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The Black Country dialect is spoken by many people in the Black Country, a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. [1] The traditional dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English [ 2 ] and may be unintelligible for outsiders.
Accents vary significantly between ethnic and language groups. Home-language English speakers, Black, White, Indian, and Coloured, in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles British Received Pronunciation, modified with varying degrees of Germanic inflection due to Afrikaans. [15] The Coloured community is generally bilingual.
Within a given English-speaking country, there is a form of the language considered to be Standard English: the Standard Englishes of different countries differ and can themselves be considered dialects. Standard English is often associated with the more educated layers of society as well as more formal registers.
African-American English (AAE) is the umbrella term [1] for English dialects spoken predominantly by Black people in the United States and many in Canada; [2] most commonly, it refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to more standard American English. [3]
The traditional Black Country dialect, known as "Black Country Spake" (as in "Where's our Spake Gone", a 2014–2016 lottery-funded project to preserve and document the dialect) preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English [85] and can be very confusing for outsiders.
However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as a creole or semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoing decreolization. [19] [20] [c]
There are some local phrases in the Black Country that are renowned. People do tend to substitute a reply of "arr" for "yes". Generally, most words are shortened, most commonly being "I haven't" to "I ay" (which can be argued as an even shorter form of "I ain't"). [ 1 ]
Older Southern American English is a diverse set of English dialects of the Southern United States spoken most widely up until the American Civil War of the 1860s, gradually transforming among its White speakers—possibly first due to postwar economy-driven migrations—up until the mid-20th century. [1]