The Geography of Speech

IN every community there exists a certain degree of uniformity in speech, which is the result of common inheritance, of contact between the members of the community, and of a desire to make oneself understood with ease. The young learn from the old, and in a lesser degree the old from the young; and newcomers acquire the established dialect in whole or in part. If the inhabitants of a village or a countryside have intimate contacts with a neighboring community, they may abandon some of their own dialectal peculiarities and adopt speech habits of their neighbors, especially if the community with which they entertain relations is of greater importance in the economic, political, religious, or cultural life of the region. Intermarriage, migration from the country to the city and back again, prolonged stays in other communities, the influence upon the pupils and students of teachers from other parts of the country and of teachers advocating ideal standards of speech (better and purer speech)-all these factors play their part in assimilating the speech of one community to the speech of other communities. If the diverse social groups are exposed to such influences in varying degrees, the original uniformity may be destroyed through the development of class dialects

Atlas (anatomy · Geography · Linguistics · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Medicine

• The lay of the language

  Candice R Luebbering, Korine N Kolivras et al.•Cartography and Geographic…•2013

  Add to list

• Anymore, It’s on Twitter

  Christopher Strelluf•American Speech•2019

  Add to list