Dialect

“ Now, the view taught at the present time seems to me to want greatness; and the dialect in which alone it can be intelligibly uttered is not the dialect of my soul. It is a sort of postponement of life; nothing quite is, but something different is to be; we are to keep our eyes upon the indirect from the cradle to the grave. ”

“ We of the English-speaking race are apt to wonder at this love of a local dialect. This vigorous attempt to create a first-rate literature, alongside and independent of the national literature, seems strange or unnatural. We are accustomed to one language, spoken over immense areas, and we rejoice to see it grow and spread, more and more perfectly unified. ”

“ Thus innumerable dialects spring up. Whenever a difference of situation takes place among the people composing the aggregate by whom the original language was spoken, a diversity of dialect is at once created. ”

“ Is it possible that, in the mesmeric trance, the mind in some cases rejects as artificial fabric all the educated conventionality of tongues, and resumes unconsciously the original and genuine dialect of the world? ”

“ There are, it is true, dialect stories which we must all admire and enjoy,—many of them in spite of their strange language rather than because of it,—but none the less is the multiplicity of tales in dialect a visitation not unlike the Egyptian plague of swarming flies or of sprawling frogs. ”

“ It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers of it is surely a monstrous step. ”

“ Would an universal idiom result from this fusion of societies, or would there be a dialect of compromise, employed for daily use, while each nation would talk its own language, or else would the different languages be understood by all? ”

“ I hold that the value of dialect to the American author has never yet been estimated. When a story has a lot of dialect, you never discover that it hasn’t anything else. (Laughter, and a surprised frown from Cryder.) Furthermore, as America is too young to have an imagination, the dialect is an admirable and original substitute for plot and situations. ”

“ "Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught! ”

“ It is in such out-of-the-way places that one hears the dialect to perfection, and learns, if one is so minded, much strange wisdom acquired by many generations spent in isolation from the living world. ”

“ If, from some conformity between us and the pupil, or perhaps among all men, we do in truth speak in such a dialect and express such views, beyond question we shall touch in him a spring; beyond question he will recognise the dialect as one that he himself has spoken in his better hours ”

“ Every item of the difference by which a given dialect is distinguished from its ancestor, or from another dialect having the same ancestry, is the work of a gradual change of usage made by the members of a community in the speech which they were every day employing as their means of mutual communication, and which, if too rapidly altered, would not answer the purposes of communication. ”

“ Their use rises and falls with fashion in nations, classes, groups, and families, and it controls the habits of individuals. Whether certain persons use a pious dialect, a learned (pedantic) dialect, a gambler's slang, a phraseology of excessive adjectives and silly expletives, or profane expressions, oaths, and phrases which abuse sacred things, depends on birth and training. In this sense each dialect is the language for each group and corresponds to the mores of the group. ”

“ Hitherto we have been concerned chiefly with the second of these three characteristics of a dialect, namely vocabulary, but we will now consider in some detail the first on the list, namely pronunciation, and here we cannot fail to be struck by the wonderful uniformity and regularity of the sound-system of modern dialects.
To classify the modern dialects of a country is a difficult and unsatisfactory task. ”

“ As Max Müller puts it: ‘the real and natural life of language is in its dialects,’ The Science of Language, vol. i, p. 55.
A dialect may be defined as one of the subordinate forms or varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities of pronunciation, vocabulary, and idiom, or as that form or idiom of a language peculiar to a limited region or people, as distinguished from the literary language of the whole people. ”

“ A dialect is a variation in the pronunciation, and necessarily in the orthography of words, or a peculiarity of phrase or idiom, usually accompanied by a tone which seems to be as local as the word it utters. It is a language rarely understood out of the sphere of the population by whom it is appropriated. A language is fixed in a nation by a flourishing metropolis of an extensive empire, a dialect may have existed coeval with that predominant dialect which by accident has become the standard or general language ”

“ First, dialect imparts a flavour to a narrative, especially when it is in contrast to educated utterances on the part of other characters. But the chief reason is that dialect people have more character than other people—as a rule. ”

“ Helped by the two other causes of linguistic change, the dialect of a household becomes in time the dialect of a clan or tribe, and as soon as its characteristics are sufficiently numerous and distinct, the dialect is transformed into a language. ”

“ Insomuch as the intense expressiveness of a dialect—of a small vocabulary in the mouth of a dramatic people—lies in the various accent wherewith a southern citizen knows how to enrich his talk, it remains for the actor to restore its life to the written phrase. In dialect the author is forbidden to search for the word, for there is none lurking for his choice ”

“ Equally with the perfect English, then, dialect should have full justice done it. Then always it is worthy, and in Literature is thus welcome. The writer of dialect should as reverently venture in its use as in his chastest English. His effort in the SCHOLARLY and ELEGANT direction suffers no neglect— he is SCHOOLED in that, perhaps, he may explain. Then let him be SCHOOLED in DIALECT before he sets up as an expounder of it—a teacher, forsooth a master! ”

“ It must be remembered, that unlettered races are subject to far greater and more rapid changes of dialect [85] than those who preserve in sacred books or popular poetry fixed standards of correct speech; add to this, the chances of error when a traveller, communicating with a native through an interpreter, and contending with sounds unusual to his ear, attempts to form a vocabulary. These causes, acting together, tend to increase the difficulty of recognizing linguistic affinities that really exist. ”

