Register as a Variety of Language

Register as a Variety of Language

Each language has its dialects and we can travel across one country and find that each region speaks in quite a different dialect and ... 5:05 AM

Each language has its dialects and we can travel across one country and find that each region speaks in quite a different dialect and that accents differ from one place to another. Then, we can take the example of the English and Spanish languages which have variety depending on the countries where they are spoken. Therefore, if we are in South America we will hear and speak a somehow different variety of Spanish: the accent is totally different from the one in the Peninsula, and in terms of vocabulary we can also find some 'false friends'. The fact that English has been spoken in England for 1,500 years but in Australia for only 200, explains why we have a great wealth of regional dialects in England that is more or less totally lacking in Australia .

It is often possible to tell where an English person comes from to within about fifteen miles or less. In Australia, where there has not been enough time for changes to bring about any regional variation, it is almost impossible to tell where someone comes from at all, although very small differences are now beginning to appear.   

It is unlikely however that there will ever be as much dialectal variation in Australia as there is in England. This is because modern transport and communication conditions are very different from what they were 1,500 or even one-hundred years ago. Even though English is now spoken in many different parts of the world many thousands miles apart, it is very unlikely that English will ever break up into a number of different non-intelligent languages in the same way that Indo-European and Germanic did. German and Norwegian became different languages because the ancestors of the speakers of these two languages moved apart geographically, and were no longer in touch and communicating with one another