English dialects
British versus American
English dialects are regional and social varieties of English distinguished by pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.
Major groupings include British dialects (Cockney, Scots, Yorkshire), American dialects (Southern, New England, African American Vernacular), and varieties from Australia, Ireland, the Caribbean, and elsewhere.
Dialects reflect geography, class, ethnicity, and history: She still speaks in her native dialect.
All dialects are linguistically complete systems, though some carry more social prestige than others.
- GeordieNewcastle resident or dialect
- broad accentPronounced regional inflection
- working class speechProletarian verbal expression
- Indo-CaribbeanSouth Asian Caribbean diaspora
- idiomatic expressionsPhrases with non-literal meanings
dropped aitches · code-switching · diphthongs · Aussie · mother tongue · lilt · drawl · regional · regional slang · tongue · accent · Irish · patois · twang · creole · vernacular · Yorkshire · Midlands
- Englishregional variations, accents, spelling, orthography
- World EnglishesSinglish, Hinglish, Chinglish, Japanglish, Spanglish
- dialectologylinguistic atlas, regional dialects, fieldwork, Neapolitan, Sicilian
- language changelanguage change, linguistic diffusion, loan words, creolization, Great Vowel Shift
English dialectsforeign languages
Tongues not one's own
Mandarin Chinese · Arabic · Japanese · language families · French