English language variation - group B by ELISA MARCHIORO STUMPF

Golconda, Illinois, EUA

2022-07-05 14:00:04 UTC

Luiza Estivalet Pinto and Maria Victória Pfitscher Pydd
Before I Knew It by Mason Ramsey

Especially in this song, we can observe the kind of English that Mason Ramsey speaks is the one mostly used in the southern region of the United States and by artists in the country genre industry. Such English features the drop of the letter “g” in the present tense, like in “talkin’” and the use of “ain't'' instead of other words to express negation. The singer also pronounces “I” in a manner different than the one used in Standard American English. In SAE, “I” is pronounced [aɪ], while in this variation, it is pronounced [ä]. What stands out the most is the drawl, that features slower, longer vowel sounds and diphthongs.

Taglish

2022-07-06 21:49:25 UTC

The Philippines is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. The language most spoken in the metropolitan area of the capital Manila is Tagalog. However, the population in the area speak a variety of Tagalog strongly influenced by English - so much so, it can be nearly impossible for some people to escape using English words in speech.

This presence of Tagalog and English, both at a lexical and structural level of usage, has become known as Taglish - Tagalog + English. This street interview poses a challenge for regular people in Manila to answer a set of questions without using any linguistic forms that stem from Tagalog.

The existence of Taglish blurs the lines between bilingualism and variation within a single language. Is it a type of English? Is it a type of Tagalog? Or is it something unique?

Bel Air, Los Angeles, CA, EUA

2022-07-06 22:30:28 UTC

In the video presented, we can see a stretch from the TV Show ‘’The Fresh Prince of Bel-air’’, a series already known for bringing up some cultural reflections about prejudice and racism in the United States. During the scene, we see an argument between Will’s uncle and father, and right after we see Will talking to his uncle about his father. During their talk, Will says to his uncle ‘’Ain’t like I’m still five years old, ain’t like imma be sitting up every night asking my mom when is daddy coming’’.

We can check that Will speaks African American English because of the use of the variation of the verb to be ‘’AIN’T’’ and the structure ‘’be sitting up every night’’ where he is using the verb ‘’be’’ to talk about a habit or routine. As a contrast, his uncle, who is a black person, does not speak that way. Even though being black, Will’s uncle is not an AAE speaker, probably because he is from a different social status and had to adapt into another class’ culture and way of speaking.

Group: Helena Vieira Matias Paulo and João Pedro Santos

Inglaterra, Reino Unido

2022-07-07 15:40:37 UTC

The attached scene was taken from the Friends series and shows some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between American English and British English. When the character Phoebe imitates the British accent, she changes the way she would say the word "mobile", in which Americans pronounce the noun mobile as "MOH-beel", while in the British version it says "moh" + "BEEL". Also, British Americans used to use cell phone to talk about the telephone, while Brits used the word mobile more often in this function. Another situation is when the character Amanda speaks flat, which in American English would be called an apartment. The character also says "ring me back" instead of "call me".
- Luísa Lemos, 00325963

Australia

rafaelarf2003 — 2022-07-07 21:26:49 UTC

THE AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH

We all know that an uncountable amount of English varieties exist in the world, each one with their own characteristics and specificities. One of them is Australian English (AusE). Firstly, we have to keep in mind that even Australian English has its different dialects, depending on regional and social matters. But talking about it in a general scale, there are some interesting differences in comparison to other World Englishes.

I chose this meme to show some characteristics from AusE. In this meme, it says that if we say "good eye might" (in American Standard English), we'll sound Australian. This is because the AusE accent/pronunciation is a little different: the 'a' in words like "day" and "mate" is pronounced more open, with an 'i' / 'eye' sound. So, this is a little joke with the real sentence referred to, which is "Good day, mate", one of the most common greeting expressions used by Australian people.

Another interesting thing to spot is the word "mate", which is (probably) the most common expression used by Australians to call a friend or any person who they are talking with. It is equivalent to "buddy". The last thing I would like to talk about is the habit of shortening words and expressions, in the spoken variety. The expression "Good day", used in the meme, is commonly spelled "G'day", for example.

