Regional variation

Geography affects language, both within a country and between countries, giving rise to regional accents and dialects, and to the pidgins and creoles which emerged around the world whenever English first came into contact with other languages.

Intranational regional varieties have been observed within English from its earliest days, as seen in such labels as ‘Northern’, ‘London’ and ‘Scottish”.

International varieties are more recent in origin, as seen in such labels as ‘American”, ‘Australian’ and ‘Indian’.

Regional language variation is studied by sociolinguistics, geographical linguistics, dialectology and other disciplines, the actual designation depending on the focus and emphasis of the study.

A variety of language peculiar to some district and having no normalized literary form is known as dialect. However, in cases when a regional variety is characterized by statehood and possesses a literary form (usually codified in grammars and dictionaries) the term variant is preferred.

The term dialect is also to be differentiated from the term accent. A regional accent refers to features of pronunciation which convey information about a person’s geographical origin, e.g. bath [baө] as opposed to [ba:ө]; hold [həuld] and [əuld].

A regional dialect refers to features of grammar and vocabulary which convey information about a perons’s geographical origin. Compare, for instance, They real good and They are really good; Is it ready you are? and Are you ready?

Speakers who have a distinctive regional dialect will have a distinctive regional accent but the reverse does not necessarily follow. It is possible to have a regional accent yet speak a dialect which conveys nothing about geographical origin.