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toxxy's collection of anglic dialect stuff
17
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(2)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(1.2)
(1.2)
(1)
(1.2)
(1)
(3)
(3)
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(4)
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(4.5)
(4.5)
(5)
(5)
(5.6)
(6)
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(7)
(7.8)
(7.8)
(8.9.10)
(8)
(9.10)
(9)
(10)
there isn't enough online coverage of traditional dialects of english and scots, so i've decided to put some information on them all together in one place. i hope that more people will become interested in our dialects and help to stop them from dying out. i'll put links to different resources and things in dialects here. the numbers on the map will link to pages for their districts; hover over them to see the names of the districts. the main focus of these pages is traditional dialects instead of more recently developed ones, so a lot of the information might not apply to the current speech of areas it covers. every time i mention counties, i'm talking about historic counties.
about the map
the map on the right shows the districts from a. j. ellis's "on early english pronunciation part v". any division up of dialects on a map like this will be somewhat arbitrary, but ellis's is the best one i can (be arsed to) find.
the thick unbroken lines divide the six principal divisions, and the thin ones divide the 42 districts. the broken lines, which become crossed lines when they overlap unbroken lines, show ellis's 10 transverse lines. these are ten uselful isoglosses of where phonetic features begin and end on the map. they are numbered in brackets. where more than one of them overlap, their numbers in brackets are separated by dots.
(1): the northern limit of a /ʌ/-type vowel "some". (2): the southern limit of a rounded vowel in "some". (3): the northern limit of a retracted pronunciation of 〈r〉. (4): the southern limit for definite article reduction to /t/ or /θ/. (5): the northern limit of any use of /ðə/ or /θ/ as the definite article. (6): the southern limit of the word "house" being pronounced as /hu:s/. (7): the northern limit of any definite article reduction. (8): the southern limit of "some" ever having a vowel like /ʌ/ on moving south from scotland. (9): the northern limit of "some" having a rounded vowel. (10): this line separates northern english and southern scots dialects; it doesn't fully align with the political border.
general resources
a good resource for traditional dialects is the victorian age "on early english pronunciation, part v", which is on the internet archive. another good resource is the audio recordings from the survey of english dialects (SED); there used to be an easy to navigate website filled with the audio recordings, but i can't find anything like that now; this site has a few of them though. a structural atlas of the english dialects has lots of interesting maps of phonological features made using SED data. dictionaries of the scots language is a good site for words in modern or historical scots dialects.
problems with stuff online
wikipedia pages on them tend to gather misinformation from clueless (usually american) editors who don't realise how different traditional dialects can be from standard english. the standard language and practically all dialects spoken outside the british isles can be considered part of the "south eastern" district which is marked as 17 on the map.