Accents and Dialect Notes

A prescriptivist: concerned with the preservation of language and its standardisation. 

A desciptivist: the correctness depends on the context rather than the rules of language. 

Multicultural London English is a variety of English combining elements of the language of different ethnic groups particually afro-Caribbean English. It arose in London but has spead to different parts of the UK. 

Dialect Levelling: the process whereby people in different parts of the country sound more and more like each other as their local accents and dialects die out. 

Features of Multicultural Urban British English:

- extreme fronting of goose vowels; vowel sounds in a word produced further forward in the mouth. 

- word-initial DH and TH stopping (they becomes dey)

- use of paragmatic marker you get me (similar to innit)

Example Accents/Dialects:

• West Country
• Jafaican
• Brummie
• British Standard English
• Glasweigan
• Estuary English
• Yorkshire
• …