Other examples of shortened expressions are: "arvo", which means "afternoon"; some names of professions, as "tradie" (a tradesman), "sparky" (an electrician) and "chippy" (a carpenter); and foods as "avo" (avocado), "barbie" (barbecue) and "sanga" (sandwich). There are many other interesting characteristics of AusE, of course, that I have not been able to contemplate in this short text. However, I would like to point out that Australian English is an awesome variation of World Englishes.

Student: Rafaela Rasia Fonseca

Providence, RI, EUA

2022-07-07 23:08:24 UTC

For our contribution to the “Museum of English Variation” we analyzed the writing of H.P Lovecraft, in the short story “At the Mountains of Madness”, in a historical variation perspective, and we found some words that have fallen into disuse. In the examples below we show the three words we picked, their meanings and the contexts on which they were used in Lovecraft's work.

The first example of variation we found in the text was “betwixt”, an archaic form of the preposition “between”, as can be seen in the following sentence: “The touch of evil mystery in these barrier mountains, and in the beckoning sea of opalescent sky glimpsed betwixt their summits, was a highly subtle and attenuated matter not to be explained in literal words.”

Following “betwixt”, we were met with “shew”, an older form of the verb “show” that was utilized by Lovecraft in this passage, as follows: “Fifty miles of flight in each direction shewed no major change in the labyrinth of rock and masonry that clawed up corpse-like through the eternal ice.”

The next word (or words, in this case) we found intriguing was “to eke out”, a phrasal verb, which means “to make a supply last by economy” on the phrase: “... and despite the special dry cell formula would obviously be good for only about four more (hours)—though by keeping one torch unused, except for especially interesting or difficult places, we might manage to eke out a safe margin beyond that.”

Group: Artur Gomes Ferreira and Lucas Eduardo Camargo

London, Reino Unido

2022-07-07 23:39:22 UTC

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - Let's Call The Whole Thing Off HQ

On this video, we can listen and see the phonological differences between American English and British English. Although both caractheres on the video are american, they play with the phonological differences. She started correcting his speech when she says that the word is “neither”, not “either”. Furthermore, there are some grammar differences on the written, for example, some words that ends with the "ze" in USA, the Britishians write with the "se" (USA: realize; organize; organization..., while the British write realise, organise, organisation and so on. There are some differences between the semantic, for example, in USA they use "jeans" to refer to the pants, while in the UK "jeans" means little pants (calcinha), for the britishes "jeans" it's "trouser". Other example: in the USA "sneaker", in the UK "trainer"; in the USA "pullover", in the UK it's "jumper" and so on. But like Williamson Burke said on “A various language, 1971”: if one ways is right, why don't we all pronounce that way and compel the other fellow to do the same?

Seul, Coreia do Sul

2022-07-08 00:55:18 UTC

I decided to bring two versions of the song called “purpose” by Justin Biber, the original version, which you can listen to here and a cover, that is above the text. The main point here is to spot the differences between how some words sound when said by a (1) native spaker and (2) someone (from what can be called the Expandind Circle) that has it as a second language. You may notice a slight difference on how 1 says “heart” and “Hand” meanwhile 2 sounds more like “eart”and “RAnd”, if you go a little further on the song you have 1 saying “forver peaCee” but two says “forEver peaee” they take out letters in different words. You can also see some distinction on the manner 1 pronouces the V on the sentence “... that I’ve ever known” because 2 sounds like how you just read but 1, in the other hand, seems to mark it (the V) sounding like “...I’Ve eVEr known”.

Mississippi, EUA

2022-07-08 01:19:46 UTC

Even knowing that black english is nothing more than a dialect of english it is unusual to see a dialect other than standard English in literary works. Black English is used to compose both the book and the movie "The Hate U Give". The author's action to make more legitimate the dialect that is marginalized for being a "bad English" is part of the important fight against racism that presents itself in the narrative of the protagonist Starr. But in the movie "The Hate U Give" we see Starr, a black girl who knows that she has to divide between two personalities to be welcomed both in her neighborhood and at school.

