"Iberian" languages questions

[Queequeg]

Garbon, isn't African American vernacular kind of a sociolect?  Almost all African American people I know kind of "turn it off", which is what I would suspect would happen if they were in Delhi. 

[derspiess]

Garbon, isn't African American vernacular kind of a sociolect?  Almost all African American people I know kind of "turn it off", which is what I would suspect would happen if they were in Delhi. 

Some can turn it off a lot more easily than others.  A couple gals I've worked with can code-shift in conversation but oddly have trouble doing so in their emails

[garbon]

Garbon, isn't African American vernacular kind of a sociolect?  Almost all African American people I know kind of "turn it off", which is what I would suspect would happen if they were in Delhi. 

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.

[garbon]

Garbon, isn't African American vernacular kind of a sociolect?  Almost all African American people I know kind of "turn it off", which is what I would suspect would happen if they were in Delhi. 

Some can turn it off a lot more easily than others.  A couple gals I've worked with can code-shift in conversation but oddly have trouble doing so in their emails

Oh well if that's what he means then sure but of course, different people having varying sizes of vocabularies as well a desire to modulate their behavior. Much the same I'd guess for a lot of slang.

[derspiess]

That was my best guess at what he said, but the Delhi thing did kinda throw me off.

[Queequeg]

Garbon, isn't African American vernacular kind of a sociolect?  Almost all African American people I know kind of "turn it off", which is what I would suspect would happen if they were in Delhi. 

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.

I think a lot of-maybe most-English dialect speakers can "code-shift" depending on circumstance. 

[Jacob]

I think a lot of-maybe most-English dialect speakers can "code-shift" depending on circumstance.

I don't think that's a phenomenon that's unique to English speakers. I've observed the same sort of effect with speakers of Japanese, Chinese, and Danish; I expect the same is true for speakers of Spanish and Portuguese.

[Jacob]

Well good thing I didn't do that?  Page 1 we have a discussion on the difficulties of understanding presumably Portugal Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. None of that seems esoteric to me but examples of rather mainstream speech. Totally could be off but I think Portugal and Brazil have the highest concentrations of Portuguese speakers.

Then we also had some bits about Spanish and difficulties of understanding pronunciations in various parts of the same country. Is that comparable to picking a few places out of anglosphere?

we are spending a lot of time on something so trivial eh?

Anyhow, I thought you were making that comparison - between the Anglosphere and the Hispanosphere, and that's what I've been talking about. If you weren't then I guess we can take that as proof that even if people have no dialect/accent barrier (since we're typing)  there can still be significant communication barriers

Also, who said anything about excluding South Boston, urban African-American or Delhi-standard - I didn't agree to that and I'm not sure I'd agree either that there would be difficulties to the extent that two speakers would be unable to communicate.

Similarly, I'd wager that a speaker of Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese from Portugal would be able to communicate.

Not sure what to make of this TV-American unless the suggestion is that most Americans all speak that way - as again like I said there really isn't a lot of difficultly understanding English as one travels about America.

When you turn on a TV in the US, people on it tend to speak a non-regional "generic American". Same thing as BBC/RP-for the UK, and there are similar dynamics in many other countries. It's the standard towards which you alter your accent if you speak a heavy dialect and want to be understood by others who do not; something which you can do because it's common in education and media. So if your natural accent is close to that standard - and that goes for whatever language you speak - you don't have to worry about being understood if addressing a dialect speaker; they've learned to understand your way of speaking in school and the media.

[Barrister]

Note to self - der gets panicky when you ask whether one's nations cultural items are uncommon in other nations. Reason for that - unknown.

  I think your bar for "common" is pretty low.  I'd bet that fewer than 1 or 2% of Americans have ever heard of them.

I had never ever heard of a capralinhas (sp) before coming here to Brazil.

[Razgovory]

Jake, where do you get this impression that people in the US have a hard time understanding each other?

[Duque de Bragança]

Note to self - der gets panicky when you ask whether one's nations cultural items are uncommon in other nations. Reason for that - unknown.

  I think your bar for "common" is pretty low.  I'd bet that fewer than 1 or 2% of Americans have ever heard of them.

I had never ever heard of a caipirinha before coming here to Brazil.

Fixed it for you 

Very easy to find in European bars, btw.

[Valmy]

Jake, where do you get this impression that people in the US have a hard time understanding each other?

My Cousin Vinny.  'What is a yoot?'

[garbon]

Actually Jake, I think you're taking me to me to task about my flippant comment to Iorm about that being a pity and my initially weak salvo about Iberian language speakers being unwilling to learn their own language.

I don't think you've shown that the various English speaking groups you've highlighted are unintelligible to other English speakers - nor beyond mere assertion have you shown that the various Spanish and then also Portuguese groups have an easy time understanding one another. In fact, there's direct testimony against your position by native speakers of English and those Iberian languages respectively.

[garbon]

Also, I should point out - once again that I never said all English speakers can understand one another - clearly that's not true, but that in general one doesn't have to worry at all that one will be unable to understand other speaker's of English.  Now that may be the case for the various Spanish and Portuguese groups, but it wasn't the impression I got from this thread.

[Razgovory]

Jake, where do you get this impression that people in the US have a hard time understanding each other?

My Cousin Vinny.  'What is a yoot?'

Well, now I want to see that movie again.