A question for Europeans...

[2952-0-0]

I'd like to ask something about dialects or any regional languages which you may speak or which exist in your community. Any response is appreciated. I only ask Europeans, because those places are "old" enough to have such relations.

First, how prevalent or common is the dialect in day-to-day life? They likely aren't spoken in official purposes, but do friends and family speak to each other in those dialects? Do you encounter them in small retail shops, on the street, etc?

Second, do those dialects suffer the perception of being in the past and belonging to elders, or do they seem "cool" to youngsters?

Third, how strictly has the state imposed its "national" language, and for how long has this been ongoing?  When politicians use the local dialect, does it raise political connotations?

Fourth, does the state continue to impose its "national" language, or is it more relaxed towards dialects being used in mass media, by local government, etc?

Finally, if the local dialect is clearly on the decline, how do the elders, who do speak it, feel about the trend, and how to youngsters feel about it?

Thanks guys.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I might answer this for other areas I know, but the city where I do live first...

First, how prevalent or common is the dialect in day-to-day life? They likely aren't spoken in official purposes, but do friends and family speak to each other in those dialects? Do you encounter them in small retail shops, on the street, etc?

Welsh is the dominant language in most of North West Wales; especially in rural areas and the old quarrying communities up in the mountains. Bangor is essentially bilingual (in part because of all the students). You hear Welsh every day here, you also hear people switching from Welsh to English all the time; usually because Welsh is very good at expressing emotions, but doesn't have much in the way of a technical vocabulary. The Welsh spoken is the local dialect (quite different from the Western dialect the Welsh-speaking media has sort of adopted), the English (other than that spoken by most of the students) is usually Welsh-English with distinct Lancashire influences.

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I'm not much use at measuring that sort of thing, but most of the local young 'uns seem to speak Welsh on a day-to-day basis.

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Too complicated to explain in one post. Suffice to say that language politics has been important for a very long time (long before the rise of Plaid, actually...) and that Welsh now has equal status with English and appears on official notices, signs and so on.

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All Welsh Assembly Government documents are bilingual, so...

[memphis]

I'd like to ask something about dialects or any regional languages which you may speak or which exist in your community. Any response is appreciated. I only ask Europeans, because those places are "old" enough to have such relations.

First, how prevalent or common is the dialect in day-to-day life? They likely aren't spoken in official purposes, but do friends and family speak to each other in those dialects? Do you encounter them in small retail shops, on the street, etc?

Second, do those dialects suffer the perception of being in the past and belonging to elders, or do they seem "cool" to youngsters?

Third, how strictly has the state imposed its "national" language, and for how long has this been ongoing?  When politicians use the local dialect, does it raise political connotations?

Fourth, does the state continue to impose its "national" language, or is it more relaxed towards dialects being used in mass media, by local government, etc?

Finally, if the local dialect is clearly on the decline, how do the elders, who do speak it, feel about the trend, and how to youngsters feel about it?

Thanks guys.

Regarding African American English, which is the native dialect of the majority of people in my town, though not me.:
1. One hears it every day. It is impossible to live in Memphis and not be fairly familiar with it.
2. The majority of African-Americans speak it every day. Speaking standard English would be extremely not cool for most, and imply a bit of race betrayal. This is less true among better off blacks, but even most of them seem to prefer their dialect over the standard in casual conversation with one another.
3. The American school system greatly discourages the dialect, teaching in schools that is in incorrect speech.
4. You will very rarely hear an African-American politician or other public figure use the dialect in front of a camera, though it does happen occassionally with very local, low-level figures who represent overwhelmingly African-American constituencies. I certainly wouldn't expect to hear it ever from the Obamas The exception to this is certain entertainers, and even here, these are the folks who don't wish to be taken seriously.
5. As stated earlier, the dialect is not on the decline, and is actually much more likely to be heard from a younger person, for purposes of self-identification.

If anybody is interested in a serious book about African American English, I highly recommend John McWhorter's Word on the Street.

[Хahar 🤔]

I'd like to ask something about dialects or any regional languages which you may speak or which exist in your community. Any response is appreciated. I only ask Europeans, because those places are "old" enough to have such relations.

Hey, now, I resent that. You're Asian too, aren't you?

[2952-0-0]

I'd like to ask something about dialects or any regional languages which you may speak or which exist in your community. Any response is appreciated. I only ask Europeans, because those places are "old" enough to have such relations.