At school, the character does not allow herself to speak informally with her white classmates because she knows that if she uses slang or any dialect other than standard English, her classmates will think she is being rude. In the scene shown in the video when she enters the school, a white girl arrives and says "Hey boo" speaking informally but Starr formally replies "Hey how are you?"

The fact is that Starr uses slang and speaks informally in her daily life, within her community. She is forced to leave her informal way of speaking. It "whitens" her way of speaking and acting. As she watches her white peers try to act or speak like black people.

It's not like standard language doesn't have slang or like black english is just slang but it's about noticing that when a black person uses their dialect it can be interpreted as being rude. While a white person can use slang to look cool. Prejudice with Black English becomes a social prejudice when we realize that it is an intelligible dialect. Example: She has been working (SE), She been workin' (AAVE)

Name : Gabrielle Cezar Cidade (00302730)

Cape Town, South Africa

2022-07-08 03:05:31 UTC

Above there is a sample of an article published by the Jewish English Archives journal, written by David Gold, commenting the fourth edition of ‘A Dictionary of South African English’. In this specific part, the author mentions ‘Anglikaans’, which is a term used to refer to the mixture of English and Afrikaans, both recognized as official languages of South Africa. This term is a perfect example of an English variation in a country that was first colonized by the Dutch and then by the British. Besides Anglikaans (also called Afrikaner English), there are other four varieties of English in the country: English spoken by racially mixed or ‘Asiatic’ people, the English spoken by the black section of the population, the English spoken by native speakers of the language and the South African Indian English spoken by Indians immigrants, mainly, from the 19^th century.

Summarizing, the hypothetical language ‘Anglikaans’ emerged in a context of linguistic diversity, in a country that recognizes 11 languages as official. Other than the mixture of Afrikaans and English, there are different variations of English that can be observed in South Africa and can be seen in the journal mentioned before available on

Student: Bruna Schmidt Vieira.

London, Reino Unido

2022-07-08 19:46:44 UTC

The Cockney dialect, also known as cockney accent, is spoken on the East End of London, which historically was a working-class, immigrant neighborhood, that is now suffering a process of gentrification. Initially, most of the inhabitants of the East End worked at the local docks, and then factories moved there, which lowered the living conditions of an already desperately poor, overcrowded area.

Some of the most relevant immigrant populations that settled on the East End along the centuries were: the Huguenots (French protestants), the Irish, Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, the Chinese and, more recently, the Bangladeshi. Cockney has been heavily influenced by the languages of these people, noticeably in the “H” drop, standard in France, and in the “oy” pronunciation of “I”, common in Yiddish.

There are other pronunciation differences from RP, as the replacement of the “T” sound with a glottal stop, the dropping of the H sound and the turning of the “TH” sound into “F” or “V”, depending on placement and vocalization. Also, Cockney has several different expressions and vocabulary; and finally, there is the obscure rhyming slang.

Cockney speakers used to be shamed for their accents, but today there's no longer a stigma around it. There are over 250 languages spoken in London, which influences Cockney continuously. The attached video explains didactically and with humor the particularities of this variety of English.

Júlia Salvato - 00333789

Paquistão

2023-06-19 23:29:51 UTC

Here it is a video with many scenes from Miss Marvel Series. The main charachter was born in New Jersey, but her family is from Pakistan. Kamala's mom has a strong accent principally when she says the "R" letter.
It's possible to see on this scene the difference between Kamala and Kamala's mom, because the mom was born in Pakistan. The most interrested part of this vídeo is because even Kamala living with his familly who originally are from Pakistan, she speaks diferente of them, probabily because Kamala was raised in an english atmophere mixing with his family’s originallity, diferente from his parentes. In spite of that Kamala’s accent is not so american.

Fernando Nunes