

I'd never had a problem understanding a native English speaker from the US until I met a truck driver from eastern KY. Couldn't understand a single word he said. He was driving with his wife, who translated for him.

When my father (who had a Midlands-ish English accent) met my father-in-law (strong NC Appalachian accent), they could not at first understand each other. It was pretty funny.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com