Hey, now, I resent that. You're Asian too, aren't you?

True, but I didn't think of any other Asians on this board. I'd like to describe the relationship within the massive Chinese family of languages, but it's very complex. First, the fact that written characters are based on inherent meaning, permits a single written language to coexist with a mosaic of inter-related dialects and languages. This means that a Cantonese/Hokkien/Hakka speaker would write in a language that any speaker of a Chinese dialect could understand, which puts the Chinese languages in a different context as other languages.

1. Everyone uses their local dialect in daily life, and not doing so identifies yourself as an outsider. Anyone who has been to school recently can at least understand Standard Mandarin, which is derived from the Beijing dialect, but no one natively speaks SM. This is true in Mainland China, Singapore, and Taiwan, but not Hong Kong. There, Cantonese has always been the predominant language (with some code switching with English). Malaysia has permitted its Chinese dialects to coexist without interference.

2. In many parts of the country many youngsters cannot speak the dialect, due to a lack of interest by their parents. Other youngsters try to preserve their dialect, but this has to be done through mass spoken media (see above).

3. This is a hard one. In Mainland China, SM is preferred in official circumstances, but the government does not actively discourages the use of dialects. There are occasional stories of schoolchildren being slapped for speaking dialects, but this is not a policy. All Party bureaucrats speak SM.

In Taiwan, SM is also used in official circumstances, and Hokkien was banned in mass media until the dictatorship ended. Most Taiwanese speak Hokkien, but the more Hokkien Taiwanese politicians use, the more pro-independence they are.

In Hong Kong, SM used to be associated with the backward and communist north, but is now associated with growth and opportunity. All politicians continue to use Cantonese.

In Singapore, the LKY government has preferred that the Chinese population speak SM even though no one natively speaks it. As a result dialects are endangered there.

4. This is also difficult. In the PRC, mass media is often broadcast in dialects, but schools and government offices work in SM. Entertainers are generally encouraged to sing/speak in SM, though no one cares at the low level. Shanghainese is more actively discouraged, but only because the Communist Party faction whose base is in Shanghai has fallen out of favour, which won't last forever. Cantonese is more openly expressed due to the proximity of Hong Kong. Hokkien used to be neglected, until recently when the government saw the need to reach out to Taiwan. China is so diverse in terms of regional languages that regional languages cannot be used as a political tool anyway: if everyone is special, then no one is special.

Hong Kong, despite being a part of the PRC, continues to be overwhelmingly Cantonese, even in schools and government.

Taiwan is more relaxed about regional languages than the PRC or Singapore.

Singapore is more strict about regional languages than even the PRC. Cantonese and Hokkien media from HK and Taiwan must be dubbed in Mandarin before they are permitted to be shown locally.

5. This is not really known. In HK and Taiwan, where this subject can be discussed, the relationship is stable. In the PRC and Singapore, where this cannot be discussed, the relationship is trending towards SM dominance, more so in Singapore.

[minionofmidas]

First, how prevalent or common is the dialect in day-to-day life? They likely aren't spoken in official purposes, but do friends and family speak to each other in those dialects? Do you encounter them in small retail shops, on the street, etc?

Some form of dialect, or usually rather an accent of highly varying strength carried over from the original dialect, is spoken by virtually everybody in the Southern half of Germany. Strength of these accents vary very much from speaker to speaker, as does the extent of control a speaker has over it  - most urbanites do practice some form of code switching / toning their accent down or putting it on... though their "best" high German will usually still betray where they're from. And when they're speaking their "best" dialect, their accent will usually betray them as more commonly speaking something closer to High German than Dialect.
And other people don't.
Add the further issue of migrants' and many second generation migrants' German... which usually carries an accent from their mother tongue and one from the dialect of the area they live in.

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Only if it's really thick

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Absolutely. They seem "cool" to the people designing regional-based advertising campaigns, too. Usually ending up trying way too hard.

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The State did that throughout the later 19th and first half of the 20th century. And the nationalist movement did it throughout the first half of the 19th century. You might say that by the 1960s they were satisfied with the degree of conformity (and mutual intelligibility... still not a given with some older rural people. Even within Hesse.) achieved, and stopped trying further.

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No.

[Lechasseur]

The local dialect historically was Picard, but now you only have some old people and people living in tiny villages who still speak it. You'll never hear it in the cities, where everyone speaks Standard French.