How do linguists identify dialects?
We can learn a lot about the history of a people from studying their dialects. The way Americans speak - the words and sounds of their speech - reveals the migration patterns as the United States was settled over 400 years, starting with settlers who arrived on the East Coast. These pioneers blazed trails and roads as they moved west, sometimes using existing trails created by the Indian tribes of the area or following rivers. They fanned north and south as well as west, taking their customs and language with them. Sometimes the movement of people was so big that whole communities and economies changed nearly overnight, such as the influx of people seeking gold during the gold strike in California of 1949 and northward migration of freed former slaves after 1865.
No comments:
Post a Comment