Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Ecuador

School of Linguistics
Nombre: Jefferson Imbaquingo

Dialects of English
English has served as Lingua Franca for many countries worldwide. Due to

this, English is not kept exclusively in USA, AUS, or the UK, but it has spread

around the world. This has contributed to the proliferation of new accents of

English. In the following analysis, I have chosen: CALLIFORNIA 10, ETHIOPIAN

2 and ENGLAND 79 (London urban area) to analyze in terms of pronunciation and

lexicon.

The first English dialect in this analysis is the one that I feel I learned. I

choose CALIFORNIA 10. I think I favor this dialect since I can understand this

dialect almost perfectly and all the sounds seem familiar to me. It is needless to say

that American English is the most common of Englishs that learners choose when it

comes to learning English. This dialect of English is characterized by its variety of

sounds. For example, the fact that American English, and it is the case of the speaker

of CALIFORNIA 10, is Rhotic i.g. American English pronounces all /r/ sounds as

opposed to British: car /ka/ - /kah/. Also in NAmE, the sound /t/ can be pronounced

in six different ways. However, the most interesting and distinctive to me is the fact

that when /t/ is in the pattern -nt-, -t can be totally omitted: center [senr] or winter

[wn]. On the grounds of the aforementioned arguments, the pronunciation of the

speaker of CALIFORNIA 10 seems to be more relaxed and fluent to me if we

contrast it to British or Australian. The subject of the audio CALIFORNIA 10, in his

free speech (no the written/read section) he makes liaisons such he went and /he

wenand/.
 The second language chosen for the analysis is ETHIOPIA 2. Personally, I

think that this accent is hard to understand because the sounds that the speaker

articulates do not resemble the ones I learned as standard (North American English).

The speaker has strong /r/ sounds as if it were Spanish; for example, she says words

like rare and for with the retroflex allophone or alveolar trill []. Also, she

transforms the semi vowel /w/ into an aspirated /h/; for example, when /hen/ instead

of /wen/. This makes it more difficult to keep track of the word and I lose track of

them easily. She also has the tendency to transform typically -er sounds into the

schwa sound // which makes the accent seem British, but harder to grasp. This

strong accent prevails despite the fact that she has spent a great time under the

influence of America English. In terms of lexicon I cannot find a lot of differences.

It seems standard to me. Maybe it is because she has moved to California since she

was 20, so her vocabulary sounds familiar for the influence of American English,

but it is not the case of her pronunciation.

The third accent I choose to analyze is ENGLAND 79. This is the accent I

find beautiful to my ears. Specially I picked an accent within the urban area in

London. I enjoy listening to this accent because there are a lot of vowel and

consonant changes that are, presumably, unique from all dialects of English. To

start, I can easily differentiate between the English I learnt and this accent. The

speaker has a very strong British accent. Unlike North American English, British

accent is nonrhotic. This means that the speaker usually drop /r/ sounds. The speaker

of LONDON 79 articulates -er sounds in the way of schwa sound //, which is

typical of British accent. Unlike ETHOPIAN ACCENT, this accent does not strong

/r/ sounds. For example, the speaker drops /r/ sounds in words such as work, born,
started and lengthens the vowel what precedes /r/ sounds. Also, she does not

pronounce /t/ sound in the middle of vowel as flaps as American accents does. In

this case, /t/ sounds are stressed. This gives the language a certain degree of strength

and toughness in my opinion. In terms of lexicon, I can nly mention a few. When it

comes to possession, she favors have got (My fathers got a strong Glasgow accent)

instead of have (My father has a strong Glasgow accent). I think that have got to

express possession is more common in British accent than it is in North American

English.