“ The object of the use of dialect is of course to produce what might be called a personal local color. To personages who belong to nationalities other than his own a writer often gives phrases in their own tongue or conforming to the idiom of their own language in order to convey a lively impression of their being foreigners. ”

“ A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and force, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper, which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms of sentence peculiar to the race, and pronunciations indicative of their character and disposition. ”

“ I have, as we may suppose, a kind of home dialect, containing a certain proportion of baby-talk, and a larger of favourite colloquialisms, which would sound a little queerly, if they were not unintelligible, to any one outside of my family circle; as an artisan, pursuing a special branch of manufacture or trade, or as one engaged in a particular profession, or study, or department of art, I am a member of another community, speaking a language to some extent peculiar, and which would be understood neither by my wife and children nor by the majority of speakers of English. ”

“ Perhaps, unless a poet has a dialect ringing in his ears, so as to shape his metre and rhymes according to it at one jet, it is better to be content with a few suggestive touches; and, I fear, that the stupid public is not half grateful for studies in dialect beyond such suggestions. ”

“ The language of the educated in England, however,—in other words, the language of those who aim at following the norm,—agrees in one respect, that in all an emancipation from dialect is aimed at, and, to a large extent, attained. ”

“ There is polished English, which seems to indicate high education, and there is the most picturesque dialect variation that could be desired by the most ardent devotee of the everlasting dialect story. ”

“ This tendency of the mother tongue, to break up into as many dialects as there are shades of difference in the position and tendencies of its speakers, is only arrested by the formation of a cultivated dialect, created when the wants of an educated or cultivated class in the community demand a common medium of interchanging their ideas. ”

“ PHONOLOGY AND GRAMMAR The average educated Englishman has no accurate conception of what a dialect really is, beyond a vague notion that the term covers a mass of barbarisms, corruptions, and mispronunciations of the King’s English, devoid of any order or system, and used by the illiterate rustic in a haphazard fashion with no regard to consistency. ”

“ CORRUPTIONS AND POPULAR ETYMOLOGIES If we are to avoid on the one hand the danger of regarding a dialect as nothing better than a wilful perversion of standard English, we yet must not allow ourselves to be beguiled by the smooth-running course of true sound-laws, or the rural charm of quaint words, into the opposite error of supposing that irregularities and distortions do not exist. ”

“ The employment of dialect and of local color as a means of producing literary effect is apt to impart to work a transient character. Their effect is less likely to be permanently pleasing than that of almost any other thing legitimately among the resources of the story-teller. The principle that it is well to appeal to ordinary experiences and to ordinary tastes comes in here. The general reader soon tires of dialect unless it be very simple and is supported by all other devices within the range of art. ”

“ The general reader may feel like protesting against the use of a dialect that presents so many difficulties, and the philologist will object to the form employed, as being too much influenced by English associations to represent the dialect of the people in its native purity. ”

“ Although archaic words and expressions have been retained, no attempt has been made to preserve local peculiarities of speech, it being the custom among folksingers to use each his own particular dialect. ”

“ Clever, Comical, Conceit, Discourse The linguistic study of the dialects becomes an entertaining pursuit when we turn our attention to the dialect usage of literary words in a sense other than that to which we are accustomed in standard English. This can only be illustrated by quotations, for only thus can the true inwardness of the dialect meaning be appreciated. Adapted (Hmp.) means accustomed to: a man adapted to pigs is a man experienced in the rearing of swine ”

“ The new circumstances under which we are placed, call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects. An American dialect will therefore be formed; ”

“ The philologists explain the several stages of the development of a language, distinctly marking off each, from the crude local patois to the highly developed and polished speech of a cultured nation. The primitive tongue of a local tribe is termed a patois, a rudimentary speech ill adapted to the communication of the simplest ideas. If a patois grows and develops so as to become available in vocabulary and syntax for the expression of thought, it is called a dialect. ”

“ For, setting aside the fact that all are not agreed as to whose usage forms the unexceptionable standard, nothing can be more certain than that few, on either side of the ocean, know and follow it accurately. Not many of us can escape acquiring in our youth some tinge of local dialect, of slang characteristic of grade or occupation, of personal peculiarities, even, belonging to our initiators into the mysteries of speech. ”

“ The plain truth after all is, that those who are unwilling to take the trouble to understand any language, or any dialect of any language, with which they are previously unacquainted, generally consider such new language or such dialect barbarous ”

“ Isolated individuals may be found who speak a compromise between two dialects of a language, and if their number and importance increases they may even end by creating a new dialectic norm of their own, a dialect in which the extreme peculiarities of the parent dialects are ironed out. ”

“ Poetic Words in Dialect Use Another feature of the dialect vocabulary which is worth a passing notice, is the existence therein of words which we are wont to regard as too poetical, or too literary for everyday use. We should fear to be considered affected, and given to a habit of interlarding our conversation with quotations from books, if we called a song-thrush a mavis, or a throstle, and spoke of a merle or an ousel instead of saying blackbird, yet all these four are extremely common dialect terms. ”

“ Since Literature must embrace all naturally existing materials—physical, mental and spiritual—we have no occasion to urge its acceptance of so-called dialect, for dialect IS in Literature, and HAS been there since the beginning of all written thought and utterance. ”