Reactions for a Course of Diachronic Linguistics

I will be posting some reactions that I wrote for a course of diachronic linguistics during 2007. The reactions deal with the origin of English, a little bit of its history and its evolution thru the years. I hope this contribution might help those students who are learning English as a second language.


Reaction Paper 10: Modern English Dialects


Summary

The book distinguishes the existence of two types of dialects in Modern English, the traditional and the modern. The traditional varieties correspond to the English spoken in rural areas, usually by older, less educated people. On the contrary, the modern varieties include the Standard form of the language, associated with the Homo Counties, the urban and metropolitan areas.

There is a particular study based on dialects done by Wakelin in which he categorizes British English in four dialectal groups: the North, the West Midlands, the East Midlands and the South-West. Some years later, Trudgill carried out a survey to determine the dialects of English. Then, this same researcher used a set of linguistic characteristics to differentiate the modern dialects.

It is important to consider that the Education Act of 1870 established English public schools where all classes of society were mingled for the first time. This social change brought a permutation in the speech patterns.

Opinion

I consider very important to carry out a research in regards to the dialects that characterize the Present-Day English. This is a way to appreciate the standard and non-standard varieties of the language that embrace the part of the heritage of every linguistic region. I believe that the university should offer a specific course in dialectal variations.